How to promote empathy in games? An analysis of the structural elements to be considered in the interaction design
Resumo
Empathic Games is a category of games that try to capture the reality of the characters and situations they face in order to make the player understand how it is to be "in someone else’s shoe". These are games that, in general, bring sensitive themes such as bullying, death, or various prejudices. There works that highlight the importance of empathy in games, yet there is very little on how games can foster empathy in the player. Through the literature review, we sought to find studies on how games can generate empathy and what games are considered empathic. After selecting the games, we analyzed their structural elements that can foster empathy, namely their: narrative, gameplay, graphics, and sound design. Our findings point out that the narrative element, alongside the intent and interdisciplinary factors (such as cultural aspects the game’s plot presents), are key factors in guiding how the game’s technical aspects support the player’s immersion in the game’s universe. We hope our results help in the development of interactive experiences that connect with the user on a deeper level, and allow them to better understand realities and scenarios that are different from their own daily lives. The findings of this study also complement the artifacts available in a conceptual framework to support designers and developers in creating more empathetic games.
Palavras-chave:
Empathic Games, Empathy, Game Analysis
Referências
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Laura Beckwith, Margaret Burnett, Valentina Grigoreanu, and Susan Wiedenbeck. 2006. Gender HCI: What about the software?Computer 39, 11 (2006), 97–101.
Jonathan Belman and Mary Flanagan. 2010. Designing games to foster empathy. International Journal of Cognitive Technology 15, 1 (2010), 11.
Arthur Berger. 2017. Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon. 3–28. DOI: 10.4324/9781351299961-2
Alice Blot. 2017. Exploring games to foster empathy.
Liz Owens Boltz, Danah Henriksen, and Punya Mishra. 2015. Rethinking technology & creativity in the 21st century: Empathy through gaming-perspective taking in a complex world. TechTrends 59, 6 (2015), 3–8.
Bruno Bonnechère and Bruno Bonnechère. 2018. Serious games in rehabilitation. Serious Games in Physical Rehabilitation: From Theory to Practice (2018), 41–109.
Stuart Brown. 2015. A Brief History of Graphics. Ahoy (2015). [link]
Paolo Burelli. 2016. Game Cinematography: From Camera Control to Player Emotions. In Emotion in Games. Springer, 181–195.
Kathy Charmaz. 2009. A construção da teoria fundamentada: guia prático para análise qualitativa. Bookman Editora.
Steven Conway. 2010. A circular wall? Reformulating the fourth wall for videogames. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 2, 2 (2010), 145–155.
Patrick Crogan. 2018. Indie dreams: Video games, creative economy, and the hyperindustrial epoch. Games and Culture 13, 7 (2018), 671–689.
Cussan. 2019. Evolution of Video Game Graphics 1958-2020 [4K]. Cussan (2019). [link]
Alessandro De Gloria, Francesco Bellotti, and Riccardo Berta. 2014. Serious Games for education and training. International Journal of Serious Games 1, 1 (2014).
Tânia Saraiva de Melo Pinheiro, Caio Cesar Valério, Cristiano Maciel, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, and Eunice P dos Santos Nunes. 2021. Revisiting Empathy Games Concept from User Comments Perspective. In Proceedings of the XX Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–11.
Jack Denham, Steven Hirschler, and Matthew Spokes. 2021. The reification of structural violence in video games. Crime, Media, Culture 17, 1 (2021), 85–103.
Gustavo Velho Diogo. 2016. Empathy Games: Life, Death, and Digital Narratives. Radboud University (2016).
Malte Elson, Johannes Breuer, James D Ivory, and Thorsten Quandt. 2014. More than stories with buttons: Narrative, mechanics, and context as determinants of player experience in digital games. Journal of Communication 64, 3 (2014), 521–542.
Emmanoel Ferreira. 2014. Diz-me com quem andas e direi o quão ‘indie’és: relações entre gênero e mercado no cenário dos videogames independentes. In CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL COMUNICAÇÃO E CONSUMO, Vol. 4. 1–15.
