Tag: empathy

What Time is It? Journey Time

by  on  in Thirteen

“The road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.” -Don Williams, Jr. (1)

Ok friends, gather ’round. The time has come for us to talk about one of my personal fave and most inspirational games: Journey.

Ever since our early class discussions on Bogost’s numerous topics, Journey has naturally drifted back into my mind once more. Just a fair warning in advance: my love for this game is borderline unhealthy. I’ve lost track of how many times I have tried forcing encouraging people to play this gem; if I could, I would buy each person a PS3 just so they could play this game (but alas I am a poor college student).… Read the rest

A metaphorical experience: gaming and empathy

by  on  in Thirteen

While playing through Limbo I was reminded of another game that had a similarly minimalist aesthetic and controls, a little gem called Elude (be patent—it takes a while to load) that was created by the Singapore-MIT Gambit Game Lab in 2010. The goal of the game was to metaphorically simulate what it feels like to have depression, and despite that rather lofty premise, I have to say that it mirrors my own struggles with the disorder surprisingly well. The website describes the game as follows:

By tapping into the experiential aspects of the video game medium, Elude’s metaphorical model for depression serves to bring awareness to the realities of depression by creating empathy with those who live with depression every day… Elude aims to raise awareness for depression and to inform about this dangerous illness.
… Read the rest