I think mufasa has some good points here so I want to expand upon what he was saying.
First the “awkwardness” of the game. This game felt awkward because it hit close to home. All of us have been in situations where people argue or fight right in front of us and it can be a very awkward experience. As Professor Sample mentioned in class, many people just want to have an audience, before they drop the “facade” in which they have been living and hash it out. One interesting expression of this in the game is how many time trip and grace talked about the “truth”. They wanted the truth. They wanted the other person to tell the truth. Their whole lives were really a big facade, in which nobody was fooled but everyone played along.
I believe this game was an awkward experience because even though we may not all be, hearts, in the game playing context we all have at least some sort of the heart in our style of play. We care about trip and grace because we see them, (here is where the graphics add at least a little bit), and we want them to live happily ever after. The breakup of interpersonal relationships is one of the hardest parts of our everyday experience and so we work to prevent it whenever possible. We are all hearts to some extent, and we care about our avatar and the characters in the game and want them to succeed. If we didn’t care we wouldn’t be playing.