Vinícius Ferreira Galvão, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, Cristiano Maciel, Eunice Nunes, and Daniele Trevisan. 2022. Máquinas de empatia-Uma visão geral histórica da indústria sobre elementos característicos dos jogos empáticos. Anais Estendidos do XXI Simpósio Brasileiro de Jogos e Entretenimento Digital (2022), 468–477.
Michael Mansfield Georgina Goodlander. 2013. Press Start: Video Games in an Art Museum,. Journal of Interactive Humanities 1, 1 (2013), 615–624. DOI: 10.14448/jih.01.0004
SANDRA LÚCIA RÉBEL GOMES, MARÍLIA ALVARENGA ROCHA MENDONÇA, and Clarice Muhlethaler de SOUZA. 2000. Literatura cinzenta. In Fontes de informação para pesquisadores e profissionais. Ed. UFMG Belo Horizonte, 97–104.
Lucas Aguiar Goulart. 2017. Jogos vivos para pessoas vivas: composições queer-contrapúblicas nas culturas de jogo digital. (2017).
Maria J Grant and Andrew Booth. 2009. A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health information & libraries journal 26, 2 (2009), 91–108.
Dustin Hansen. 2016. Game on!: Video game history from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and more. Vol. 1. Macmillan.
Christian Happ, André Melzer, and Georges Steffgen. 2015. Like the good or bad guy—Empathy in antisocial and prosocial games.Psychology of Popular Media Culture 4, 2 (2015), 80.
Ben Hourigan. 2006. You Need Love and Friendship For This Mission!: Final Fantasy VI, VII and VIII as counterexamples to totalizing discourses on videogames. Reconstruction 6, 1 (2006).
David Hume. 1896. A treatise of human nature. Clarendon Press.
James D Ivory. 2015. A brief history of video games. The video game debate: Unravelling the physical, social, and psychological effects of digital games (2015), 1–21.
Anker Helms Jørgensen. 2004. Marrying HCI/Usability and computer games: a preliminary look. In Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction. 393–396.
Johannes Katsarov, Markus Christen, Ralf Mauerhofer, David Schmocker, and Carmen Tanner. 2019. Training moral sensitivity through video games: A review of suitable game mechanisms. Games and Culture 14, 4 (2019), 344–366.
Steven L Kent. 2010. The Ultimate History of Video Games: from Pong to Pokemon and beyond... the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. Vol. 1. Crown.
Jake Kring-Schreifels. 2021. Video Games Used to Copy Movies. Now They’re Influencing Modern Action.The Ringer (2021). [link]
Petri Lankoski. 2007. Goals, affects, and empathy in games. Philosophy of computer games (2007), 1–10.
Roni Linser, Nina Ree Lindstad, and Tone Vold. 2008. The magic circle-game design principles and online role-play simulations. In EdMedia+ Innovate Learning. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), 5290–5297.
Miroslav Macák 2020. The Dawn of the 9th Console Generation: The Scalpers’ Heaven. Acta Ludologica 3, 2 (2020), 92–93.
Viviana Carola Velasco Martinez. 2009. " O brincar e a realidade"... virtual: videogame, assassinatos e imortalidade. Estilos da Clínica 14, 26 (2009), 150–173.
Leonardo Dias Martins and Fabíola Pantoja Oliveira Araújo. 2021. Mineração de Texto para a Análise do Perfil Emocional de Usuários de Jogo Empático. Anais do Computer on the Beach 12 (2021), 370–377.
Heidi McDonald. 2013. Romance Games: Unpopular Genre or Untapped Market?lecture, Montreal International Game Summit, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (2013).
Alison McMahan. 2013. Immersion, engagement, and presence: A method for analyzing 3-D video games. In The video game theory reader. Routledge, 67–86.
