The Potential for Empathy Learning through Video Games

Abstract

This thesis has looked at the potential for empathy-learning and exploration of ethical issues through the use of narrative video games in education. Video games is a relatively modern medium that is unique in the sense of the level of interaction, player-agency and engagement it has the potential to produce. Video games can be used as story-telling devices within education, along the lines of traditional narrative text, while also allowing players to craft their own player-generated narratives. To explore the potential for empathy learning and exploration of ethical issues, the thesis presents an analysis of a narrative apocalyptic video game in the survival genre, Frostpunk (11 bit games, 2018). The video game’s framing of ethical issues and its potential for empathy learning is examined in relation to the notion of persuasive games, curricular texts, and genres. Based on the previous analyses, this thesis includes suggestions of how to engage Frostpunk, and by implication of other similar games, in both the English subject and to teach interdisciplinary subjects such as Democracy and citizenship, and Sustainable development. The study concludes that there is potential to use commercial video games as a platform for empathy-learning, while acknowledging that there are practical and pedagogical concerns and challenges with respect to implementing them in an educational setting.