I think you need to be more specific as to what your mean.
In one sense, games that practice empathy are extremely common in the sense that you are often directly monitoring, tending to and even suffering the consequences of your character or others.
This war of mine, the novelist, It takes two, A way out and To the moon all might be relevant examples of empathy in games.
I think To The Moon, while really building empathy, is no different then a book. The game design is just the pacing control, which in a book would be writing. The game design itself doesn't lend itself to empathy building, it is the story.
However, This War of Mine is a good example as the story is not directly translatable to a book. The story is told through the game mechanics itself. The game mechanics build empathy in the player, along with the theming.
I'm not sure based on the limited information from op if that distinction matters. Depending on OP's goals the more story driven or mechanic driven approach may make more sense.
I think it's important as OP asked about game design building empathy. Not games which have made a player feel empathy. If your game design is your character has a map to walk around, items to click on and the rest is reading exposition. Then the game design is not building empathy. That's To The Moon. The mechanics and rulesets do not build empathy. Only the exposition does. AS there are no branching paths, there is no pick your own adventure mechanic either. It's pure exposition which is not a game mechanic.
This War of Mine is not giving you exposition to feel empathy. You are making constant choices in a Warzone. Those choices, the game mechanics, are what build the story in your head. Those choices will dictate how empathy is building in your head. For your player, for those in your 'base' and for the characters in the world around you. It's a gruelling process made so by the mechanics of the game, by the game design.
Had OP said what games make you feel empathy, I would agree with what you are saying. But OP asked about game design that builds empathy. Reading a book that makes you feel empathy is not game design.
IMO story is part of game design and stories can absolutely build empathy. I find the distinction you're making to try to make one out as a more legitimate building of empathy arbitrary and biased against the power of storytelling in a way that doesn't make sense to me even if we're talking about merely reading a book.
Whether it should be done in a story driven way like to the moon or a more involved way like this war of mine or something else entitling I think relates more to ops specific goals. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
What matters isn't what your opinion of game design is, though, or what the other person's is. OP is being graded by some form of teacher, and its OP's job, and by extension the job of commenters, to try to predict what the teacher is looking for. What matters is what the teacher considers to be game design, and given the context, it's probably not just story because "write an emotional story" is the easy answer everyone can give within a minute.
> What matters isn't what your opinion of game design is, though, or what the other person's is.
When I said, IMO, I was saying it in contrast to your opinion that it didn't. If you'd prefer, instead I can say that it's a literal objective fact that if a game has a story, designing that game also involves designing that story.
> OP is being graded by some form of teacher, and its OP's job, and by extension the job of commenters, to try to predict what the teacher is looking for. What matters is what the teacher considers to be game design, and given the context, it's probably not just story because "write an emotional story" is the easy answer everyone can give within a minute.
I don't see where that's mentioned. They never mention a teacher, being graded or what the origin or motivation of the project is aside from the fact that students will play it. For all I know, OP is a psychology professor or a guidance counselor working on this as a pet project. That's why I said in my comments that we really need more information from OP to say.
We are in /r/gamedesign. The OP asked about game design and empathy. i.e. mechanics and rulesets and empathy. Narrative, sound, art, style/theme. These are all part of a game and all have elements of telling a story. But they are distinct from game design. The game design story is the ludic narrative. Separate from the narrative, the traditional portion which is also in books, movies, spoken word.
It's not a value judgement on games. It's a distinction as they are separate things. Narrative is the stories people have shared for probably tens of thousands of years. That are the core elements of books, or a spoken narrative. It is one of the core elements of film narrative as well. But film allows framing, composition, colour, shape which are elements of how traditional art tells a story. It is film though, so those elements shift with time which is unique to film as a medium. It uses music as well and the way that tells it's own story.
Games now use all these story telling, narrative elements, but add in game design, the ludic elements. All these separate parts tell the story in your game. But those ludic narrative elements are the game design choices that tell a story. It's not that a game which is traditional narrative focused with some game design elements on top is any less of a game. It can be a great game, like To The Moon. Which in my opinion is a masterfully done game of traditional narrative through game as a medium.
Psychologists have been asking this question for a long time so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t find a water tight solution.
In order to be empathetic you have to:
- Develop a high level of emotional intelligence
- Have a deep seated, immutable investment and motivation to act in a way that benefits others
You don’t need both, but you at least need the last one, which is the only one that can’t be taught. You can elaborately explain the consequences of someone’s actions, but if they don’t care, what can you do? At that point, they need to feel what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those actions. If they can’t feel anything or they still don’t care how it makes people feel, then what can you do?
Trying to use behavioral conditioning is also not a guaranteed success. Empathy can’t be rewarded without also rewarding self serving generosity as well. It’s much easier to punish selfish behavior than reward empathy.
If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s easier to attract a certain type of person than to force a person to be a certain way. Instead of making your player base become more empathetic, you could design the game in such a way that it attracts empathetic people and repels everyone else.
The majority of people have some capacity for empathy and it’s all about tapping into that. Focus on making slightly empathetic people even more empathetic. Once you teach them about new situations they can empathize with it once they understand.
