Is it normal to cry for your own story?

Megax60

Member
i have cried like 3 times thinking in the story of my game

is this normal? do this happens to you?

i don't want her to die... but its the only way...
 
G

Guest User

Guest
idk are you an emotional person? is this the only story that makes you cry? does it make a difference if it's normal or not? i suppose if it's keeping you from working on your game then yea, might want to make some changes or something to yourself or the story but otherwise it's not really that big a deal.

and no, it doesn't happen to me, or at least it doesn't on SSRIs.
 

Megax60

Member
idk are you an emotional person? is this the only story that makes you cry? does it make a difference if it's normal or not? i suppose if it's keeping you from working on your game then yea, might want to make some changes or something to yourself or the story but otherwise it's not really that big a deal.

and no, it doesn't happen to me, or at least it doesn't on SSRIs.
well, im not emotional AT ALL, i have never cried on a story, but... when i think on her... FeelsBadMan
 

Niels

Member
Kinda want to hear the story now:)

I never really cried about a story but some (game) stories do really hit me emotionally.

For example Lewis his storyline in "what remains of edith finch" hit me like a emotional truck:).
That storyline was pure storytelling gold
 
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Alessio

Guest
Too much anime, i guess. Besides me, is there someone willing to not shove sob stories in their games and make games that are actually fun to play? Because i'm quite tired of this trend among developers. Ironically, the games that tend to focus mainly on the sob story aspect tend to be the least popular.

Le me guess: some hero's love interest brutally dies or the former is forced to kill her, and something like the Chernobyl disaster is somehow involved.


LMAO!
 
Yeah, how dare games try to have stories, @Alessio. :'D

Yes, I've cried thinking of my own game's story. 💩💩💩💩's sad, lol. No, no hero's love interest is brutally killed or dies, and Chernobyl (lol wut) isn't involved.
 
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Alessio

Guest
In all seriousness:
Yeah, how dare games try to have stories, @Alessio. :'D
If game developers think "touching stories" mean "dead parents/love interests" or simply "overwhelmingly tragic and dramatic", then it's an awful habit. In doing that they think to be "artists" and "great storytellers", but are just plain unoriginal and lazy. Too many developers do that thinking most people give a fig about that while, in fact, it's the exact opposite. It's even worse when they do that with a game that is actually amied at young kids, as they did with Mario Galaxy 1, and i'm so glad Miyamoto put a stop to that with its successor. In all honesty, even if not directly related to the dead love thing, i have to quote Miyamoto when he said:
These younger game creators, they want to be recognised. They want to tell stories that will touch people’s hearts. And while I understand that desire, the trend worries me. It should be the experience, that is touching.
Though i'm less generous when it comes to considerations. At least, if they want to make "touching stories", what about trying something original and more elaborate? Writing stories is not as easy as someone might think, and thus it's quite easy to write an awful story, and this is one of the main reasons many storylines in games are literal trash. Personally, i'm more for the "less story, the better" approach, and Miyamoto even talked about building your own story and experience. It's very rare a storyline is as interesting as gameplay. Most of the times, storyline just ruins the fun of gameplay.

and Chernobyl (lol wut) isn't involved.
Looking at the posting history of OP trying to find some hints for their story, i assumed they wanted to put Chernobyl or something similar in the same content, but i can't know that for sure.
 
Z

zendraw

Guest
why shuldnt it be normal? what makes you ask this question?

also are you a karateka? osu?
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
i'm so sick of all these games about chernobyl. there's been like, 8 this year. it's gotta stop
Agree. I'm surprised by it myself. (The number of games, not your disgust.) Either way, I don't feel tearful sadness over it. More anger and outrage toward the authorities.
 

Rob

Member
Bugs that take me ages to fix make me cry. Stories do not. I actually haven't ever written a story for any games/projects that I've made so that might be part of the reason!
 
If game developers think "touching stories" mean "dead parents/love interests" or simply "overwhelmingly tragic and dramatic", then it's an awful habit.
Well yeah, sure. Won't argue with that. Badly done sad stories are bad for games obviously, hahah.