Andrew McStay. 2018. Emotional AI: The rise of empathic media. Sage.
Michaelis. © 2022. Empatia. Editora Melhoramentos (© 2022). [link]
R Myerson. 1991. Game theory: Analysis of conflict harvard univ. Press, Cambridge 3 (1991).
Federica Pallavicini, Alessandro Pepe, and Maria Eleonora Minissi. 2019. Gaming in virtual reality: What changes in terms of usability, emotional response and sense of presence compared to non-immersive video games?Simulation & Gaming 50, 2 (2019), 136–159.
Kamila R. H. Rodrigues, Caio Cesar Valério, Tânia S. M. Pinheiro, Cristiano Maciel, and Eunice P dos Santos Nunes. 2021. Revisiting Empathy Games Concept from User Comments Perspective. In Proceedings of the SBGames 2021.
Marina Cotta Rangel, Luciana Cardoso de Castro Salgado, and Silvia Amélia Bim. 2022. TraduBem: Towards a Text Verification Tool for an Altruistic Language. In Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Diamantina, Brazil) (IHC ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 44, 7 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3554364.3559143
Tech Rules. 2020. History of VR Technology, But I Have to Explain in VR | Tech Rules. Tech Rules (2020). [link]
Danilo Barros dos Santos, Tânia Saraiva de Melo Pinheiro, Cristiano Maciel, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, and Eunice Pereira dos Santos Nunes. 2020. Interpreting posts in empathic games: assumptions for a conceptual framework. In Proceedings of the 19th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–10.
Lucas Marques dos Santos. 2021. Jogos digitais e autorrepresentação: a construção de sentidos nos videogames com elementos autobiográficos. (2021).
Elena Shliakhovchuk and Adolfo Muñoz García. 2020. Intercultural Perspective on Impact of Video Games on Players: Insights from a Systematic Review of Recent Literature.Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice 20, 1 (2020), 40–58.
Adam Smith. 1822. The theory of moral sentiments. Vol. 1. J. Richardson.
Osama Sohaib, Walayat Hussain, and M Khalid Badini. 2011. User Experience (UX) and the web accessibility standards. International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI) 8, 3 (2011), 584.
Chris Stone. 2019. The evolution of video games as a storytelling medium, and the role of narrative in modern games. Game Developer (2019). [link]
Steve Swink. 2008. Game feel: a game designer’s guide to virtual sensation. CRC press.
Raymond Usher, Paul Robertson, and Robin Sloan. 2013. Physical responses (arousal) to audio in games. The Computer Games Journal 2 (08 2013), 5–13. DOI: 10.1007/BF03392340
Leandro Manuel Reis Velloso. 2017. O espaço nos videogames: dentro e fora do círculo mágico. Ph. D. Dissertation. Universidade de São Paulo.
Andrew Walsh. 2021. Press Y to Cry: Generating Emotions in Videogame Narrative. Game Developers Conference (2021). [link]
Josef Wiemeyer, Lennart Nacke, Christiane Moser, and Florian ‘Floyd’Mueller. 2016. Player experience. Serious games: Foundations, concepts and practice (2016), 243–271.
Elie Wiesel. 2017. Night: Memorial Edition. Hill and Wang.
F Michael Williams-Bell, Bill Kapralos, Andrew Hogue, BM Murphy, and EJ Weckman. 2015. Using serious games and virtual simulation for training in the fire service: a review. Fire Technology 51 (2015), 553–584.
Mark JP Wolf. 2008. The video game explosion: a history from PONG to Playstation and beyond. ABC-CLIO.
Richard TA Wood, Mark D Griffiths, Darren Chappell, and Mark NO Davies. 2004. The structural characteristics of video games: A psycho-structural analysis. CyberPsychology & behavior 7, 1 (2004), 1–10.
Ossy Dwi Endah Wulansari, Johanna Pirker, Johannes Kopf, and Christian Guetl. 2019. Video games and their correlation to empathy. In International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning. Springer, 151–163.