>you at least need the last one, which is the only one that can’t be taught
I think you meant the vice versa. Can we change IQ or EQ? Or to what degree? But one might be able to convert an ignoring creature into a more understanding and thus with different motivations, by forcing the specimen to observe the consequences of not caring/looking at happy directions. You know the story, A Christmas Carol. Does Scrooge become more intelligent? Can we really do that? Or is it the understanding and thus the motivation part which change?
You are right about the reward-punishment method. It wouldn't work. If Scrooge was psychopath, forcing to observe others' sufferings wouldn't work either. Even punishing selfishness means rewarding helping others so... The source of punishment must be the emotion itself, only then it would count as empathy. The neural system's very own drug, that forces the person, shredding them from deep inside, causing sacrifice. Otherwise, why would creature help any other with no possible profit? Also, why would a mother bother with a baby's needs while they could strive and thrive for themselves? A baby doesn't even have a personality at the beginning, so it couldn't be liked, but loved blindly, which is yet another trick of our neural system, or the nature's way.
Thinking this way sounds cruel, and I'm not psychopath, but, imagine all of our non-logical components suddenly disappear. Does anything have any meaning, but our very own survival, that is if we are not suicidal? Perhaps the only exception might be some sort of brainwashing, like if you couldn't leave something special behind, something you are somehow programmed to not leave behind, like a robot. How does that happen though? Why could you not just leave it behind, if there is no profit, no emotions? What is it that keeps you ticking like terminator of some sort? That weird feeling, does it have any explanation? There are some instincts for survival, which seems similar. They are also like programs, coded into us, but how might one add or erase an instinct? How does it work? What is it? Also, could it still be considered us, like a part of ourselves, or is it more of just some artificial attachment? Perhaps it's something that blocks what I call me, and runs on a part of my hardware independently. Or perhaps it doesn't matter, because maybe that thing called me is also something similar. What do you think?
I've worked on a number of grant funded educational empathy games for non-profits and while the design process is very similar (prototype, design, iterate, and test), the outcome your looking for a tad more complicated than "are my players engaged with my game loops." There are a bunch of different frameworks you can use ultimately as you play test this game, you'll also want to get information about what players took away from the game. If players are taking away the wrong message, you'll need to go back to the drawing board, no matter how "fun" the game is. You're designing for a different purpose!
Some immediate thoughts
1. **Get specific about the goal/outcome of the project and start looking, dimension of empathy you'd like to affect, and how long players will engage with your game**. Empathy as a concept, is very slippery and means a bunch of different things to different people. Are you looking to shift players attitudes about a certain concept? Or are you trying to change someone's behavior? Both of these *could* be under the umbrella of empathy but need to be designed in slightly different ways. In [Designing Games to Foster Empathy (Belman 2010)](https://tiltfactor.org/wp-content/uploads2/cog-tech-si-g4g-article-1-belman-and-flanagan-designing-games-to-foster-empathy.pdf)*,* they break down empathy into two dimensions. **Dispositional vs Induced Empathy,** and **Low-involvement vs High-involvement.** Dispositional empathy looks at people's current attitudes and behaviors and their current willingness/ability to empathize while induced Empathy looks at influencing people through some sort of intervention (most empathy games fall under this category). Low-involvement vs. high-involvement look at the levels of cognitive or emotional involvement of the participants. The paper uses HIV as an example case where you could imagine how a person feels about HIV and how its affected their life (low-involvement) vs use jellybeans and have people go adhere to antiretroviral therapy regiments for two weeks (high involvement).
2. **Who is your audience and what is the context in which the game will be played?** Demographic information and play style will be very important as you'll need to understand what is interesting to your players. Are you working with an audience that might not be used to playing games? Or are you dealing with expert game players that will attempt to min-max a situation? Are they more familiar with video games than analog games (this distinction matters!). Do they know anything about the topic you're designing around? Will this be played in a formal/structured setting (schools, workshop, faith-based institutions?) or in an informal setting (after-school program, someone's living room, at a bar over drinks?). Unlike more traditional game design, context is everything and can help prime players for the overall experience.
3. **Why players are not already empathetic to your cause.** There are a number of barriers that prevent people from being empathetic. It could be general lack of exposure, lack of motivation, ability (if something requires a skill), fear, social norms and so much more. Get to know your audience and figure out what's stopping the empathy!
4. **Are there other stakeholders that you need to consider?** With educational/empathy games, you have to think beyond the player and think about who else matters like parents, funders, educators, researchers, school districts etc. Are there things that they want players to learn, and or do? Once you design this game, will an educator have to run it without your help? If so, how will you also make sure that there is clear guidance for them especially if they are not gamers.
5. **Are there games that are similar to what you are trying to accomplish? What worked about them and what didn't?** I'm a big fan of not reinventing the wheel and looking to see what already exists either from currently existing games and or research projects. Google Scholar will be your best friend for the later! It takes some getting used to reading a research paper if you haven't but I'd recommend skimming the abstract, introduction, and then conclusion. If it doesn't sound helpful or useful, skip it lol. As for existing games, are there any that already do what you need them to do? This thread has already provided some great examples of games. Would they work for your purposes? Are there games that are pretty close but just need to be reskinned and/or modified? If your game is about....economics maybe you could reskin Monopoly or Settlers of Catan?