Looking at the posting history of OP trying to find some hints for their story, i assumed they wanted to put Chernobyl or something similar in the same content, but i can't know that for sure.
Ah, okay. Makes sense, then. I was confused as to why you mentioned Chernobyl!

i'm so sick of all these games about chernobyl. there's been like, 8 this year. it's gotta stop
lol, is this actually a thing right now?
 

Megax60

Member
Le me guess: some hero's love interest brutally dies or the former is forced to kill her, and something like the Chernobyl disaster is somehow involved.
well, you are kinda right, in my games, there is no heroes or villains, you decide them, the protagonist is a hero for someones, and a villain for others, you must decide who to save, your sister (she is the only family the main character has) or save someone you have meet 5 years ago, she is the love of his life. The protagonist finds out that he can bring back his sister, but he must kill his beloved


(also Chernobyl is not involved, its just a stage, but thats for another game on the same storyline)



i'm so sick of all these games about chernobyl. there's been like, 8 this year. it's gotta stop
dude... its just a stage of 12...


@Alessio DONT SPOIL ME MEGAMAN X 4 I WAS ABOUT TO BUY MEGAAMAN X LEGACY COLLECTION WHAT HAVE YOU DONE AHT I MA FIGITHING FOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR
 
No player is going to decide to murder his in-game waifu to ressurect his sister. I don't think almost anyone in real life would even do that. Killing someone is wrong, even if it's to do something good. Because of that, almost anyone would choose to do nothing because "that's just how things turned out."

Not much of a moral quandary for your game, hahah.
 

Megax60

Member
No player is going to decide to murder his in-game waifu to ressurect his sister. I don't think almost anyone in real life would even do that. Killing someone is wrong, even if it's to do something good. Because of that, almost anyone would choose to do nothing because "that's just how things turned out."

Not much of a moral quandary for your game, hahah.
I'm planning on making a trilogy in where the first two games, both are playable, but in the third game, only the guy is playable cuz.... reasons... in the first two games you get along with your sister (or play with her) and stuff happens, and in the end of the second game, your sister decides to sacrifice for her brother because a war has killed like 99% of people in the world, she then builds the perfect world for his brother, no war, no murderers (and if there is any murderer, he or she gets executed (yea, too much anime ikr), after hundreds of years, he wakes up near a village in peace, and with very outdated tecnology (like the year 1500 in real life or stuff)

after trying to find whats going on, he realizes this is the world his sister imagined, and after a long depression, he meets her, his true love, and they live happy for ever and blah blah blah... just kidding, its just 5 years.

after those years, in a normal day with his friends in the bar, they tell him that someone is going to be executed for "witchery", and after they tell him the details of how she looks, he bolts like a rabbit of the bar...

look, im not gonna tell you the entire story, im just gonna told you that many players (those who know who this sister is) will decide to kill their waifu, and those who decide not to kill her, probably they dont know who is that sister.

if you ask me, i would kill her
 

Megax60

Member
Oh no! You spoiled the ending for me :'(
I was looking forward so much of playing your trilogy...
bah, when i announce the game, i will not by using this account, you will forget what happened here, and its going to be a long time when i release even the first game, i'm really looking forward to make these games

pd: the sister of that guy is my main waifu
 
bah, when i announce the game, i will not by using this account, you will forget what happened here, and its going to be a long time when i release even the first game, i'm really looking forward to make these games

pd: the sister of that guy is my main waifu
He was being sarcastic, lol. He doesn't think you'll ever finish your trilogy, since we get hundreds of young kids in here a month talking about their grand plans for epic games and series, and then 99.999% of them give up without ever making anything worth playing, lol.

Statistically, he's almost definitely right about you, but you don't have to be part of that 99.999%. Start small and work hard. If you keep at it for five to ten years, you'll be on your way to making the games you're imagining in your head. Nobody believes in anybody with big dreams until they succeed.