M Cecília C Baranauskas, Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, and Roberto Pereira. 2012. GranDIHC-BR: prospecção de grandes desafios de pesquisa em interação humano-computador no Brasil. In Companion Proceedings of the 11th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 63–64.
Laura Beckwith, Margaret Burnett, Valentina Grigoreanu, and Susan Wiedenbeck. 2006. Gender HCI: What about the software?Computer 39, 11 (2006), 97–101.
Jonathan Belman and Mary Flanagan. 2010. Designing games to foster empathy. International Journal of Cognitive Technology 15, 1 (2010), 11.
Arthur Berger. 2017. Video Games: A Popular Culture Phenomenon. 3–28. DOI: 10.4324/9781351299961-2
Alice Blot. 2017. Exploring games to foster empathy.
Liz Owens Boltz, Danah Henriksen, and Punya Mishra. 2015. Rethinking technology & creativity in the 21st century: Empathy through gaming-perspective taking in a complex world. TechTrends 59, 6 (2015), 3–8.
Bruno Bonnechère and Bruno Bonnechère. 2018. Serious games in rehabilitation. Serious Games in Physical Rehabilitation: From Theory to Practice (2018), 41–109.
Stuart Brown. 2015. A Brief History of Graphics. Ahoy (2015). [link]
Paolo Burelli. 2016. Game Cinematography: From Camera Control to Player Emotions. In Emotion in Games. Springer, 181–195.
Kathy Charmaz. 2009. A construção da teoria fundamentada: guia prático para análise qualitativa. Bookman Editora.
Steven Conway. 2010. A circular wall? Reformulating the fourth wall for videogames. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 2, 2 (2010), 145–155.
Patrick Crogan. 2018. Indie dreams: Video games, creative economy, and the hyperindustrial epoch. Games and Culture 13, 7 (2018), 671–689.
Cussan. 2019. Evolution of Video Game Graphics 1958-2020 [4K]. Cussan (2019). [link]
Alessandro De Gloria, Francesco Bellotti, and Riccardo Berta. 2014. Serious Games for education and training. International Journal of Serious Games 1, 1 (2014).
Tânia Saraiva de Melo Pinheiro, Caio Cesar Valério, Cristiano Maciel, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, and Eunice P dos Santos Nunes. 2021. Revisiting Empathy Games Concept from User Comments Perspective. In Proceedings of the XX Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–11.
Jack Denham, Steven Hirschler, and Matthew Spokes. 2021. The reification of structural violence in video games. Crime, Media, Culture 17, 1 (2021), 85–103.
Gustavo Velho Diogo. 2016. Empathy Games: Life, Death, and Digital Narratives. Radboud University (2016).
Malte Elson, Johannes Breuer, James D Ivory, and Thorsten Quandt. 2014. More than stories with buttons: Narrative, mechanics, and context as determinants of player experience in digital games. Journal of Communication 64, 3 (2014), 521–542.
Emmanoel Ferreira. 2014. Diz-me com quem andas e direi o quão ‘indie’és: relações entre gênero e mercado no cenário dos videogames independentes. In CONGRESSO INTERNACIONAL COMUNICAÇÃO E CONSUMO, Vol. 4. 1–15.
Vinícius Ferreira Galvão, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, Cristiano Maciel, Eunice Nunes, and Daniele Trevisan. 2022. Máquinas de empatia-Uma visão geral histórica da indústria sobre elementos característicos dos jogos empáticos. Anais Estendidos do XXI Simpósio Brasileiro de Jogos e Entretenimento Digital (2022), 468–477.
Michael Mansfield Georgina Goodlander. 2013. Press Start: Video Games in an Art Museum,. Journal of Interactive Humanities 1, 1 (2013), 615–624. DOI: 10.14448/jih.01.0004
SANDRA LÚCIA RÉBEL GOMES, MARÍLIA ALVARENGA ROCHA MENDONÇA, and Clarice Muhlethaler de SOUZA. 2000. Literatura cinzenta. In Fontes de informação para pesquisadores e profissionais. Ed. UFMG Belo Horizonte, 97–104.