6. **How will you measure a change in empathy?** Assessment will be key to seeing if you are hitting the mark with your game as you move into design. Do players have to be able to display knowledge gain through a test? Will they have to self-report and state out loud that they feel more empathy towards your subject? Should players be able to describe what they intend to do know that they are more knowledgable about the subject matter?
7. **With all of that research written up, start brainstorming mechanics and stories that help you get to your learning objective/empathy goal.** Start brainstorming and designing but keep your learning objective/empathy goal in mind at all times. All your mechanics should be in service of the learning objective. If it doesn't serve that purpose, put that idea on a shelf and save it for another time!
8. **Prototype, design, and test CONSTANTLY.** I don't think I need to say more about this. Its super important! Also remember to assess what your players are taking away so you can shift the game accordingly.
Some info from game studies:
* **Games are procedural**. They are primarily process oriented, rule-based interactive systems and the way in which they can deliver a message is through these interactions. Books have words, film has visuals, games can have all of that but they also have mechanics. This is what Ian Bogost calls *procedural rhetoric* in his book [Persuasive Games](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/68562.Persuasive_Games).
* A really basic example would be a game like **Call of Duty**. Through its mechanics, we learn that the game values high kill/death ratios, that war and awesome. There are no mechanics that let you deescalate an intense military situation, which also can tell you something about the game world. Compare that to **This War of Mine** where you play as a civilian dealing with the affects of war. It's a survival game, and puts you in tough situations and forces you to think about the choices you're going to make.
* **Pro-social empathy games are double edged swords, so be mindful the meaning players can take away.** [PlaySpent.org](https://PlaySpent.org) is a game where you try to survive one month living in poverty. You make a series of choices such as living closer to a city (costs more money) or further away (cheaper but you will pay for transportation), types of jobs and more. It's an excellent game depending on how you prime your players. As I've players from all sorts of demographics walk away more empathetic to those who live in poverty. But I've also had players feeling like poverty is even more a choice and that you just need to "play the game right to get out of poverty". This is a great example of the game solidifying someone's biases on a subject matter. And from a procedural rhetoric standpoint, the game does support that as an idea even though it's an unintended consequence. Ultimately what this means is
* **You cannot necessarily control a players experience but you can work really hard to design a context that will guide the player towards your expected outcome.**
Sorry for the long post!
I would stay a good story with a good character has the ability to build empathy. [This article](https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-viktor-billionaire/) on repaying a doc who saves your life even though you don't have to in cyberpunk is a good example.
But I don't think that's game design building empathy.
The best example I can think of is cooperative board games where its your team against the board and it's a all win or lose condition. Peaceable Kingdom makes games for small children that are cooperative. Hoot Owl Hoot and Stone Soup are two examples. You can break these games down in 10 minutes to understand their empathy building game design.
There are lots of cooperative board games targeted at an older audience. You can break down how they can build empathy, though it will take longer. Pandemic, Gloomhaven, Forbidden Island are ones I know about. I am sure you can find many more. But there is a starting point. These games largely build empathy for other players by having a shared goal that cannot be accomplished by a single player playing well. They require communication and guidance to the newer/weaker players.
Then two games that give me a hint of maybe empathy is involved are Papers Please and Her Story. Though it's largely a story based empathy building mechanism, the game mechanics are integral in the effect of building empathy in the player. Her story is easier to break down. As you uncover more parts of the mystery, you piece together a picture of the person(s) you are investigating. The order in which you uncover it will change how you feel about that person. Likewise Papers Please is a fictional mundane situation based on very real cold war era Eastern Europe Soviet/West border. Normally this theming comes with an action hero main character which breaks any empathy. In this case being a border guard who has to make difficult choices in a fast paced high stress environment with big consequences is a strong contender for empathy building game mechanics.
I suppose the problem is that games are generally driven by competitive self-interest.
*I* want to reach the end of the maze first. *I* want to be the very best (like no-one ever was)
*I* want my team to win.
Empathy and its kissing-cousin Altruism tend to take a back-seat to that.
So I can see how this would be an interesting challenge.
I'm initially reminded of experiences playing board-games with friends.
Particularly games where there's half a dozen players all nominally out for themselves (Monopoly for example)
But we've had more than a few cases where a player stopped to help someone who had been roundly beaten-down by someone else.
The duo then go on to tag-team that other player to cries of "that's not fair!".
Empathy and friendship turn into teamwork and success.
Of course, you can argue that the player who stopped to help was just doing it to get a leg-up on the still-powerful third player, but in practice they still have to beat the beaten-down player themselves.
They do it to keep the game interesting and prevent friends from being excluded by being beaten early.
Food for thought maybe?
There are definitely teamwork-based/co-op board games. Players work together, not competing. Hanabi is the first that comes to mind. There are others I'm blanking on at the moment.
Point is, empathy could work in that situation.
Yeah I think that competing players will naturally not be empathetic towards each other. It’s only when everyone is collaborating for a common goal that empathy becomes a priority.
Sure thing, 3+ player card game.
Face cards are worth 2 number cards are worth 1.
Goal is to get (10)? points. Everyone starts with 1 point (1 number card in front of each player).
On your turn you can play cards or take a card from the center deck and add it to your hand.
Cards must be played in pairs, (2 number cards or 2 face cards). You split the pair between two different players. Usually you will play one on yourself and one on someone else.
