Feeling Empathy in Video Games

Feeling empathy in video games

TED or TED Talks is an annual online conference that showcases interesting and inspirational speakers talking about varying subjects such as education, business, and science. In 2019, one of their speakers was Catharina Bøhler, a Norwegian game developer and CEO of an independent (indie) game studio Sarepta Studio.

In her TED Talk, Bøhler showcased their game “My Child Lebensborn”. She talked about her teams’ journey in trying to create a game that would make the players emotionally interested in its narrative. Lebensborn were children born in Norway during the second World War to Norwegian women and German soldiers. They were often ostracized by their families and society. The game has the player in the role of a seven-year-old Lebensborn child’s adoptive parent.

Peer support from video games?

People discuss video games’ stories widely online. Blog posts and video-analyses are common these days. People want to know about good games beforehand and discuss about them afterwards. They want to hear and share experiences even though they might have played the game alone. Did the game’s theme impact others the way it did them? Game companies also encourage this talk because it’s free advertisement for their game.

My Child Lebensborn’s theme is very heavy. This is why I might not play it despite it being an interesting title. I’ve, however, played several other games that tackle empathy, fear, hope and regret. As such the topic is interesting to me.

As games have evolved, we’ve began to see deeper storytelling in them. There are games about mental health, such as Celeste, a game about cancer called That Dragon, Cancer, and even a game where your job is to control the flow of immigrants on an imaginary nation’s border called, Papers, Please.

Some games are based on the developers’ own experiences. This can help make the game feel more realistic and personal. I’ve noticed that if the game’s topic is personal or well researched, it really gives an impact while playing and feels respectful. Bøhler and her team also did a lot of research into their topic. These included interviewing actual Lebensborn people and watching documentaries.

One of the themes in their game is bullying, which is a familiar theme to many. Many Lebensborn’s players across the world said they could identify with its themes, like horrors of war, childhood trauma or a parent’s responsibility.

Unpleasant feelings is part of the job

The team themselves had difficulties dealing with the topic of child abuse but decided to keep it in the game for realism. In gaming circles, child abuse is seen as a sort of boundary, over which no one wants to climb. Violent games have excess blood, people are starving and beaten, but there are no corpses of children in game worlds.

A child’s death is treated with sadness.

The more realistic child characters in game, the more it is considered poor taste to have violence happen to them. In this light I believe that Bøhler’s team had to go through some unpleasant decisions in what to show. I hope they managed to treat the topic with respect.

“Your actions have consequences in a video game.”

Video games are highly dependent on user input. Sounds, visuals, and story guide the player to a desired direction, but ultimately it is up to the player to decide if they want to follow. A game such as Lebensborn tries to make the non-player-character (or NPC) child as compelling as possible so that the player would want to take care of them.

Anthropomorphizing means attributing human qualities to non-human things (I do this often while gaming). Game developers take advantage of this in both serious games like Lebensborn or in humorous ways like Portal’s Weighted Companion Cube. Players feel sad when sad things happen to their favourite characters, so they want to protect them.

On the other hand, some players have created “pacifist runs” for originally violent games where they try to complete the game without killing any of the game’s enemies. I think this shows that players can show empathy to NPCs even when the game itself doesn’t actively encourage it. They will also try to find new solutions to challenges.

Good stuff, but…

All in all, I enjoyed listening to Catharina Bøhler’s talk, but there wasn’t really anything new to me. She could’ve dived deeper into the topic, since at times her talk seemed to be more about promoting her game. Still, I understand that she wanted to set her own game as an example. I’ve become happy, sad and scared while gaming, and think games can be a safe way to deal with these feelings.

Not all games need to have deep narratives, some are made just to be entertaining. But games have the potential to give voice to those who don’t have it. I don’t think we can have too much empathy in video games. We just need to learn when to use it.

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Photo by Javier Martínez on Unsplash

Featured image: Photo by Derek Story on Unsplash

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