From Pixelated Pain to Player Connections: Empathetic Strategies From Two Japanese Videogames

This talk will ask how Japanese video games organize one's affective responses to social issues prevalent in Japanese society, including traumas. Professor Whaley will discuss virtual violence and nuclear memory in the stealth action game "Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain" (Konami, 2015)
and the role-playing game "The World Ends With You" (Square-Enix, 2007).

Taken together, these two Japanese games offer new strategies of empathetic play that complicate established debates about virtual violence and videogame addiction by encouraging players to see "humanity" in assemblages of pixels or bring shut-in players out into the "real" world.

Reception to follow.