Game Design for empathy

 Just read an article that's a postmortem on Journey. Really interesting, talking about game and level design to promote more empathetic behavior.

Most games simulate competition, and are power fantasies. Give players guns and limited resources and they'll be thinking "who can I dominate, I'm going to be strongest". Journey has no possessions, so no resources to compete over, and no arms on characters so no agency to push others for the sake of being rude.

In Journey, they designed environments to make the player feel small and a sense of awe. They believed this vulnerability made the players more empathetic to others, and more aware of how you are stronger with a partner.

They also talked about having no way to communicate with another player, that people projected missing loved ones onto their partner, helping them to grieve. 

The really interesting question was implied: "What would a game where you were given a med kit instead of a gun be like".   Like Hacksaw Ridge as a game. Or some kind of RTS where you are building robots to rescue people from an earthquake.

Toby Olié - Puppet God

Found this cool guy Toby Olie doing awesome stuff

WorldBuilding

Found this tumblr with this great advice, pasting it here because how long will tumblr survive? (or blogs :P  )

 

 

Hey btw, if you’re doing worldbuilding on something, and you’re scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it’ll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don’t want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:

Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:

Plot hole 1: If the vampires can’t stand daylight, why couldn’t they just move around underground?

Solution 1: They can’t go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.

Well, that’s a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.

Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there’s no vampires?

Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.

It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it’s just turtles all the way down. And if you’re lucky, you might even find that the second question’s answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:

Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what’s their point and purpose?

Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don’t try to move around via the sewer system.

When you’re just making things up, you don’t need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won’t bother to dig around for a 3rd question.