Taking up space in the vast world of video games
by Erica Buehler
Illustration by Daniel Castineiras. Our nonprofit generates funding in multiple ways, including through affiliate linking. When you purchase something through an affiliate link on this site, the price will be the same for you as always, but we may receive a small percentage of the cost.
Video games have come a long way from the simplicity of Pong and Pac-Man. Design, technology, and storytelling have achieved a mind-bending degree of innovation, and many of today’s video games seek to tackle more than just strategic button-pressing; they attempt to illustrate, dissect, and make sense of real, raw, and complex emotions. These games elicit critical thinking and emotional awareness, prompting players to tap into innate human drivers through verbal and nonverbal messaging.
There’s an element to video games as a medium that books and movies don’t possess — a level of immersion that places players in a scenario, whether an epic battle or a vulnerable conversation. This is the result of combining “expressive modalities” such as design and music (as outlined in Neimeyer and Thompson’s Expressive Art volume) with the empathetic responsibility as a player of a character, especially when that character has predetermined characteristics and backstory.
However, enough removal from said scenario reassures us that the stakes are still relatively low. That is, we don’t have to deal with the tough stuff in ways that affect our real lives. But as far as navigating emotionally taxing or uncomfortable situations, players can experiment with what the real-life versions could look like, which can be transformative for healing.
Daniel Castineiras
Starting with connection
Modern video games owe much of their success to the trailblazing done to make space for connection. From subsets formed through the shared goals of massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) and communities birthed from independent games with cult followings to players simply connecting with the games themselves and developing emotional attachments to expertly tailored writing, cultivating connection is a good thing, and games can be a catalyst for it.
“Humans are a social species,” says Erin-Clare Fitzpatrick, adjunct professor at Saint Mary’s College of California, who teaches about literary merit in video games. “Because we desire to connect through shared experience, we naturally align ourselves with telling stories. The way that narrative has evolved in games fits the mold. [They’re] just another medium that allows us to convey stories… in an accessible way.”
It’s that accessibility that’s key for using video games as healing tools. Encouraging players to explore emotions at their own pace relieves the pressure to engage fully and provides a healthier alternative to, say, spiritual bypassing. Elena Davis, LCSW, a trauma therapist specializing in grief with more than 25 years of experience in the mental health field, thinks exploring the tough stuff through video games is innovative. “It’s [a question] of, ‘How do you feel the feelings but not get lost in them?’” she says. “This idea of using a modality that’s approachable and in which you’re actively involved translates on a symbolic level to feeling more empowered around navigating things. It’s a gentler, user-friendly way to engage with content so it doesn’t feel as intense.”
Key art from Spiritfarer, a gentle game that focuses entirely on the journey to the afterlife.
Designing emotional space
For designers and developers, the process can begin with a narrative, mechanics and gameplay, or an experiential journey. However, games like Spiritfarer and Gris (among many others) don’t adhere to the same acquisition and conquering concepts that other games do; instead, they task the player primarily with thought and reflection.
Spiritfarer focuses entirely on grief — specifically, the journey from life into the afterlife. Nick Guerin, creative director at Thunderlotus and lead designer and writer for Spiritfarer, said the aim was to provide an interactive experience for players and to paint an honest portrait of what death feels like — not to convey a specific message. “I don’t think we think about dying enough,” he laughs. “We can never really get used to it. It will always be terrifying, so to alleviate the fear a tiny bit is all I hope people will get out of playing.”
This hope is the backbone for all the stylistic choices of Spiritfarer, a cozy, Ghibli-esque management game played as a “ferrymaster to the deceased” who, in life, was an end-of-life caregiver. Guerin says pivotal choices in the design process included being as non-violent as possible, using intense color, animation, and sound contrast, featuring characters based on real people who had passed, and empirical research at end-of-life facilities. “We had to make sure the characters we portrayed were people to whom [players] could actually relate. The game essentially worked because it approached death from a positive angle and it became a journey.”
Spiritfarer is a cozy, Ghibli-esque management game played as a “ferrymaster to the deceased”
Gris, a completely wordless game, is another one whose cornerstone is loss. Players move through challenging environments that rely heavily on the presence or absence of color(s) thought to represent the various stages of grief. For games like this, every detail is intentional and always returns to the desired user experience.
Stacey Mason, Ph.D., founder and narrative director of Storymason Media, says game designers who attempt to tackle heavy emotions well spend considerable effort on visuals, music, systems, and mechanics to create a unified emotional experience for players. “They understand how those feelings fit into the overall narrative and creative experience of their game, and they don’t shy away from engaging with them in a real way.”
In Gris, color reemerges into a colorless landscape as the player progresses.
And even beyond the anticipated player experience is the feeling of representation when content resonates. “I think a lot of what people need is the validation and normalization of what they’re going through,” Davis points out. “In some ways, there’s companionship in terms of not being alone with [the emotion]. It’s also art; words can be so inaccurate and don’t actually embody a feeling, and that’s where art, music, and video games can capture things that there are no words for, and that’s validating for people.”
A world to explore
The undeniable truth about video games is that they simultaneously serve multiple purposes; their beauty lies in how players engage with that purpose. If someone wants to connect emotionally with content, find comfort in an online community, or simply borrow time in a different, sensory-pleasing reality, video games provide an outlet for that which feels too heavy to carry. “I will always advocate for games being some kind of transformative experience and making you think,” says Guerin. “That’s the power of games as an art form and what they can do in only a way that they can do it.”