Gabriel [Abstract]

Serious games – How do they try to make players think about immigration issues? An overview [Full text]

Sonja Gabriel [1]

Abstract: Immigration has become a popular topic for digital games, most of them wanting players to empathize with (illegal) immigrants. There are different game elements that can be used to embody empathy and having a look at different games one can see that they are sometimes more successfully applied, sometimes less. Apart from empathy these games often try to teach facts and information, but also (unintentionally) convey misconceptions and/or political messages. This article is going to look at various examples of digital games discussing and comparing these areas.

Keywords: Empathy, serious games, immigration, teaching via serious games, stereotypes, ideology


[1] KPH Vienna/Krems, Austria, sonja.gabriel@kphvie.ac.at