When watching a series or a movie, hardly ever we keep on watching if we don’t empathize with the main character. Often, we end up falling in love with the characters, rooting for their success and cringing every time they fail. In the last 10 years, audiences have experienced a big change in television. Main characters that before were likable and stereotyped have gained more depth and multiple dimensions. We no longer have the “good guy” and the “bad guy”, but human beings that we can identify with no matter how flawed they are. Narratives have made us able to empathize with killers, drug addicts, billionaires, homeless people, people that are completely different from who we are, people who live lives that we would never dream of living, or even people that are just as ordinary as us or our next-door neighbors.
But how is that possible? Besides a very well-crafted plot structure, all stories tend to show us the core of their characters. Before presenting us with the unlikeable parts of a character, narratives make us experience their deepest fears, their motivations, the reasons behind their actions, and their sorrows. How would you like “Finding Nemo” if we hadn’t seen that scene in the beginning where the mother dies? Would the main character Marlin be as likable as he is if we didn’t understand the suffering that motivated his behavior towards his son? Would we root for Walter White if we didn’t him being humiliated and put down?
Another thing that narratives do very successfully is to put characters in situations where they need to make a decision. When seeing characters that they know and love face hard decisions, audiences can’t help but put themselves into that character’s shoes and think “what would I do in that situation?”
If the story fails to provide enough information to have the audience empathize for the character, the audience stops watching. Although very powerful, TV series and films have one limitation. They are a one-way communication piece and audiences do not get to interact with the content. They are mere spectators.
Games come in as a great way to integrate the power of narratives and audience’s agency. When playing a game, the player is the character. They get to learn about that character’s backstory and literally walk in their shoes. If a player makes a decision, this decision impacts the life of the character they are playing as much as the lives of other characters in the game and the entire game world.
Games allow players to make decisions and face the immediate consequences of their actions, taking empathy to the next level. For that reason, games are a powerful tool to bring more empathy and awareness to players. According to James Gee, games make it possible for players to live other people’s stories and add new perspectives to their lives, even if what they live in the game is something they would never experience in real life.
Reference:
Gee, J. P. (2011). Stories, probes, and games. Narrative Inquiry, 21(2), 353–357. https://doi-org.libproxy.csun.edu/10.1075/ni.21.2.14gee