Playing with Trauma
Interreactivity, Empathy, and Complicity inThe Walking DeadVideo Game
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2409547 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Toby Smethurst (Ghent University, corresponding author), Stef Crap (0000-0002-6720-1689, Ghent University) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 269-290 |
| Publication date | 2015-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Games and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1555-4120 • E-ISSN: 1555-4139 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1555412014559306 |
| OpenAlex | W2130244129 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 17 |
| References cited | 8 |
Just as books and films about traumatic events have become part of Western popular culture, so the theme of trauma and its accompanying tropes have been seeping into video games over the last two decades. In spite of the discernible trauma trend within video games, however, and the potential they exhibit for representing trauma in new ways, they have received very little critical notice from trauma theorists. In this article, we argue that a trauma-theoretical study of games has much to offer our understanding of the ways that trauma can be represented, in addition to giving game studies scholars further insight into how games manage to elicit such strong emotions and difficult ethical quandaries in players. We demonstrate this by performing a close reading of one recent and much-discussed game, The Walking Dead: Season One, analyzing how it incorporates psychological trauma in terms of inter(re)activity, empathy, and complicity
Aesthetics · Art · Complicity · Empathy · Game studies · Media studies · Multimedia · Notice · Political science · Popular culture · Psychological trauma · Psychotherapist · Reading (process · Sociology · Theme (computing · Video game · Computer Science · Digital Games and Media · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Law · Media Influence and Health · Psychology · Social Psychology
Queer trauma, everyday experience and surveillance in This Bed We Made
Moral complexity in multiperspective video games
Near-Death Experience in Video Games or How Looking Death in the Eyes Can Be a Sales Concept
There is no cure
We Are the Champions? Performing whiteness in Ascension
Can video games change attitudes towards history? Results from a laboratory experiment measuring short‐ and long‐term effects
Is video games' effect on attitudes universal? Results from an empirical study comparing video games' impact on the attitude change of players with different backgrounds
‘The Changes that Face Us’
When Critique Meets Reality
A Foreshortened Future and the Trauma of a Dying Earth in Christopher Nolan’s Tenet
The undying ideologies of race and gender
Pay for your choices”
From Saviour to Colonial Perpetrator
Is This Trauma Yours or Mine? Empathy Gaps and Single-Player Videogame Experiences
Nihilism, Violence, and Popular Culture
An Integrative Review of Empathy, Attitude Change, and Historical Consciousness in Games
Sustaining intangible heritage through video game storytelling - the case of the Sami Game Jam
| Unique citing works | 17 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,13 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2026 (9) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 17 |