I recently finished playing through Jericho for the Xbox 360. The game certainly isn’t any good, but it had enough fresh ideas to motivate me to play through the game despite some pretty serious flaws with the level design and enemy AI. That being said, the greatest mistake I think this game made was in regards to the story telling. At some point in the game, I was walking through a river of blood, and I didn’t stop to even think about how that should make me feel. I had been numbed to the events that were occurring in the game around me. At that point, a crucifixion had become about as provoking as a spawning pokemon ball in Super Smash Brothers.

The Crime

The lack of contrast can turn otherwise provocative events into nothing more than white noise.

The Punishment

You are forced to come up with higher and higher stakes in order to create the same impact. Eventually you will likely fail and you will cease to get the desired response from the player.

The Cure

Give your players a chance to breathe. If you have a lot of powerful content to hit your players with, make sure you give them some down time with which to create some contrast. That doesn’t necessarily apply just to grotesque environments or the pacing in horror games. It can be true for little princess games too. A cluster of peaks is far less breathtaking without some deep valleys to put them in context.

When you decide your game is going to emphasize a particular point, make sure you think about what peaks you might be creating, and then consider what valleys you can introduce to accentuate your peaks. If you want to encourage the player to feel a particular emotion, it probably makes sense to think about the opposite emotion and how you can integrate that in order to better support your primary goal.

Good story telling thinks about amplitude. You can help make your highs higher by making the lows lower.