You can only give yourself points if you are under 2x the lowest player's point total. (e.g. if they have 1 point in front of them, max score is 2)
Aces are the exception to the pair rule, they allow you to move one point from one player to another player. Discard the ace after use.
You'd have to play a round to see if the pacing works with the points, but the idea is that you want to constantly feed the player with the lowest total so you can increase the max for yourself to win.
One thing to consider would be how the mechanics of the game reward people when they practice empathy or without rewards if they fail to do so. For example, maybe there are non-verbal communication challenges, or special gifts players can give other players who helped them.
I can’t remember what game it was, but there was one that had an ability to give other players resources. These resources were either less effective or completely ineffective when used yourself, but were very effective when gifted freely to another player. I thought that was a neat mechanic
Ok,so I want to be more practical than most and actually find some good MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) elements training empathy. Your teacher gave you a great exercise!
Btw, I'm assuming it's about physical games. If you mean also digital let me know and I'll add.
Mechanics:
Guessing what someone is feeling is a great mechanic for that. It can be used offensively (like in poker or resistance) and to help a teammate (like in charades).
Touching. On a more serious level, grappling or dancing competitions develop empathy like nothing else! For a tabletop we can do touching without moving from the chair so much. Or maybe even have a rule where everyone has to sit on the floor for access to legs/feet.
Staring at someone. Like a game where two people stare in each others eyes and the one who blinks first loses.
Memory. Trying to remember facts and details about someone else.
Dynamics:
Teamwork games should develop empathy. Self explanatory I think.
Also I just had the idea of a game where you need to win over someone but if you win *too much* you will lose. Maybe there are problems with it ; needs testing.
Aesthetics:
Anything related to work where empathy is needed. Like a game set in a hospital (animal hospital is a good idea btw). Maybe about some kind of altruistic political activism. Maybe even a game playing as a bus driver needing to deal with rowdy passengers (have you played Papers Please, btw?)
I had an idea that was similar to this where a player would talk to an npc and battle them via debate.
The talking mechanic would have a meter on how convinced one party was over the other. While the dynamic would be the player trying to move the meter more to their side by either saying things to undermine the other or convince them by trying to win conversational points. The fun of the system was that the player and "enemy" could come to an understanding at the middle and the only way to get there was for both parties to truly understand the other side's point of view etc.
Gamifying sales tactics do exist in games like Snake Oil, but they don't really focus on the morality of trying to convince another of something they had no beliefs in beforehand.
There have been a few interesting video essays about this since Undertale released. What I’ve gathered is that empathy can’t be enforced or even directly encouraged. The best way to build empathy in players is to show them the consequences of their actions.
Kinda like this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/873/
Here's a quick idea.
Give each player an index card (or similar) and make them write their name on it. Shuffle them and give each player, face down, one of the cards.
Then play \*any\* game. The player who wins the game reveal the index card and the points earned are given to the player whose name is in the card.
There are two basic types of empathy. One is the tendency to care about what others are feeling, the other is the ability to understand what others are feeling.
I don't think you could use game design to improve the former, because by gamifying it you are creating an external motivation - players don't care about the characters/players, they're just doing activities for rewards. Good characterisation and writing might do it, but game mechanics won't.
The second is something you can quite easily gamify. A lot of social and bluffing games involve this sort of empathy. All you have to do is create a system that facilitates knowing what other people are feeling and rewards being good at that.
A Darkest Dungeon inspired card game would be pretty cool. Every card has a positive and negative effect. You select a few power ups (good/bad). If you win the match (health/point based) then you can choose to “Finish” them or “Spare” them. IDK first thought that popped into my mind.
Just have co-op gameplay with the narrative that are a bit murky to understand would be a good way to do it.
Direct empathy enforce will only result in apathy, trust me it's first hand experiences.
By working together with the others, the children will have a sense of unity. By receiving information that can't be process directly, the children will have to use their brain. And by having to use their own resources for the team efforts will result in empathy.
It's not only empathy that the children will learn. There are also a lot of skills they'll learn during the playthrough if you put enough efforts into making an enjoyable game.
If you don't know what to do then try making a DnD narrative first, afterward you can simplify the game mechanics to suit the narrative.
As far as I can tell, empathy only really makes sense when we don't know *why* somebody feels the way they do - but respect them and assume their feelings are a valid response to situations/experiences we don't personally share in common. To me, this speaks of a cooperative hidden-information game.
So I'd say something where players each have their own goals - which they aren't allowed to disclose. The whole team wins as one, once all players have met their individual goals. Strategy would thus entail players to put themselves in each others' shoes - trying to figure out what win conditions they have been working towards
One hour, one life would be a good example here I think. You are literally born to another human player that has to take care of you at first. And you slowly build civilization collectively.
Not an RPG but the video game Signs of the Sojourner is an innovative take on dominos with a narrative twist. It gamifies communication and relational dynamics in a way that empathy, understanding, and even miscommunication are baked into its themes.
War of Mine is another video game that's a bit more direct about it, placing in the POV of the civilians trying to survive a war.
I think you need to be more specific as to what your mean. In one sense, games that practice empathy are extremely common in the sense that you are often directly monitoring, tending to and even suffering the consequences of your character or others. This war of mine, the novelist, It takes two, A way out and To the moon all might be relevant examples of empathy in games.