Lucas Aguiar Goulart. 2017. Jogos vivos para pessoas vivas: composições queer-contrapúblicas nas culturas de jogo digital. (2017).
Maria J Grant and Andrew Booth. 2009. A typology of reviews: an analysis of 14 review types and associated methodologies. Health information & libraries journal 26, 2 (2009), 91–108.
Dustin Hansen. 2016. Game on!: Video game history from Pong and Pac-Man to Mario, Minecraft, and more. Vol. 1. Macmillan.
Christian Happ, André Melzer, and Georges Steffgen. 2015. Like the good or bad guy—Empathy in antisocial and prosocial games.Psychology of Popular Media Culture 4, 2 (2015), 80.
Ben Hourigan. 2006. You Need Love and Friendship For This Mission!: Final Fantasy VI, VII and VIII as counterexamples to totalizing discourses on videogames. Reconstruction 6, 1 (2006).
David Hume. 1896. A treatise of human nature. Clarendon Press.
James D Ivory. 2015. A brief history of video games. The video game debate: Unravelling the physical, social, and psychological effects of digital games (2015), 1–21.
Anker Helms Jørgensen. 2004. Marrying HCI/Usability and computer games: a preliminary look. In Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction. 393–396.
Johannes Katsarov, Markus Christen, Ralf Mauerhofer, David Schmocker, and Carmen Tanner. 2019. Training moral sensitivity through video games: A review of suitable game mechanisms. Games and Culture 14, 4 (2019), 344–366.
Steven L Kent. 2010. The Ultimate History of Video Games: from Pong to Pokemon and beyond... the story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. Vol. 1. Crown.
Jake Kring-Schreifels. 2021. Video Games Used to Copy Movies. Now They’re Influencing Modern Action.The Ringer (2021). [link]
Petri Lankoski. 2007. Goals, affects, and empathy in games. Philosophy of computer games (2007), 1–10.
Roni Linser, Nina Ree Lindstad, and Tone Vold. 2008. The magic circle-game design principles and online role-play simulations. In EdMedia+ Innovate Learning. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), 5290–5297.
Miroslav Macák 2020. The Dawn of the 9th Console Generation: The Scalpers’ Heaven. Acta Ludologica 3, 2 (2020), 92–93.
Viviana Carola Velasco Martinez. 2009. " O brincar e a realidade"... virtual: videogame, assassinatos e imortalidade. Estilos da Clínica 14, 26 (2009), 150–173.
Leonardo Dias Martins and Fabíola Pantoja Oliveira Araújo. 2021. Mineração de Texto para a Análise do Perfil Emocional de Usuários de Jogo Empático. Anais do Computer on the Beach 12 (2021), 370–377.
Heidi McDonald. 2013. Romance Games: Unpopular Genre or Untapped Market?lecture, Montreal International Game Summit, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (2013).
Alison McMahan. 2013. Immersion, engagement, and presence: A method for analyzing 3-D video games. In The video game theory reader. Routledge, 67–86.
Andrew McStay. 2018. Emotional AI: The rise of empathic media. Sage.
Michaelis. © 2022. Empatia. Editora Melhoramentos (© 2022). [link]
R Myerson. 1991. Game theory: Analysis of conflict harvard univ. Press, Cambridge 3 (1991).
Federica Pallavicini, Alessandro Pepe, and Maria Eleonora Minissi. 2019. Gaming in virtual reality: What changes in terms of usability, emotional response and sense of presence compared to non-immersive video games?Simulation & Gaming 50, 2 (2019), 136–159.
