A movie or a book can be influential on how we think, but we consume these through the fixed lens of the protagonist, we don’t make decisions for the character, and we don’t directly experience the impact of those decisions as victory or defeat that we have influence over. What if we could use video games in a way to increase empathy, to educate through interactive experience about issues such as racism, anti-semitism, or even the holocaust?
That’s what our first guest on the “Those Who Do Podcast”, Luc Bernard, and his studio Voices of the Forgotten set out to do with his game, The Light In the Darkness.
The Light in the Darkness is an upcoming narrative-driven adventure game for Xbox and PC that aims to educate players about the Holocaust. It follows a fictional family during the 1942 Vel d’Hiv Roundup in Paris on July 16th and 17th, in which Jewish families were arrested by French police under German authoritarian pressure. According to records of the Préfecture de Police, 13,152 Jews were arrested, including more than 4,000 children.
“Luc and I connected on Twitter, and I was immediately struck by his unique perspective on issues surrounding the Holocaust. Considering my family's deep connection to that horrific period, his words deeply resonated with me. Having dedicated over a decade to working on extremism in various countries and communities, Luc's idea of using video games to combat hate just clicked with me. It was more than a mere connection; it was an instant realization. Imagine putting players in the shoes of marginalized, detained, or persecuted characters based on their ethnicity. Let them experience firsthand the challenges faced by those who are targeted by authority for being different. In video games, players have objectives and seek rewards. Denying them those rewards because of their identity in a game can create a powerful empathetic experience. That's precisely what Luc's game, The Light In the Darkness, aims to achieve.”
Around the world hate crimes have been on the rise, in 2021-2022, the UK reported a 26% rise in hate crime with over 100,000 incidents; almost tripled since 2015. The US saw a similar rise of 11.6% from 8,120 in 2020 to 9,065 in 2021 according to the FBI. The US figures for the same period are startling lower than the UK and may have to do with whether or how such crimes are reported in the US.
When talking about the proliferation of violence, there are often questions about what has caused this change in society - are video games a contributing factor?
Although the alleged link has been largely disproven, there is an inclination to talk about gun violence, in search of an explanation, and in the US there have been 200 mass shootings by May 2023, where four or more people died. If video games aren’t causing violence, can they make us more empathetic toward each other?
Videogames are a means of entertainment but they are also a form of storytelling that places the player in the perspective of the character that they control. Narrative-driven video games such as the “Last of Us” sold 37 million copies around the world. Many of the top-selling games aren’t shooters, Tetris is the all-time best-selling game with 520 million copies, followed by Minecraft at just under 270 million copies worldwide.
Videogames, Violence, and Radicalization?
Violent video games have been at the forefront of the debate around increases in tragic events such as mass shootings in the United States, but despite more than 20 years of research, no causal connection has been proven between playing violent video games and committing acts of violence.
Videogames as a reactionary response have received backlash for the promotion of violence in society since they first came into arcades and our homes in the 1970s. The first successful video game, Pong was published by Atari in 1972, and just a few short years later in 1976, Death Race was launched; a simple black and white video game, a primitive Grand Theft Auto of sorts where the player drives a basic sprite car and run down gremlins from a top-view. The game sparked controversy, being covered on 60 Minutes and Associated Press published a widely disseminated piece that referenced the game’s violence and potential to impact players.
Studies and debates around video games became larger in the 1990s with congressional hearings, and the infamous Columbine High School massacre in 1999 that further fueled the perception that violent video games were responsible for such incidents.
The link between video games and an increase in violence doesn’t seem to be there. A longitudinal study into the connection between video game violence and human aggression found that any impact was “too small to be practically meaningful,” according to an analysis published in Royal Society Open Science in 2020. The study led by Aaron Drummond from New Zealand’s Massey University re-examined 28 studies from previous years that looked at the link between aggressive behaviour and video gaming, a method known as a meta-analysis, concluded “… current research is unable to support the hypothesis that violent video games have a meaningful long-term predictive impact on youth aggression,” the report said.
Ironically, there is more likely to be a link between the News Media, that fueled the concept that videogames proliferate violence and social media where ‘anger-baiting’ gets more attention, and leads to greater social division, and thereby ease of willingness to carry out an act of hate. A Yale study found that ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ teach people to express more outrage online.
Whereas video games on the contrary, collaborative research has shown that video games can help improve our well-being and offer a sense of satisfaction. Is it possible that video games that have been maligned for causing violence, can in fact play a role in expanding empathy?
Videogames, A Means to Foster Empathy & Connection?
In a study conducted by Niklas Johannes, Matti Vuorre, and Andrew K. Przybylski at Oxford University titled "Video Game Play Is Positively Correlated With Well-Being", the researchers collaborated with Electronic Arts and Nintendo of America to gather data on players' actual gameplay behavior. They surveyed players of Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville and Animal Crossing: New Horizons to assess their well-being, motivations, and satisfaction levels during gameplay. Contrary to concerns that excessive playtime could lead to addiction and poor mental health, the study revealed a small positive relationship between gameplay and affective well-being.
The Holocaust: Never Again
"Never Again" is a phrase associated Holocaust and other genocides, but “Never Again” requires humanity to “Never Forget”, the brutality and massive human cost of the industrialised scale of murder carried out by the Nazi regime.
Sadly, holocaust awareness has become startling low. Approximately two-thirds of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust. In a Pew Research survey (2020), only 45% know that approximately 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Nearly three-in-ten Americans say they are not certain how many Jews died during the Holocaust.
If we’re going to ensure that the horrors of the holocaust aren’t to be repeated in the future, we need better and more impactful means to educate the public.
The Light In the Darkness
The Light In the Darkness is both a game and interactive story-telling, there are no choices that the player can make to save Samuel, and his parents, Bluma and Moses. That’s not how this story ends. The game starts on May 01st, 1941, just over a year before the Vel d’Hiv Roundup in 1942, intersperses the narrative with real documents from the period, and requires the characters to wear the “yellow Jewish badge”.
Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels was the first to suggest a "general distinguishing mark" for German Jews in a memorandum in May 1938. The badge was a significant piece in the Nazi campaign against the Jewish, in France all Jews over the age of 6 years were required to wear it. The badge was used for segregation, control, and deportation to concentration camps.
The story itself is gripping, Samuel’s Father does his best to reassure the young boy that he will protect him and to help him make sense of the cruelty they endure, all while they move toward their tragic and inevitable fates in boarding a train to a concentration camp.
Watch 15 minutes of gameplay from The Light In The Darkness here. The Light In the Darkness is available for free from Epic Games on PC and Xbox.
Digital Holocaust Museum
The Light in the Darkness brings players closer to the victims of the Holocaust through empathy with the characters, the Digital Holocaust Museum in Fortnite is an effort to engage young people from different backgrounds with stories that, says Bernard, allow them to “see themselves in history”.