Podcast 49: Empathy in Video Games

Empathy –the ability to understand and share the emotions of others– is a powerful tool for those wanting to create games where the goal is to get players to think differently and have powerful emotional experiences. It can be used to great effect and probably plays a big part in more games than you realize.

But leveraging empathy in games has its own risks and pitfalls. Designers who do so need to be aware of these so that they can successfully create the outcomes they want and so that players aren’t abused or exposed to undue distress.

Fortunately, my guest expert on this episode, Kelli Dunlap PsyD, is here to help us explore and understand this psychological concept.

This week’s guest expert, Dr. Kelli Dunlap (left)

Music credits:

  • Robot Motivation” by The Polish Ambassador, licensed under Creative Commons: CC BY-NC-SA 3.
  • “Over Under” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.