Kamila R. H. Rodrigues, Caio Cesar Valério, Tânia S. M. Pinheiro, Cristiano Maciel, and Eunice P dos Santos Nunes. 2021. Revisiting Empathy Games Concept from User Comments Perspective. In Proceedings of the SBGames 2021.
Marina Cotta Rangel, Luciana Cardoso de Castro Salgado, and Silvia Amélia Bim. 2022. TraduBem: Towards a Text Verification Tool for an Altruistic Language. In Proceedings of the 21st Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Diamantina, Brazil) (IHC ’22). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 44, 7 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3554364.3559143
Tech Rules. 2020. History of VR Technology, But I Have to Explain in VR | Tech Rules. Tech Rules (2020). [link]
Danilo Barros dos Santos, Tânia Saraiva de Melo Pinheiro, Cristiano Maciel, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, and Eunice Pereira dos Santos Nunes. 2020. Interpreting posts in empathic games: assumptions for a conceptual framework. In Proceedings of the 19th Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–10.
Lucas Marques dos Santos. 2021. Jogos digitais e autorrepresentação: a construção de sentidos nos videogames com elementos autobiográficos. (2021).
Elena Shliakhovchuk and Adolfo Muñoz García. 2020. Intercultural Perspective on Impact of Video Games on Players: Insights from a Systematic Review of Recent Literature.Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice 20, 1 (2020), 40–58.
Adam Smith. 1822. The theory of moral sentiments. Vol. 1. J. Richardson.
Osama Sohaib, Walayat Hussain, and M Khalid Badini. 2011. User Experience (UX) and the web accessibility standards. International Journal of Computer Science Issues (IJCSI) 8, 3 (2011), 584.
Chris Stone. 2019. The evolution of video games as a storytelling medium, and the role of narrative in modern games. Game Developer (2019). [link]
Steve Swink. 2008. Game feel: a game designer’s guide to virtual sensation. CRC press.
Raymond Usher, Paul Robertson, and Robin Sloan. 2013. Physical responses (arousal) to audio in games. The Computer Games Journal 2 (08 2013), 5–13. DOI: 10.1007/BF03392340
Leandro Manuel Reis Velloso. 2017. O espaço nos videogames: dentro e fora do círculo mágico. Ph. D. Dissertation. Universidade de São Paulo.
Andrew Walsh. 2021. Press Y to Cry: Generating Emotions in Videogame Narrative. Game Developers Conference (2021). [link]
Josef Wiemeyer, Lennart Nacke, Christiane Moser, and Florian ‘Floyd’Mueller. 2016. Player experience. Serious games: Foundations, concepts and practice (2016), 243–271.
Elie Wiesel. 2017. Night: Memorial Edition. Hill and Wang.
F Michael Williams-Bell, Bill Kapralos, Andrew Hogue, BM Murphy, and EJ Weckman. 2015. Using serious games and virtual simulation for training in the fire service: a review. Fire Technology 51 (2015), 553–584.
Mark JP Wolf. 2008. The video game explosion: a history from PONG to Playstation and beyond. ABC-CLIO.
Richard TA Wood, Mark D Griffiths, Darren Chappell, and Mark NO Davies. 2004. The structural characteristics of video games: A psycho-structural analysis. CyberPsychology & behavior 7, 1 (2004), 1–10.
Ossy Dwi Endah Wulansari, Johanna Pirker, Johannes Kopf, and Christian Guetl. 2019. Video games and their correlation to empathy. In International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning. Springer, 151–163.
Publicado
16/10/2023
Como Citar
GALVÃO, Vinícius Ferreira; MACIEL, Cristiano; DA HORA RODRIGUES, Kamila Rios.
How to promote empathy in games? An analysis of the structural elements to be considered in the interaction design. In: SIMPÓSIO BRASILEIRO SOBRE FATORES HUMANOS EM SISTEMAS COMPUTACIONAIS (IHC), 22. , 2023, Maceió/AL.
Anais [...].
Porto Alegre: Sociedade Brasileira de Computação,
2023
.
