Playing At Empathy: Representing And Experiencing Emotional Growth Through Twine Games

Keywords

depression; empathy; games; interactive fiction; mental health; suicide; Twine

Abstract

While many games use physical health as a metric and ask the player to become invested in 'health' as a resource, emotional health and experiences of trauma, depression, stress, and anxiety are less frequently explored. Yet games represent a powerful space for exploring emotional conditions and allowing players to experiment with choices in the face of difficult circumstances. The Twine platform, a free open-source tool for making primarily text-based games, offers a compelling system for representations of this kind. Close play of games made with this system demonstrates that what is essential for emotional representation is not player agency: instead, it is the lack of choice that is most strongly resonant.

Publication Date

10-7-2016

Publication Title

2016 IEEE International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health, SeGAH 2016

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/SeGAH.2016.7586272

Socpus ID

84994691831 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/84994691831

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