goldtag

  To understand the emotional structure of visual novels, I needed a point of comparison. Other media that handle the same subject — relationships and emotions between people. Films and novels. I asked AI: "What's the difference in how films, novels, and visual novels each deliver emotion?" Then I combined the analysis with my own experience. Film: Emotion Under Time Control Film controls time. Within a fixed two hours, the director decides everything. How long to show a scene, when to bring in music, where the camera looks. The audience surrenders to the flow. This control is film's strength. At exactly the moment the director wants, they can produce exactly the emotion they intended. When the camera lingers on a character's eyes during a sad scene, the music swells, silence extends — the audience's emotions follow almost automatically. I think of Christmas in August. The emotion this film creates is "regret for what was missed." Words unspoken, fee...

  We've analyzed why emotion emerges in visual novels. The reverse question follows naturally: why can't other games do the same? Of course, "can't" is an overstatement. People have cried playing The Last of Us, felt their chest tighten in Final Fantasy. But those emotions mostly come from cutscenes or story events. It's rare for the gameplay itself to produce relationship emotions. Why? AI and I dug deep into this topic. Games' Basic Structure Clashes with Emotion Most games are built on a challenge-reward structure. Defeat enemies for experience, complete quests for rewards, clear stages to progress. The emotions this produces are achievement, tension, thrill. Intense, but different in texture from relationship emotions. Relationship emotions sit at the opposite end of efficiency. Liking someone is inefficient. Anxious, irrational, uncontrollable. The challenge-reward structure fundamentally conflicts with such feelings. AI explained this using the term ...