Video Games: The game to make you cry

Cloud, which can be downloaded for free, is a new computer game where you play a young boy who flies through the air above a small group of islands. Add in slow melodic piano music and beautiful water-colour graphics, and Cloud becomes one of the most relaxing games you'll ever play.

Cloud has come out of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab at the University of Southern California. The lab's brief is to "try and create projects that could drive games into new areas", says Tracy Fullerton, co-director of the lab, who was in town last week for the Interactive Entertainment 2005 conference at the University of Technology, Sydney.
While Fullerton is dead against censorship - like most gamers - she does think computer games are too limited.

"Games today have a very narrow range of emotions," she says. "I think that in order for games to appeal to a wider range of players, they have to address a wider range of content but also a deeper range of emotions."
Cloud is a game that goes even further than other non-traditional games like SingStar and The Sims. It really does seem to appeal to non-computer game playing adults.

"People have written to us and said they cried when they played the game," Fullerton says. "I show [Cloud] to non-gamers a lot and they say to me 'where can I get this'? The game industry isn't catering to these people. [Marketing] campaigns are oriented to a certain type of person, who is already a gamer."

Consider the emotions brought up by your last trip to the movies. That's the gap the games industry has to close. Do you think they're getting any closer?

Download here:
http://www.thatcloudgame.com/CloudInstall.exe

Yeah.. Well the game was kind of relaxing for me, but it wasn't like an emo experience or anything.