What do games do for us—and what do we owe them for that? It's an odd question, but it seems to come up, in one form or another, whenever a gaming controversy hits the news. Gaming is no longer a young medium, but it's still somewhat opaque from the outside, which makes games an easy target for crusades from those wont to crusade: most recently, with local-news insistences that Fortnite is rotting your children's brains.
It's not. (Probably.) But every question about gaming's value is met, within the world of videogaming, with a chorus insisting that games are good for you, games are your friend, and—perhaps most concretely—games actually make you more empathetic. It's this assumption that buoys the Games for Change Festival, the 15th edition of which begins today in New York, as well as a dozen other games advocacy groups. It has become a talking point in all levels of the industry, and with empathy as the TED Talk-anointed foundation of game-adjacent VR "experiences," it informs one of that technology's busiest content categories.
Games, the thinking goes, can make you a better person. But can they? Do they?
