Digital Empathic Games and Their Relation with Mortality: Analysis of Discussion Forums

摘要

Digital empathy games have attracted the attention of players since they present topics associated with human frailty, such as death and mortality. Thus this type of game invites users to engage in reflection and they identify with scenes and images of the narrated world. This study presents an analysis of the perception of users of this type of game, in order to identify relevant aspects of its design and evaluation. The object studied by this article is the empathy game Valiant Hearts: The Great War, and user reviews were collected and analyzed through comments found in internet forums. These discussion boards contain user opinions ranging from technical issues and quality to matters related to mortality and death. The research is based on netnography, by means of qualitative and quantitative manual analysis of user comments. In general, the study presented multiple aspects involved in this type of game and generated considerable reflection and future studies.