Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkins has writen in April 17 2007 article about Melodrama and Realism in games. I have found out in this article few paragraphs that has specifically  interested me. One of them is

 

                ''Cameron deepens the emotional impact of this basic situation through a series of melodramatic devices: Playing with gender roles (the woman allows herself to go into hyperthermia in hopes that her ex-husband, the stronger swimmer can pull her to safety and revive her), dramatic gestures (the look of panic in her face as she starts to drown and the slow plummet of her hand as she gasps her last breath), emotionally amplifying secondary characters (the crew back on the ship who are upset about the woman's choice and work hard to revive her), abrupt shifts of fortune (a last minute recovery just as we are convinced she is good and truly dead), performance cues (the rasping of the husband's throat as he screams for help), and an overarching emotional logic (she is brought back to life not by scientific equipment, but by human passion as her ex-husband slaps her, demanding that she not accept death). When the scene ends, absorbed audiences gasp because they forgot to breathe. Classic melodrama depends upon dynamism, always sustaining the action at the moment of maximum emotional impact.''( Henry Jenkins, 2007, April 17)

 

I have highlighted one of last sentences because I think that it is one of the important points that he have mention in his article. Most of the time people play games either because its fun and doesn't need any storyline or minimum for example, Tetris, Zoombie, Mario and so on or because it got great storyline. This paragraph refer to one with storyline and good example of that we can see in Crysis Warhead.  At some point during the game our main character is losing one of his friends during the battle which cause player to feel emotions, anger and the result of that is of course more killing of the enemies. Thanks to that the player feels more attached to the game and start to play more passionate. It's not just kill them all but it gets to the revenge point where we want to chase the enemy that cause our friend to die. I think that games should have more actions and storyline like that because it make the game more mature and player will remember it for a long time.