Playing with Trauma: Interreactivity, Empathy, and Complicity in The Walking Dead Video Game. (May 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Smethurst, Toby; Craps, Stef
• Is Part Of: Games and culture. Volume 10:Number 3(2015)
• Page Start: 269
• Page End: 290
• Publication Date: 2015-05
• Subjects: trauma studies -- empathy -- complicity -- interactivity -- the walking dead; Games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Video games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Computer games -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; Interactive multimedia -- Social aspects -- Periodicals; 303.4834
• DOI: 10.1177/1555412014559306
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1555-4120

Abstract

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.