Exploring games to foster empathy

Sammanfattning: In this thesis I investigated empathy field in games and I explored how to create a game fostering empathy. In a first part I defined empathy, game and game mechanics and I analyzed four games fostering empathy through the prism of these definitions. I noticed these games used role-playing so then I focused my research on role-play games. In a second part I proposed an interactive story based on game mechanics fostering empathy. This interactive story is a mix of LARP and escape room. The player embodies a role and follows a goal. This game tries to foster empathy for the main character, a young woman who just found out that her mother had passed away. Through the iterations of testing I could improve the game and highlight some issues. Empathy is difficult to evaluate and puzzle solving prevents the player from being empathic. This thesis intends to contribute to the research areas in different ways. It outlines game mechanics fostering empathy and it suggests a new kind of game, the interactive story using these game mechanics.