Customer Reviews

Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book has about 10 anonymous, 5 star reviews that all sound the same. I'm VERY suspicious that these are fake reviews.

I've read parts of this book and I understand why most of the non-anonymous reviewers have problems with it. While it has some interesting aspects, it doesn't go very in depth and the amount of ridiculous buzzwords (like Emotioneering) make it hard to swallow.

If books had a dressing contest, this one would surely take first place. It applies every imaginable gimmick for the sole purpose of impressing the reader. There are many pictures in it, all of which are sensational adolescent fantasy material, many filling a full page and sometimes in color. The text is broken up in various ways, with intervening boxes and sidebars in incosistent shapes and sizes, as if designed specifically to distract you. Its "techniques" are trademarked under the bombastic name "Emotioneering", and worst of all, the author makes a point of repeatedly flaunting his screen(game)writing prowess.

But what are these "Emotioneering" techniques? has freeman actually invented a set of technical rules which applies to drama? No, that would be Aristotle. If you're really interested in the rules of drama, that's whom you should read. What Freeman refers to as "Emotioneering" are nothing more than a pile of bad screenwrting practices you can pick up in any second rate screenwriting book - except for two differences; first, in this sorry book they are given mind-blowing names like "technique stacking" and "Emotionally Complex Moments and Situations Techniques", and second, the examples used are said to be taken "from games" instead of from films, but, of course, all of these "games" have been imagined by Freeman for the purpose of the book (which he expressly admits), because there IS no real world game that would serve his purpose - he is really talking about films.

But when it comes to films, Freeman seems to think the The Lord of the Rings trilogy is about the best you can get. Ask any amateur screenwriter and they'll tell you that the one award these films honestly deserve is Worst Screenplay. The Lord of the Rings, like Freeman's book, is all spectacle and no content.

What kept me trudging through the morass of simpleton notions and overflowing filler text was the hope that, as a man who has some experience with writing for games, Freeman would have a few words to say about the intersection of stories with interactivity - the most alluring aspect of combining games with stories. Although he doesn't take up the subject directly, he does mention at some point that writing for games is complicated by the need to accommodate for the actions of the player. He says that he uses branching statements in his scripts for this, and that this is a very tough problem. Other than that, there are some minor points like how to allow the player to experience the events of your computerized screenplay in several different orders (which is made possible only by the ridicules simplicity of the story proposed as an example), but nothing which actually deals with letting a human have a meaningful interaction with a story.

To summarize, except for the pictures (if that's your cup of tea) I really can't see any reason to buy this book over any other random heap of text. If you want spectacle, you got it. If you want knowledge, you do yourself a favor and read three books: The Poetics by Aristotle, for the real "Emotioneering" techniques, Chris Crawford on Game Design, for an understanding of why the problem is not nearly as simple as Freeman pretends it to be, and Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling for the best solutions to the problem currently available.

I'm surprised by the reviews from people claiming to be game industry veterans who say they've found this book to be useful. Either they're not really in the game industry (possibly PR flaks?) or they haven't learned much in their time here.

General comment on content: Between the massive amounts of interior artwork, the big body type, the big (and frequent) headers, unusually wide margins, and lots of white space, there's probably only about 75 pages of actual information in this "500-page" book. Think of it as more of a booklet.

Mr. Freeman's credits are hard for me to verify. Web searches turn up some titles he's gotten credit for contributing to, but none of them were AAA titles. And there's no way to know for sure how much he actually contributed to them. Having been both a freelancer and internal writer/designer, I know outside writers who've been completely useless to games' development, so a claim of credit doesn't mean much, IMO. I have no clue what expertise he has with movies or other media, but I'm not too hopeful after reading his book on game writing.

One big problem I have with his book is the jargon he insists on excreting everywhere. This isn't game industry jargon, movie jargon, or any sensible jargon that I know of. It's jargon he seems to have made up to try to claim writing techniques and mechanics as his own. And he really, really likes to capitalize the (sometimes excruciatingly long) names of "his" techniques. A sense of impending doom approaches when you first see the word "Emotioneering" (capitalized, of course), looms high overhead when you see such phrases as "Plot Deepening Technique" and "Dialogue Interesting Technique," and crashes down with skull-crushing force upon reading the phrase "Player Toward NPC Relationship Deepening Technique." Ouch. Lack brilliance? Try BS!

How can anyone read a sentence such as "A Character Being Genuine is an NPC Rooting Interest Technique, but not a Character Deepening Technique" without laughing? (And, yes, the capitalization and comma fault are the author's.)

The bottom line is that this book doesn't seem (to me) to have much of value to offer anyone who's been in the industry for any length of time. If you're trying to break into the industry, however, you could be deluded into thinking that you're learning something useful here. FWIW, that's the opinion of someone who's actually been in the games industry since 1984. I keep trying to read this book, hoping to get something out of it, but can't get more than 20% into it before giving up.

I've had a handful of screenwriting classes, and some limited practical experience with making games. I thought this book delivered on what it promised, yet at the same time I felt there are many problems with the way its written.

Freeman uses what seems to be a highly methodological way of dealing with the 'soft' issue of emotion in games. You'll find countless references to elaborate terms such as "NPC Toward Player Relationship Deepening Techniques", "Emotionally Complex and Situation Techniques" and so on. Some very specific examples even get their own designated capitalized label. Structured as this seems, it actually only helps to make things confusing. A lot of the "hundreds" of techniques are quite similar, and without a clear overarching framework, things get very convoluted.