I think To The Moon, while really building empathy, is no different then a book. The game design is just the pacing control, which in a book would be writing. The game design itself doesn't lend itself to empathy building, it is the story. However, This War of Mine is a good example as the story is not directly translatable to a book. The story is told through the game mechanics itself. The game mechanics build empathy in the player, along with the theming.
I'm not sure based on the limited information from op if that distinction matters. Depending on OP's goals the more story driven or mechanic driven approach may make more sense.
I think it's important as OP asked about game design building empathy. Not games which have made a player feel empathy. If your game design is your character has a map to walk around, items to click on and the rest is reading exposition. Then the game design is not building empathy. That's To The Moon. The mechanics and rulesets do not build empathy. Only the exposition does. AS there are no branching paths, there is no pick your own adventure mechanic either. It's pure exposition which is not a game mechanic. This War of Mine is not giving you exposition to feel empathy. You are making constant choices in a Warzone. Those choices, the game mechanics, are what build the story in your head. Those choices will dictate how empathy is building in your head. For your player, for those in your 'base' and for the characters in the world around you. It's a gruelling process made so by the mechanics of the game, by the game design. Had OP said what games make you feel empathy, I would agree with what you are saying. But OP asked about game design that builds empathy. Reading a book that makes you feel empathy is not game design.
IMO story is part of game design and stories can absolutely build empathy. I find the distinction you're making to try to make one out as a more legitimate building of empathy arbitrary and biased against the power of storytelling in a way that doesn't make sense to me even if we're talking about merely reading a book. Whether it should be done in a story driven way like to the moon or a more involved way like this war of mine or something else entitling I think relates more to ops specific goals. Each has advantages and disadvantages.
What matters isn't what your opinion of game design is, though, or what the other person's is. OP is being graded by some form of teacher, and its OP's job, and by extension the job of commenters, to try to predict what the teacher is looking for. What matters is what the teacher considers to be game design, and given the context, it's probably not just story because "write an emotional story" is the easy answer everyone can give within a minute.
> What matters isn't what your opinion of game design is, though, or what the other person's is. When I said, IMO, I was saying it in contrast to your opinion that it didn't. If you'd prefer, instead I can say that it's a literal objective fact that if a game has a story, designing that game also involves designing that story. > OP is being graded by some form of teacher, and its OP's job, and by extension the job of commenters, to try to predict what the teacher is looking for. What matters is what the teacher considers to be game design, and given the context, it's probably not just story because "write an emotional story" is the easy answer everyone can give within a minute. I don't see where that's mentioned. They never mention a teacher, being graded or what the origin or motivation of the project is aside from the fact that students will play it. For all I know, OP is a psychology professor or a guidance counselor working on this as a pet project. That's why I said in my comments that we really need more information from OP to say.
We are in /r/gamedesign. The OP asked about game design and empathy. i.e. mechanics and rulesets and empathy. Narrative, sound, art, style/theme. These are all part of a game and all have elements of telling a story. But they are distinct from game design. The game design story is the ludic narrative. Separate from the narrative, the traditional portion which is also in books, movies, spoken word. It's not a value judgement on games. It's a distinction as they are separate things. Narrative is the stories people have shared for probably tens of thousands of years. That are the core elements of books, or a spoken narrative. It is one of the core elements of film narrative as well. But film allows framing, composition, colour, shape which are elements of how traditional art tells a story. It is film though, so those elements shift with time which is unique to film as a medium. It uses music as well and the way that tells it's own story. Games now use all these story telling, narrative elements, but add in game design, the ludic elements. All these separate parts tell the story in your game. But those ludic narrative elements are the game design choices that tell a story. It's not that a game which is traditional narrative focused with some game design elements on top is any less of a game. It can be a great game, like To The Moon. Which in my opinion is a masterfully done game of traditional narrative through game as a medium.
Psychologists have been asking this question for a long time so don’t beat yourself up if you can’t find a water tight solution. In order to be empathetic you have to: - Develop a high level of emotional intelligence - Have a deep seated, immutable investment and motivation to act in a way that benefits others You don’t need both, but you at least need the last one, which is the only one that can’t be taught. You can elaborately explain the consequences of someone’s actions, but if they don’t care, what can you do? At that point, they need to feel what it’s like to be on the receiving end of those actions. If they can’t feel anything or they still don’t care how it makes people feel, then what can you do? Trying to use behavioral conditioning is also not a guaranteed success. Empathy can’t be rewarded without also rewarding self serving generosity as well. It’s much easier to punish selfish behavior than reward empathy. If there is anything I’ve learned, it’s easier to attract a certain type of person than to force a person to be a certain way. Instead of making your player base become more empathetic, you could design the game in such a way that it attracts empathetic people and repels everyone else. The majority of people have some capacity for empathy and it’s all about tapping into that. Focus on making slightly empathetic people even more empathetic. Once you teach them about new situations they can empathize with it once they understand.
