Adolescents cannot be diagnosed as psychopaths, and ten quick minutes in the chat room of any multiplayer game will tell you why–all children are psychopaths. That is, all children are either psychopaths or sociopaths until they learn empathy. Empathy, defined as “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another” person by Merriam-Webster, is learned through life experiences. It can develop rapidly or at a very early age for some people, or over time, but still before the age of 18 for others. A select few never develop empathy at all, becoming the psychopaths or sociopaths of the world (which is completely okay and a genuine medical condition). Although I can’t pinpoint exactly when I developed empathy, I believe that a big part of my ability to put myself in the shoes of others comes from watching others play video games in sixth grade.
After a bad friend group break-up at the tail end of my first year of middle school coupled with an announcement that my father was moving to another state for work, I turned to the internet for a bit of company. At the time, Let’s Plays were the big trend on YouTube. At the risk of exposing myself as a huge nerd in middle school, I’m going to let you guys delve into the psyche of 11-year-old me through my then most-watched YouTube creators. Dan and Phil would have been the top two, followed swiftly by PewDiePie, JackSepticEye, and Markiplier. Somehow I missed the Zoella train, but not to worry, Jenna Marbles was always a staple. I first got into Let’s Plays by watching Dan and Phil’s gaming series where they played the Sims. The videos were entertaining since I remembered playing a free, mobile version of the same game on my phone back in the good old days (elementary school). From there, the recommended bar pushed me into the world of the big three gaming YouTubers I mentioned earlier, but more specifically, it pushed me into the world of Until Dawn.
If you don’t know, or weren’t a victim of the YouTube algorithm in 2016, Until Dawn is a cinematic, modern, choose-your-own-adventure style horror game in which the Butterfly Effect plays an integral role in what ending a player gets. At its core, the goal of the game is to keep 8 college-aged people alive through the night in the snowy mountains surrounding their friend’s cabin. However, throughout the game there exist totems, physical parts of a totem pole that allow the player to see choices they may be presented with in the future in hopes that the snippet of information the totem gives them will be able to help the player make the right choice down the line. There are certain choices in the game that cannot be made if a totem revealing the proper choice isn’t found earlier in the game. Additionally, Until Dawn makes its connection to the Butterfly Effect very direct by announcing that a “Butterfly Effect” has been discovered when a player views a totem. All of the butterfly effects are also tracked in a virtual notebook so the player can see when they have had an effect on their personal gameplay. I’ve attached a picture of a totem, as well as the butterfly effect journal, below.
Watching others, most likely Jacksepticeye and Markiplier, play until Dawn in its entirety forced me to sit idly by while they made decisions that were the opposite of the ones I would have made. However, even though they were doing something that I didn’t want them to do, I still had fun watching. It also seemed like they had fun playing. Heck, sometimes they even stumbled into better outcomes by making those different decisions. Through this process of watching, but not having control, I learned that sometimes others lived experience led them to make decisions that would be better in the long run. I found that while watching them play the game, if they made a decision that I wouldn’t have made, and it led to a good outcome, I would switch what my decision was going to be to match theirs. If they made a decision that led to something horrible, and I would have made another, it still didn’t change how the course of their game went because the video of their gameplay had already been shot and recorded. These experiences, combined, taught me patience with others decisions and how to deal with my own emotions when the consequences of their decisions impacted my own experience. Watching them play the game taught me empathy, as well as respect for others independent decision-making.
Not only did watching others play the game teach me about empathy, but Until Dawn itself taught me how to put myself into others’ shoes. If it were only watching others play a game that taught me empathy, I would have learned the complex topic much earlier, while watching my sister play Nintendogs on our shared pink DS. Maybe I learned a little empathy during those sessions (for the poor dogs that had to deal with her agility training), but I certainly didn’t learn as much as I did while watching people play Until Dawn. Due to the structure of the game, the player is forced to play as all of the characters in the game at least once (with the exception of the non-human characters or any characters whose trustworthiness is meant to be unclear to the main group of 8). This procedure of having the player physically be in every character’s shoes forces the player to, at least for a little bit, make decisions from that character’s perspective. This means taking into account how their decisions when playing as that character will affect the other characters, knowing that they will have to play as the other characters later. As a programmer now, looking back, I have no idea how the game creators thought of these mechanics and didn’t immediately say “no way, that is going to be absolute insanity to code,” but I’m so glad they didn’t. In fact, they doubled down. The programmers said, “actually, we’re not going to make the players guess how their actions as a specific character affect that character’s relationship with the others, we’re going to directly tell them.” Which was a revelation to 11-year-old me who had absolutely no clue, or didn’t care to have a clue about, how my actions affected those around me. I’ve included a picture of that feature of the game below as well. You’ll notice that the character’s relationship with every other character is measured, as well as the strength of their own character traits. Of course, every decision the player makes affects that character’s traits as well as that character’s interpersonal relationships–because programming the game wasn’t already hard enough.
I’m not saying Until Dawn singlehandedly prevented me from becoming a sociopath, but I can confidently say that it sped up the process of my own learning about empathy. The cut-and-dry way of seeing how actions have consequences not only for oneself but for others in a very direct way that forces the player to have empathy for every character they play as was very easy for 11-year-old me to pick up on. If it could happen in the game, then certainly it also happened in real life, which meant that I needed to stop acting like my own actions didn’t have consequences. Overall, I’m glad a game like Until Dawn came out when it did, and although I would never want to program something as complex as it on my own, I hope that someday something I program can have the same impact on its users. I hear from the grapevine that a movie for Until Dawn is in the works, and I can’t wait to see how these elements translate to that form of media.
With love–Lizzie.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html ; https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-couch/201810/can-empathy-be-taught; https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy ; https://www.playstation.com/en-us/games/until-dawn/
New Media: Storytelling in Literature, Films, and Games 
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