It’s World Emoji Day today, and if we’re folding emoticons, emotes, and whatever other digital means of expression under the same banner, then it’s time to admit I rarely use emotes in the games I play. If we’re being realistic, I don’t think many people do. At least not the way in which they’re intende🔯d.
In theory, emotes are a fantastic way for players to communicate across language barriers. A way to share directions, celebrations, and commiserations with those playing the same game you both love pouring 𓃲your time and energy into. But for most gamers, they only see an emote being used when someone is dancing on their fallen corps♋e or attempting to teabag their face by crouching in quick succession. Aren’t we a lovely bunch?
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Even The Most Innocent Emote Can Become A Taunt
That’s right, it doesn’t matter how many emotes a developer puts into a game or how innocent they intend them to be; most gamers use them to somehow taunt others. A once innocuous emote becomes humping the air when you spam it e🀅nough before the animation starts to loop. And it’s not just teabagging corpses, emotes are used to digitally harass other players because some people apparently have nothing better to do than make their avatar a bit of a digital pervert.
Most gamers likely have a tale or two of some fool that wouldn’t leave them alone and kept spamming them with emotes for far too long and far past it having any semblance of being funny. It’s just part and p🤡arcel of playing online these days, and we tend to accept that fact and ignore it as best we can.
Some games have been daft enough to allow even more creativity, with Monster Hunter Wilds’ allowing players to 🍒add custom text to stickers. Of course, there were some nice or funny creations, but you guessed it - plenty of players opted to use these to be rude. Emotes are the digital equivalent of giving people a pen to express themselves; without a doubt, some ꦗof those people are g꧟oing to draw penises on the wall.
This is obviously the more cynical side of the coin. But even if they weren’t mostly used to ridi🎃cule other players, when does anyone have the damn time or reason to break out an emote in the middle of a fast-moving match?
Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That
I just can’t find the time to emote because I’m too focused on shooting, running, surviving, 🅷or anything other than alerting nearby enemies to my location by stopping to do a dance that plays music and reveals my location. I don’t see the appeal, other than for those wanting to taunt others when they’ve killed them, which I never do. Yet I know that’s not the case for everyone.
I play Fortnite with my son, and he is meticulous about selecting his emotes and often uses them throughout matches while I couldn’t even tell you which emotꦉes I currently h🤡ave equipped, and the only time I ever use emotes is to complete quest objectives. Somehow, though, emotes actually benefit him sometimes. I remember once he met another player in the same skin as him so they started dancing at each other, cementing an unspoken promise that they were now friends forever and wouldn’t kill each other. And they actually stuck to that promise.
Fortnite emotes feel like the pinnacle. They take internet trends, viral dances, and iconic moments in popular𓄧 culture only to further popularise them. Even non-gamers can’t escape it when something like that goes viral… We can’t forget when people all over the world couldn’t resi༒st whipping out the floss in real life, no matter how hard we try.
No, I refuse to hit the griddy. In For🐠tni𝓡te, real life, or anywhere else.
In most games🔯, I don’t register that emotes even exist, and I don’t touch them at alꦿl. I rarely see people using emotes in games other than as taunts, so I can’t be the only one that doesn’t use them. Have we all accepted that emotes are just for annoying other players when you’ve killed them, and if so why do we bother adding in the niceties?
The Only Exception
How🅺ꦍever, there is an exception to the rule: MMORPGs. These are the only games I have ever used emotes in, and I don’t just dabble in them - I live and breathe them. It’s impossible not to when these games have such a focus on community and social aspects. Social conventions are as ingrained in me in Final Fantasy 14 as they are in real-life.
If you 🥃run past someone you know, you wave. If they wave at you first, you wave back. You give a little bow as a thank you, you cheer ♔people on when they’re battling or crafting. It’s the norm, and it feels rude or weird to not partake in these customs.
Because of that, I think less of them as emotes as an essential in-game function, almost an extension of my personality. Sure, you still get players using them to taunt and be annoying, but it feels far less prevalent because the nature of the game is not the same as quick-fire online matches l🥃ike Fortnite. You’re building a digital life complete with a house, you dress your character, and you have a whole team of friends. It’s a community more than a battlefield.
Emotes in FF14 don’t just live up to the expectation of what they’re meant to represent. They’ve evolved. Players use emotes to help craft full scale 🥂productions, from plays to musicals, dance shows and concerts, and elevate these spectacles to whole new levels. In fact, every time new emotes are added to the game I🏅 wonder in what creative way these troupes will use them.
It’s not jജust Final Fantasy 14, other MMORPGs are the same. Perhaps it’s because they mirror real life and communities so much that the social conventions transfer over into the digital world more e🦩asily.
Maybe it’s just me, and everyone else really does use emotes in every single game they play. I guess I just want to know, why? Or maybe🐷 it’s a generational divide and I simply fall on the wrong side? My son dancing to strange songs in Fortnite and then bonding over ꧟it with strangers could be the new norm of online social interaction and community, and I’m just set in my ways grumbling about some 12-year-old who shot me and then danced on my corpse. Either way, I can’t help but love how I use emotes in games.
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