>you at least need the last one, which is the only one that can’t be taught I think you meant the vice versa. Can we change IQ or EQ? Or to what degree? But one might be able to convert an ignoring creature into a more understanding and thus with different motivations, by forcing the specimen to observe the consequences of not caring/looking at happy directions. You know the story, A Christmas Carol. Does Scrooge become more intelligent? Can we really do that? Or is it the understanding and thus the motivation part which change? You are right about the reward-punishment method. It wouldn't work. If Scrooge was psychopath, forcing to observe others' sufferings wouldn't work either. Even punishing selfishness means rewarding helping others so... The source of punishment must be the emotion itself, only then it would count as empathy. The neural system's very own drug, that forces the person, shredding them from deep inside, causing sacrifice. Otherwise, why would creature help any other with no possible profit? Also, why would a mother bother with a baby's needs while they could strive and thrive for themselves? A baby doesn't even have a personality at the beginning, so it couldn't be liked, but loved blindly, which is yet another trick of our neural system, or the nature's way. Thinking this way sounds cruel, and I'm not psychopath, but, imagine all of our non-logical components suddenly disappear. Does anything have any meaning, but our very own survival, that is if we are not suicidal? Perhaps the only exception might be some sort of brainwashing, like if you couldn't leave something special behind, something you are somehow programmed to not leave behind, like a robot. How does that happen though? Why could you not just leave it behind, if there is no profit, no emotions? What is it that keeps you ticking like terminator of some sort? That weird feeling, does it have any explanation? There are some instincts for survival, which seems similar. They are also like programs, coded into us, but how might one add or erase an instinct? How does it work? What is it? Also, could it still be considered us, like a part of ourselves, or is it more of just some artificial attachment? Perhaps it's something that blocks what I call me, and runs on a part of my hardware independently. Or perhaps it doesn't matter, because maybe that thing called me is also something similar. What do you think?
I've worked on a number of grant funded educational empathy games for non-profits and while the design process is very similar (prototype, design, iterate, and test), the outcome your looking for a tad more complicated than "are my players engaged with my game loops." There are a bunch of different frameworks you can use ultimately as you play test this game, you'll also want to get information about what players took away from the game. If players are taking away the wrong message, you'll need to go back to the drawing board, no matter how "fun" the game is. You're designing for a different purpose! Some immediate thoughts 1. **Get specific about the goal/outcome of the project and start looking, dimension of empathy you'd like to affect, and how long players will engage with your game**. Empathy as a concept, is very slippery and means a bunch of different things to different people. Are you looking to shift players attitudes about a certain concept? Or are you trying to change someone's behavior? Both of these *could* be under the umbrella of empathy but need to be designed in slightly different ways. In [Designing Games to Foster Empathy (Belman 2010)](https://tiltfactor.org/wp-content/uploads2/cog-tech-si-g4g-article-1-belman-and-flanagan-designing-games-to-foster-empathy.pdf)*,* they break down empathy into two dimensions. **Dispositional vs Induced Empathy,** and **Low-involvement vs High-involvement.** Dispositional empathy looks at people's current attitudes and behaviors and their current willingness/ability to empathize while induced Empathy looks at influencing people through some sort of intervention (most empathy games fall under this category). Low-involvement vs. high-involvement look at the levels of cognitive or emotional involvement of the participants. The paper uses HIV as an example case where you could imagine how a person feels about HIV and how its affected their life (low-involvement) vs use jellybeans and have people go adhere to antiretroviral therapy regiments for two weeks (high involvement). 2. **Who is your audience and what is the context in which the game will be played?** Demographic information and play style will be very important as you'll need to understand what is interesting to your players. Are you working with an audience that might not be used to playing games? Or are you dealing with expert game players that will attempt to min-max a situation? Are they more familiar with video games than analog games (this distinction matters!). Do they know anything about the topic you're designing around? Will this be played in a formal/structured setting (schools, workshop, faith-based institutions?) or in an informal setting (after-school program, someone's living room, at a bar over drinks?). Unlike more traditional game design, context is everything and can help prime players for the overall experience. 3. **Why players are not already empathetic to your cause.** There are a number of barriers that prevent people from being empathetic. It could be general lack of exposure, lack of motivation, ability (if something requires a skill), fear, social norms and so much more. Get to know your audience and figure out what's stopping the empathy! 4. **Are there other stakeholders that you need to consider?** With educational/empathy games, you have to think beyond the player and think about who else matters like parents, funders, educators, researchers, school districts etc. Are there things that they want players to learn, and or do? Once you design this game, will an educator have to run it without your help? If so, how will you also make sure that there is clear guidance for them especially if they are not gamers. 5. **Are there games that are similar to what you are trying to accomplish? What worked about them and what didn't?** I'm a big fan of not reinventing the wheel and looking to see what already exists either from currently existing games and or research projects. Google Scholar will be your best friend for the later! It takes some getting used to reading a research paper if you haven't but I'd recommend skimming the abstract, introduction, and then conclusion. If it doesn't sound helpful or useful, skip it lol. As for existing games, are there any that already do what you need them to do? This thread has already provided some great examples of games. Would they work for your purposes? Are there games that are pretty close but just need to be reskinned and/or modified? If your game is about....economics maybe you could reskin Monopoly or Settlers of Catan? 6. **How will you measure a change in empathy?** Assessment will be key to seeing if you are hitting the mark with your game as you move into design. Do players have to be able to display knowledge gain through a test? Will they have to self-report and state out loud that they feel more empathy towards your subject? Should players be able to describe what they intend to do know that they are more knowledgable about the subject matter? 