Negative empathy in videogames: to play or not to play?

Abstract

Stories can take several shapes, depending on the artistic medium they are told in, thus eliciting different responses and unique sensations: listening to Don Giovanni and his unfavourable fate in Mozart’s musical endeavour is not quite the same as reading Don Juan Tenorio. Both works manage to shake strings of our sensibility in manners that are exclusive to those specific forms of expression. Speaking of exclusivity, there is indeed a comparatively recent medium that found its path to rise above all the other arts precisely for the unprecedented way it moves and entertains people: videogames. Their uniqueness, in fact, lies in interactivity, which is their defining feature: not only do we get to experience how a story unfolds, with all its twists and turning points, but we are also, and especially, able to live it, as we are essential components of that narrative world that has been set up for us to get lost in. And this is where empathy plays a crucial role. The emotional connection we may feel to the main character(s) of a videogame is sensibly emphasized by the fact that we do not sit back and watch them act before our eyes, but we instead play in their shoes, meaning we act as them and, even for a limited time, we are them. Empathy, in this sense, allows us to tune in with the inner side of a person that we, as players, are called to embody, establishing thus a sort of “pact of complicity”, not only in terms of what they feel but also, especially, in terms of what they do. What if these characters were bad, though? What if they behave in manners that clash with our ethics and morals? How would we react? Would we still want to keep playing? These are exactly the kind of quandaries embedded in the concept of “negative empathy”, which will be scrutinized through a thorough analysis primarily devoted to exploring this aesthetic experience in close relation to videogames and the way they affect us on an exquisitely intimate level. Incidentally, this dissertation also aims at providing a much broader understanding of the gaming medium, with the intent of contributing to ennobling this artistic form of entertainment so as to acknowledge it as equal to literature, cinema or television, which are the three pivotal media it draws inspiration from.