Emotionally engaging experiences make for more memorable experiences

Life has interfered, positively, with my journey through Liberty City. Nevertheless, after some days, I did complete a couple of missions just now. Niko discovered the Internet cafes of the city, and escaped an explosion-filled car chase through Bohan. It reminded me of a sequence of memorable events in GTA III years ago, when I managed to jump out of a burning car about to explode, ending up walking away with the character, with the car exploding in the background. Classic action heroism, and more importantly, classic visual tropes and metaphors of a genre that the GTA series has managed to incorporate into game play so well. The fact that I remember the event is very clearly down to how it played out visually and aurally - i.e. 'eye candy' does have consequences for game play experiences; it can amplify them and thus create memorable images into our mind.

The internet feature adds to the experience of the amount of content the game has. My friend mentioned that he had ordered pizza (in real life) and eaten it while watching the television channels in Niko's safehouse. As someone who has experience of game design and development, it is just overwhelming to think about the amount of work all this has taken, and how seamlessly everything functions within the world that the game creates.

In addition, the internet of Liberty City engages our mental schemas about how the Internet is supposed to function. The net, GTA IV style, is a stylized, sarcastic, and in-your-face version of the net, and thus, as a game design feature, it displays another system that borrows some aspects from its referent system (the Internet) and leaves others out.

I am anxious to see whether Niko gets a date through the net. Once again, the curiosity and expectation that the situation elicits from me, as a player, is interesting. In terms of design, and particularly in terms design of eliciting conditions for certain kinds of emotional reactions, the Internet dating mechanic is more than a trivial feature.