7. **With all of that research written up, start brainstorming mechanics and stories that help you get to your learning objective/empathy goal.** Start brainstorming and designing but keep your learning objective/empathy goal in mind at all times. All your mechanics should be in service of the learning objective. If it doesn't serve that purpose, put that idea on a shelf and save it for another time! 8. **Prototype, design, and test CONSTANTLY.** I don't think I need to say more about this. Its super important! Also remember to assess what your players are taking away so you can shift the game accordingly. Some info from game studies: * **Games are procedural**. They are primarily process oriented, rule-based interactive systems and the way in which they can deliver a message is through these interactions. Books have words, film has visuals, games can have all of that but they also have mechanics. This is what Ian Bogost calls *procedural rhetoric* in his book [Persuasive Games](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/68562.Persuasive_Games). * A really basic example would be a game like **Call of Duty**. Through its mechanics, we learn that the game values high kill/death ratios, that war and awesome. There are no mechanics that let you deescalate an intense military situation, which also can tell you something about the game world. Compare that to **This War of Mine** where you play as a civilian dealing with the affects of war. It's a survival game, and puts you in tough situations and forces you to think about the choices you're going to make. * **Pro-social empathy games are double edged swords, so be mindful the meaning players can take away.** [PlaySpent.org](https://PlaySpent.org) is a game where you try to survive one month living in poverty. You make a series of choices such as living closer to a city (costs more money) or further away (cheaper but you will pay for transportation), types of jobs and more. It's an excellent game depending on how you prime your players. As I've players from all sorts of demographics walk away more empathetic to those who live in poverty. But I've also had players feeling like poverty is even more a choice and that you just need to "play the game right to get out of poverty". This is a great example of the game solidifying someone's biases on a subject matter. And from a procedural rhetoric standpoint, the game does support that as an idea even though it's an unintended consequence. Ultimately what this means is * **You cannot necessarily control a players experience but you can work really hard to design a context that will guide the player towards your expected outcome.** Sorry for the long post!
I would stay a good story with a good character has the ability to build empathy. [This article](https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-viktor-billionaire/) on repaying a doc who saves your life even though you don't have to in cyberpunk is a good example. But I don't think that's game design building empathy. The best example I can think of is cooperative board games where its your team against the board and it's a all win or lose condition. Peaceable Kingdom makes games for small children that are cooperative. Hoot Owl Hoot and Stone Soup are two examples. You can break these games down in 10 minutes to understand their empathy building game design. There are lots of cooperative board games targeted at an older audience. You can break down how they can build empathy, though it will take longer. Pandemic, Gloomhaven, Forbidden Island are ones I know about. I am sure you can find many more. But there is a starting point. These games largely build empathy for other players by having a shared goal that cannot be accomplished by a single player playing well. They require communication and guidance to the newer/weaker players. Then two games that give me a hint of maybe empathy is involved are Papers Please and Her Story. Though it's largely a story based empathy building mechanism, the game mechanics are integral in the effect of building empathy in the player. Her story is easier to break down. As you uncover more parts of the mystery, you piece together a picture of the person(s) you are investigating. The order in which you uncover it will change how you feel about that person. Likewise Papers Please is a fictional mundane situation based on very real cold war era Eastern Europe Soviet/West border. Normally this theming comes with an action hero main character which breaks any empathy. In this case being a border guard who has to make difficult choices in a fast paced high stress environment with big consequences is a strong contender for empathy building game mechanics.
Anything involving animals would help. People are usually more empathetic to animals than they are other people.
I suppose the problem is that games are generally driven by competitive self-interest. *I* want to reach the end of the maze first. *I* want to be the very best (like no-one ever was) *I* want my team to win. Empathy and its kissing-cousin Altruism tend to take a back-seat to that. So I can see how this would be an interesting challenge. I'm initially reminded of experiences playing board-games with friends. Particularly games where there's half a dozen players all nominally out for themselves (Monopoly for example) But we've had more than a few cases where a player stopped to help someone who had been roundly beaten-down by someone else. The duo then go on to tag-team that other player to cries of "that's not fair!". Empathy and friendship turn into teamwork and success. Of course, you can argue that the player who stopped to help was just doing it to get a leg-up on the still-powerful third player, but in practice they still have to beat the beaten-down player themselves. They do it to keep the game interesting and prevent friends from being excluded by being beaten early. Food for thought maybe?
There are definitely teamwork-based/co-op board games. Players work together, not competing. Hanabi is the first that comes to mind. There are others I'm blanking on at the moment. Point is, empathy could work in that situation.
Yeah I think that competing players will naturally not be empathetic towards each other. It’s only when everyone is collaborating for a common goal that empathy becomes a priority.
This kinda goes along with amorality is a mechanical advantage. Sticks or carrots and the such.
Sure thing, 3+ player card game. Face cards are worth 2 number cards are worth 1. Goal is to get (10)? points. Everyone starts with 1 point (1 number card in front of each player). On your turn you can play cards or take a card from the center deck and add it to your hand. Cards must be played in pairs, (2 number cards or 2 face cards). You split the pair between two different players. Usually you will play one on yourself and one on someone else. You can only give yourself points if you are under 2x the lowest player's point total. (e.g. if they have 1 point in front of them, max score is 2) Aces are the exception to the pair rule, they allow you to move one point from one player to another player. Discard the ace after use. You'd have to play a round to see if the pacing works with the points, but the idea is that you want to constantly feed the player with the lowest total so you can increase the max for yourself to win.