Some great knowledge and insights are contained in this book, mind you. I personally found some of the hypothetical games and game scenarios that are presented valuable. However, the knowledge is fragmented and disorganized. Freeman quickly jumps from one thing to the next, without a clear underlying logic as to how all the information is distributed among the chapters. The book especially emphasizes quantity - Freeman even refers to things beyond the scope of the book, i.e. "this would take way too long to explain, but let me give you the short version". I think the book would be a lot better if the information were better organized.

The book leaves a lot to be wanted in terms of focus and clarity. This book needs a new edition, or someone else needs to come along and tackle this (very important) subject from a different angle.

If you want to learn to write, pick any Writer's Digest book on the topic of your choice and you'll be fine.

If you want to design a game, I recommend just about any other book with the word "game" in the title. You won't learn any of that here.

On the other hand, if you want to know how to hire David Freeman and the Freeman Group, this book is for you.

In general, there are 2 types of "How to" book: 1) "How you" books, which actually try to teach you something; and 2) "How I" books, which explain how the author will do what he does as soon as you hire him to do it.

This is definitely a "How I" book.

Finally, any book that sums up the plot of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as "Two Major Characters Change Places" (capitalized because this is one of the vaunted "1500 Emotioneering Techniques") is not going to teach you anything useful.

The book has some good ideas -- but they are incomplete. If you want The Rest of the Story you will need to pay Freeman for his services. Example: Freeman says he has a list of over a thousand character traits for creating characters. If he has such a list, it wasn't included with the book. The pages in the book are beautiful; it is a well-crafted book -- just like a fancy brochure. Caveat emptor.

I've worked in the game industry, and like many other recent reviewers, I have doubts about many of the positive reviews for this book. Too many of them 1. are written by someone who gives his job title but not a name, 2. are written by someone has written no other reviews, 3. are written in the same gee-whizz-buy-this style. Interestingly, none of them show the insight into the games industry an insider would have (the book's author is a consultant with very limited experience) and none of them refer to the books considerable faults, which have made it rather more disliked than otherwise by professionals.

Good book. A good book indeed.
For those of us interested in writing/designing pc and videogames, a book like this one really comes in handy.
But before I ramble with the good side of it, I'll mention the three aspects I disliked about it:
First, I was a bit annoyed with the cocky attitude. Most of the time it sounded as if, either you use emotioneering techniques (term created by David Freeman) or your game will never have emotion or be any good at all. This might sound like a big deal, but I have to accept it, after reading the explanation of what emotioneering is and why it is better than simple writing, well, he does make some very good points... nonetheless, the attitude bothered me a bit so you might want to be ready for it.

The second thing that bothered me is that the author teases TOO much about the hundreds of other techniques that exist... but that is it. I do understand that there had to be a limit as to how long the book would be and mentioning all the techniques and explaining them in a proper way would take way too much, but still, where am I supposed to learn about the rest? I WANT MORE!

The last issue doesn't really have to do with content as it does with form. And is definitely not a very big issue, as a matter of fact, I only mention it because I thought that, in order to stay as objective as possible, I needed more "bad points".
The thing is there are many typing mistakes. They aren't orthographic mistakes, they definitely look just like typos, but still they hinder a bit the quality of the book.

And that is it, as far as I am concerned, the rest of the book is just good stuff.
For starters I have to praise the great pointers on creating characters. The ideas for both the physical and internal aspects of an NPC and PC opened my eyes to a whole new way of giving life to characters. And the goodness doesn't stop there. You also get techniques for plot, dialogue, relationship between NPCs and PCs, ways to make the game more immersive, pointers on cinematics, etc.
Trust me, even when David Freeman cuts back on the list of techniques available (and if you are like me, you'll also be left craving for more), there are many more than the ones I mentioned, and most of them have subdivisions with great explanations and examples of how to use them or how they have been used.

I am sure you'll also enjoy the foreword by Will Wright (The Sims guy) and the lovely art scattered throughout the book. Another point in favor of Mr. Freeman is the fact that he gives credit where credit is due. There is even a section at the end of the book that mentions every artist, where you can find more about them and comments on most of them.
The last tidbits of ideas are very interesting, very fun to read because they seem like the ramblings most of us write in that old notebook, the scattered ideas that someday might find their way into a book and/or game.

Now I think I've written too much, so I'll wrap this up by saying that if you are interested in game designing/writing, this book is a must for you. You won't regret buying it and if you do... nah, that won't happen if you are interested in games , I'm confident about that =)

I'm somewhat surprised to see all the hate here for this book. It's one of the few books I recommend to new people in the industry (I've been designing and writing games since 1996). It's all focused on storytelling, not gameplay, but it has the best sense of how the two converge that I've seen. The advice in here is actual practical advice that you can use in making a game. Most of the storytelling discussions in other books are high-minded literary theory or purely from a linear non-game perspective. This has some movie bias, but not much. And it does try to make the material fun and attractive, which seems to annoy many reviewers but I found refreshing.

And I like that it doesn't focus entirely on dialog - it looks at all aspects of storytelling and emotion-building across the design. It's not a perfect book and won't make you a great game writer on its own, but it will make you think of some new techniques you might have forgotten and get you thinking about your games as more than just gameplay, which is good.

It does tell you a lot of techniques, but it doesn't tell proper practice. Its ok for game design since the (western) industry isn't very sentimental when it comes to games. Mostly the Japanese are coming out with RPGs with a lot of sentiment. I think its good that someone is trying to help with dry gaming. I do like games like unreal, tetris, street fighter, which have little to no plot, but I don't like to be a weapon of mass destruction without a cause.

The book can be comparable to a core paper-pencil rpg book for storytellers.

As far as "emotioneering," I think its a catch phrase. And many of the dimensions used for creating characters you could get out of a white-wolf book.

Overall, the book is good at telling you how to use techniques for characters and story/plot. Its cheaper than taking a scriptwriting class or a creative writing class.