You're right that he'll probably forget this conversation before you release your games though, hahah! ;p
 
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Alessio

Guest
well, you are kinda right, in my games, there is no heroes or villains, you decide them, the protagonist is a hero for someones, and a villain for others, you must decide who to save, your sister (she is the only family the main character has) or save someone you have meet 5 years ago, she is the love of his life. The protagonist finds out that he can bring back his sister, but he must kill his beloved


Dead serious: too edgy to get the interest of anyone but some niche audience. In websites like Reddit, Gamefaqs, Know Your Meme or TVTropes they'll tell you the game becomes a hit but in reality these kind of game don't tend to be truly popular, and if they become popular it's for very different reasons. Seriously, i don't think i'd play it.

I used to do the same thing, probably worse. I used to make the same mistake, the one of making super edgy stories starring family friendly-looking characters.
  • One storyline involved a cute little animal who was actually a failed experiment for a mass destruction bio-weapon, and had a female human friend who brutally dies after being kidnapped later in the story. Then you discover that the female friend was a non-living clone made in laboratory with an artificial computer at the place of the brain, used to spy on the protagonist. Very jolly!
  • Another storyline involved a young jap teen with superhuman strenght and resistance: since she was, guess what, another experiment, she had been kidnapped as a child, made her tame with a "serum" and had been tortured multiple times by soldiers a week ever since. That was just the backstory. Because she breaks free after some mysterious friend destroy the serum storage, kills everyone and escapes. She weared a school/saylor uniform and got a sword now. How it ends? Won't tell much (even because i don't know it either) but she has parents, and she fails to save her mommy, who is brutally killed by the same enemy who tortured her since her childhood. Daddy becomes a grieving widower. Nice, huh?
  • Last story: cute bird protagonist has a cat mother who is killed, her cat daughter later commits suicide because she missed her mother. Another mother dies there, committing suicide and sacrificing herself to give her daughter (with no dad) enough power to beat a freaky abomination. Cute bird discovers his parents are dead, somehow. Ha ha ha no.
Now that i look back i think: WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING BACK THEN??? I had to rethink and tone down these kind of freaky storylines... a lot. Probably, i used to find them cool, but now i find them horribly tasteless, especially the second one. Unfortunately, someone still thinks "everyone dies" is an interesting concept. Certain anime stuff keeps rooting for that formula but now i understand why anime besides stuff like Dragon Ball is an extremely niche thing. The only niche anime i watched was when i visited Annecy's animation festival.

Please, don't go for that route!
 
Unfortunately, someone still thinks "everyone dies" is an interesting concept
Lots of people do, and this isn't just an "anime" thing. Marvel's Infinity War was melodramatic tripe, but it found huge mainstream success.

Besides that, the success of stories like these is 90% based on how they're executed, I think. I could make almost any story sound like cringy teenager crap if I described it simply enough, and I'm pretty sure I could make OP's story work if I tried. Not that I'd necessarily try to, but I think I could!

I agree with you, though. The older I get, the less I can stomach overly contrived tragedies and stuff. Smaller, more nuanced stories are much better. Nuance comes with age and experience, though...

Calling anime an "extremely niche thing" is funny to me, though. Japan exports more culture through anime and games than any other country on the planet besides the US. How much do you think people care about *your* country's shows, Alessio? It's amazing anime gets any foothold at all outside of Japan when everyone is busy shoving America's garbage down their throats. Anime not being as popular as Hollywood's stuff definitely isn't because of a lack of quality. There's some amazing stuff there if you dig a little.
 
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Megax60

Member
YEA EDGY STORIE I LIKE IT

what is most important than story, is gameplay and ost, but she.....

WHY I CANT HAVE BOTH

btw if i make any other story in the future, i would like NOT to add "heroes" or "villains", havent you played smt4?
neutral route better than law
 
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Alessio

Guest
I mean, even your "too edgy" image macro comes from a ridiculously popular Japanese game series. This stuff isn't niche, lol.
And indeed Shadow was so bad it has been continuously bashed by everyone. As soon as it hit the mainstream, it showed the world how awful and cringey it is. Luckly, Sonic Colors made Sonic return to look decent, and i have a good memory of that game. I didn't play the ow the edge game but played Sonic Adventure 1 and 2: they're not only unpolished games that didn't age well, their storylines are also cringey as hell, especially 2. They should have stayed in the niche, but Sonic was too popular with the cooler 2D games.

