When was the last time you were excited during a game ? Nervous because just loading your gun with 50 other guys, getting ready for those bastards coming up behind the ridge any time. People have been discussing much about violence and stuff, but when you are gonna start including some real feelings into your games ? Those characters are never afraid even if you shoot at them... (exceptions exist). Plus, you should try creating truly interactive environments which could cause impact on the player... so that he would feel scared, happy, excited etc... kinda thrilling idea I think... I can feel the heatwave already - A.J. Oja. - Lead Programmer/Project Leader DiMTEX Software

Well I was scared out of my mind about 2 months ago when I finally completed System Shock 2 (what a great game).

And it only cost me $12.

Well I was scared out of my mind about 2 months ago when I finally completed System Shock 2 (what a great game).

And it only cost me $12.

-- Look at you hacker. A Pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?--

"Yeah, I''ve seen people w/ ''so-called'' lives. They are petty and thoughtless." - Nazrix

Undying. I actually yelled when I was attacked after an uneasy long period of silence.
That game really has a nice atmosphere. Too bad I''m one of those people who tire quickly of most games. I think I got about halfway before calling it quits.

Lighthouse - A baby I was supposed to be watching in the game started crying and my nerves immediately frazzled - so I run in the room and a cross between a demon and a spider is stealing the baby! The game continues to have scenes like that throughout, and they''re very immediate-feeling because the game is first person.

Sanitarium - A little kid goes by with the dead body of another little kid in his little red wagon. He''s talking to the body just as if she were still alive - *shudder*.

*Shudder* indeed. And I thought you (sunandshadow) didn''t like adrenaline rushes.

I think excitment in games derives from tapping into our primal instints. Need I say more?

Pitch black bedroom.

2:30 AM in the morning.

Everybody asleep.

I''m a lonely Colonial marine, trying to get out of an dark, abandoned base and I can hear them slithering up the walls as they come for me.


Aliens vs. Predator.

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Just waiting for the mothership...

...but it''s not enough to simply provide the elements of creepiness and suspense, you still have to draw the player in to make those things believeable in their creepiness or surrealness.

Bishop is right in that it is little more than playing to a primal instinct or urge, but a lot of that is difficult to pinpoint when you consider that kids like Eric Harris never found stuff like that not so much gory, but positively exciting. (personally I feel Dylan Kleibold (sp?) was cowed into going along, Eric probably threatened to kill him if he didn''t go along).

Most excitement borrows from one thing: Unexpectedness.

A rapid change in the environment.. a flash of light in the dark, a loud noise in the silence, Shadow-Khan suddenly materializing with great speed in great numbers where there was none only FRAMES ago - not even seconds. Unexpected behaviors require to attract the player into thinking one thing will happen (and foreshadow often!), then subtly (or violently) shifting into something completely opposite.

AvP/Marine play is absolutely one of the most knuckle-whitening things I have ever played, followed closely by those INFECTED BASTARDS in System Shock 2.

The more I think about it, watch Scream again. They literally laid out all the classic media-school elements of suspense and horror. Don''t say "I''ll be right back", don''t go outside alone, so forth and so on.

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-WarMage
...It''s lonely at the bottom, but from here you can see up all the skirts.

I thought excitement was expectation.

Sure, the player doesn''t have knowledge of the exact frame when the monster jumps out, but he/she knows it''s going to happen.

The scariest parts of doom were the tights mazes where id threw imps into the walls just so you could hear them.