Something I've always liked to talk about in the everyday is soul. Things which have soul in them. Not soul as in soul music, but something within something. Something which gives it a personality, something gives it a being, something which gives it almost a life which gives it a human quality.

Let me putn it to you like this. Take the millenium falcon from star wars. Wasn't it in itself a charecter. It never really worked to well. It always had to be pushed. But all the time watching it, you felt compelled to scream it on. You were behind that ship and every time, it just pulls through. The ship in itself or at least the idea had soul in it. Now let's take, staying on the space ship theme, the red squadron fighters (I don't know their name). These things were designed by machine, built up to do one thing. To fight. Admitadely they did it well, but they had no personality. All it would ever do is fight or talk about fighting. It had nothing in it giving that factor of desire or wanting. Sure it looked alright, but that's about it. All it was, was a machine interface built to work and to do.

Now I'm not saying that to have soul something should break down every 3 minutes. But something must give somehting back. It has to reward you for being with it. It has to interact with it. The millenium falcon had soul because in the film it tried. And it kept trying. The fighters didn't because they did.

So can games have soul power? I think so. Lets take say 2 examples like the two above. Say burnout and need for speed. Both of these are track racers, both are very good games from a technical stand point. But burnout gives something that need for speed does not. Need for speed feels like a technical marvel. A machine. Very push button to go. The characters put into them simply hides this now as a marketing tool and it feel very artificial. Wheras burnout gives a feel of a person not a machine. A feeling of let's go do this. GO have fun. Come in. Blow stuff up. GO FOR IT!!!! It has soul under the hood. It's not the most sophisticated thing in the world, but my god it is one hec load of fun. You feel compelled by it. You feel it wants you to try harder. It wants you to play more. Not like need for speed, where it it only wants you to play till the next one comes out. It has somehting which can only drive it on. Take away from burnout the dj (annoying though he is) how it tells you how to break stuff. Take away from it runnning through billboards how it congratulates you from going through every fence and how it slows down on all the jumps. What are you left with? Just another racer. Need for speed almost. But because of all those little details, you absorbed by the game. Whereas need for speed, is just not there. It doesn't relate. It just does.

Cannot all games be capable of giving something back? Of giving the user some experience. Is it trully that hard? Soul can come from anywhere and interaction is but one possible aspect. If all producers were to absorb themselves with passion in their ideas in their everyday, would not gaming be better for it? Or will they just make another product on the line?