As someone who has looked into game design for quite some time, I’ve found that having creativity is vital to making a successful game. At the same time, you need to be able to have your game evoke some sort of emotion from the player. After reading both articles, I realized that many games use their creativeness to evoke emotion. These emotions vary from game to game as each can have different styles of gameplay, aesthetic and storyline.

Take for example Abzu and Dark Souls II. Two starkly different games, each offering their own emotional response from players.

Abzu, a deep-sea exploration game, is very much focused on it aesthetics. The underwater environments of coral reefs, grottos and countless colonies of fish it presents leave the player feeling relaxed and in awe of the world around them. While a story is present and gameplay is pretty solid, both are overshadowed by the creative aesthetics of the game. The story is very vague as its represented through underwater murals and the gameplay is fairly simple as it mainly consists of swimming through different areas and occasionally adjusting levers.

Dark Souls II on the other hand, is part of a series of game series infamous for its difficult gameplay in both single player mode and player versus player combat. While the story and aesthetics of Dark Souls II are interesting and captivating, the game depends on its gameplay to draw emotion from players. Many fans of the series play because of how hard the game is and to challenge themselves. Players may end up getting frustrated or even enraged at the game, but keep playing to achieve a feeling of success when they finally beat a boss they’ve died to 20 or more times.

Each game is able to evoke emotions from players because of how they use their creativeness to differentiate themselves from other games. They become unique in their own ways so they aren’t just seen as copies or imitations of other games. Many games attempt to imitate or reference what other game before them did, but it just doesn’t work the same. In order to grab a player’s attention and get a response from them, a game must use its creativeness to differentiate itself.

As an Interactive Game Studies major, I tend to analyze games as I play them. I have specific games I play when I want a challenge, or when I want to play something that doesn’t require too much attention. Some of my favorite games are quite different when comparing them to other favorites. This is because each game has something unique about it that I like.

For instance, Pokémon Emerald is one of my all-time favorites because of its story, art-style and music. Like most Pokémon games, the gameplay is exactly the same as past titles. Catch Pokémon, train Pokémon, battle Pokémon and repeat. However, the story, art-style and music are unique to that generation of Pokémon games and are what make it unique to me.

Meanwhile another one of my favorites, Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, is a favorite because of its gameplay and difficulty. No matter how many times I play a level I can still die because I wasn’t paying attention or was trying to go too fast. But the feeling of accomplishment I feel when beating a difficult stage and maybe even finding one of the collectible gems is worth all the trial and error.

I hope to one day make a game that affects players in some way. Whether they enjoy the gameplay, aesthetic or even the story of my game, I’ll be satisfied knowing it touched them in some way. And while every player won’t be affected the exact same way, that’s okay. We all enjoy things for different reasons, it’s all a matter of opinion.