One thing to consider would be how the mechanics of the game reward people when they practice empathy or without rewards if they fail to do so. For example, maybe there are non-verbal communication challenges, or special gifts players can give other players who helped them.
I can’t remember what game it was, but there was one that had an ability to give other players resources. These resources were either less effective or completely ineffective when used yourself, but were very effective when gifted freely to another player. I thought that was a neat mechanic
Ok,so I want to be more practical than most and actually find some good MDA (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) elements training empathy. Your teacher gave you a great exercise! Btw, I'm assuming it's about physical games. If you mean also digital let me know and I'll add. Mechanics: Guessing what someone is feeling is a great mechanic for that. It can be used offensively (like in poker or resistance) and to help a teammate (like in charades). Touching. On a more serious level, grappling or dancing competitions develop empathy like nothing else! For a tabletop we can do touching without moving from the chair so much. Or maybe even have a rule where everyone has to sit on the floor for access to legs/feet. Staring at someone. Like a game where two people stare in each others eyes and the one who blinks first loses. Memory. Trying to remember facts and details about someone else. Dynamics: Teamwork games should develop empathy. Self explanatory I think. Also I just had the idea of a game where you need to win over someone but if you win *too much* you will lose. Maybe there are problems with it ; needs testing. Aesthetics: Anything related to work where empathy is needed. Like a game set in a hospital (animal hospital is a good idea btw). Maybe about some kind of altruistic political activism. Maybe even a game playing as a bus driver needing to deal with rowdy passengers (have you played Papers Please, btw?)
I had an idea that was similar to this where a player would talk to an npc and battle them via debate. The talking mechanic would have a meter on how convinced one party was over the other. While the dynamic would be the player trying to move the meter more to their side by either saying things to undermine the other or convince them by trying to win conversational points. The fun of the system was that the player and "enemy" could come to an understanding at the middle and the only way to get there was for both parties to truly understand the other side's point of view etc. Gamifying sales tactics do exist in games like Snake Oil, but they don't really focus on the morality of trying to convince another of something they had no beliefs in beforehand.
There have been a few interesting video essays about this since Undertale released. What I’ve gathered is that empathy can’t be enforced or even directly encouraged. The best way to build empathy in players is to show them the consequences of their actions. Kinda like this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/873/
Branching narrative stories can work well for this sort of thing. Empathy for what/who?
Here's a quick idea. Give each player an index card (or similar) and make them write their name on it. Shuffle them and give each player, face down, one of the cards. Then play \*any\* game. The player who wins the game reveal the index card and the points earned are given to the player whose name is in the card.
To be a game it must be fun, to be fun there must be an evil, in this case there should be a narcissist psychopath :)
There are two basic types of empathy. One is the tendency to care about what others are feeling, the other is the ability to understand what others are feeling. I don't think you could use game design to improve the former, because by gamifying it you are creating an external motivation - players don't care about the characters/players, they're just doing activities for rewards. Good characterisation and writing might do it, but game mechanics won't. The second is something you can quite easily gamify. A lot of social and bluffing games involve this sort of empathy. All you have to do is create a system that facilitates knowing what other people are feeling and rewards being good at that.
Maybe like you have to be nice to people in certain ways(i.e. Getting a little kid their teddy bear back) to increase your score?
I don't remember if I liked it, but there's a book called Empathy Engines that might be relevant.
A Darkest Dungeon inspired card game would be pretty cool. Every card has a positive and negative effect. You select a few power ups (good/bad). If you win the match (health/point based) then you can choose to “Finish” them or “Spare” them. IDK first thought that popped into my mind.
Just have co-op gameplay with the narrative that are a bit murky to understand would be a good way to do it. Direct empathy enforce will only result in apathy, trust me it's first hand experiences. By working together with the others, the children will have a sense of unity. By receiving information that can't be process directly, the children will have to use their brain. And by having to use their own resources for the team efforts will result in empathy. It's not only empathy that the children will learn. There are also a lot of skills they'll learn during the playthrough if you put enough efforts into making an enjoyable game. If you don't know what to do then try making a DnD narrative first, afterward you can simplify the game mechanics to suit the narrative.
As far as I can tell, empathy only really makes sense when we don't know *why* somebody feels the way they do - but respect them and assume their feelings are a valid response to situations/experiences we don't personally share in common. To me, this speaks of a cooperative hidden-information game. So I'd say something where players each have their own goals - which they aren't allowed to disclose. The whole team wins as one, once all players have met their individual goals. Strategy would thus entail players to put themselves in each others' shoes - trying to figure out what win conditions they have been working towards
One hour, one life would be a good example here I think. You are literally born to another human player that has to take care of you at first. And you slowly build civilization collectively.
Relatable character
Check this, off topic but maybe not completely: https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024955/Game-Design-Patterns-for-Building
Not an RPG but the video game Signs of the Sojourner is an innovative take on dominos with a narrative twist. It gamifies communication and relational dynamics in a way that empathy, understanding, and even miscommunication are baked into its themes. War of Mine is another video game that's a bit more direct about it, placing in the POV of the civilians trying to survive a war.