Spatial Empathy in Refugee Video Games

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between space and emotion in refugee narratives, focusing specifically on refugee-centered video games. I use a framework of affective geography to ask how and why emotions are spatialized in games about the refugee experience. I analyze three games—Cloud Chasers (2018), an adventure game with roleplaying elements that uses science fiction to examine the movement of climate refugees; Resilience (2020), which also uses science fiction tropes to explore resource management in the space of the refugee camp; and Path Out (2017), an “autobiographical narrative adventure” that employs shifts in chronology to represent space and memory in displacement. I contend that such games foreground the relationship between emotions and space to elicit unique forms of politically engaged empathy for both non-refugee players and for refugee players seeking to engage with their own experiences and/or with the experiences of other refugees. This spatial empathy uses players’ experiences of game-space to highlight the conditions needed for empathy, rather than guaranteeing its production.