But many anime shows are actually very niche. If you talk about Studio Ghibli or Toei Animation, a good amount of people might get what you're talking about, but let's see how many people even know stuff like... Danganrompa? Blood C/C++/C#/GML? Madoka Magica? I know one of these because of Annecy, but the rest are stuff i've only heard about on the internet, pretty much like these weird magical dark school anime stuff. Most people outside the internet know Naruto, Dragon Ball, One Piece, and probably heard about Ghibli animation. But niche garbage like the ones i brought out are pretty much unknown to the public... and thankfully so, Blood C/C++/C#/GML is the edgiest trash i've ever watched in my life. Shadow The Hedgehog looks like a Care Bear compared to it. That's why i said anime like that is niche, because it's awful. But at least they didn't have the nerve to present it as a feature for a young audience.
 
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SoraNgin

Guest
I cry for my stories all the time haha. Maybe you just really feel for the characters since you wrote it.
 

Roa

Member
I always find the saddest stories are the subtle ones. One's of little hope, or bitter sweet. Too much drama ruins any chance of any real connection or sympathy, and death is especially over used, and its used so much that it has little to no impact, even worse still when you have zero reason to give a 💩💩💩💩 about the character you are supposedly losing.
 
T

Triangle

Guest
I always find the saddest stories are the subtle ones. One's of little hope, or bitter sweet. Too much drama ruins any chance of any real connection or sympathy, and death is especially over used, and its used so much that it has little to no impact, even worse still when you have zero reason to give a **** about the character you are supposedly losing.
I agree, drama is great, but the best drama is built on characters. Tragedy on it's own is just that, people are cynical and will not care about it unless they relate to the victims, otherwise it will just be 'ouch' and they'll move on.. time is better spent on making people care about your characters. I don't mean to suggest that Megax doesn't bother with their characters, I would assume otherwise, but I do think that they should set up the 'choose who lives' thing differently. There has been a big push towards forked narratives in games, but I think it's worth considering whether a single choice is better then two. Linear narrative gets a lot of complaints, but it is still generally the best way to tell a story. Megax, it's your story, honestly whatever we would choose as the player in your game isn't more important then the story you are trying to tell. I suggest either: 1, going with your gut as to what your protagonist would do and forcing one choice, or 2, making the choice more emotionally complicated. Choices are rarely so cut and dry - with the framework you have now, you can predict a lot of different player's choices pretty easily based on some common philosophies - pacifists will refuse to kill someone to save someone else, utilitarians will choose whatever saves more people total, and most of everyone else will just choose whoever they like more to survive. This is one of the problems with killing people in dramatic choices - it's too straightforward. But there is a huge spectrum of painful consequences for actions, of which death is a small fraction - I mean, if you changed it so it was 'your wife lives, but she is banished forever and you never see her again' or 'your wife lives, but with some nasty disease somehow', the ethical question changes, and there is more variety in the player's reasoning for the choice.

I don't really know enough about your story to be spouting off advice and criticism like this, but it is hard to do meaningful choices like that. Just do what's right for your story, and remember that your character's opinions on the matter should matter more than your player's opinions.
 
I think so. I think its fairly normal for creators to become emotionally attached to their creation. If they have a character that dies its almost like someone they know died. The hard part is making others become emotionally attached to your art.
 
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ethian

Guest
The story of my own game also makes me cry...
It contains something related to "I hate uncensored swear words"...
One of my followers that is actually a guest of this website also cries with that story.
 

Pfap

Member
Hmmm, this is an interesting topic...

Personally, I tend to be more of a comedian, so it is more frequent that I laugh to or about my characters.

Although, as far as other games go I think "The Last Of Us" might be an interesting case study. When Joel's daughter dies during the beginning of the game it gives insight into why Joel is a hard and bitter man, but if you replay it, the tone becomes more somber and almost sad.

In any case, I think game developers or the writers of games; tend to focus on the climax and less on the build-up. Which is unfortunate as the build-up is often times integral to a cohesive experience for the viewer, or rather player in the case of games.

I find the emotion I experience most when creating anything is excitement. If I had a really deep and emotional story I would get more excited about the thought of others finding catharsis and letting out a few tears while playing or viewing; as opposed to crying myself.
 
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