Empathy Degradation describes the loss of emotional investment in bespoke worlds and characters as a result of the available authored content versus total playtime.
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There's a few distinct aspects of game writing that don't appear in any other form of traditional linear writing, one of which I want to talk about that I've very pretentiously taken to calling "Empathy Degradation"
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As part of the contract between player and storyteller, players come to our games with a willingness and desire to invest in our characters, but as playtime continues, the chances increase that they'll encounter repeated dialogue or moments where no new conversation is available.
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Each of these moments chips away at the game’s illusion of life, making it more likely that the player will cease to engage with NPCs as empathetic “people”, and instead see them as game objects to be manipulated.
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In game writing, the writer has the burden of maintaining the illusion of life for the player over the course of the game, which is more difficult than it sounds, because the forces of entropy are against us.
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Eg. You have a blacksmith whose greeting VO is "What can I do you for today?" The first time the player hears this, the blacksmith feels like a real, autonomous human. The 3rd time they hear "What can I do for you today?" it's a bit old. Maybe theyve memorized the cadence already
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The 10th time the player hears "What can I do you for today?", the blacksmith is no longer a person, but a "shell", an interaction point. The illusion of life is broken and the player's ability to view your blacksmith as a real person is significantly diminished if not gone
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Aka, empathy is lost. I'm sure you've all reached a point in a game before where NPCs no longer feel like people, and you get that surreal feeling of an "empty" world
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It's impossible to eliminate Empathy Degradation from games completely; even using procgen techniques, creating a game with infinite, unrepeatable material to prevent the breakdown of the illusion of life is not possible.
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The rate of Empathy Degradation, however, can be controlled by numerous design techniques such as bottlenecking narrative content delivery, intentionally designing narrative and gameplay so that they are consumed at similar rates,
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or simply making characters unavailable for interaction when no original content is available. Eg. If a side mission with a minor character is complete, maybe the character simply goes home as opposed to staying glued to one spot and barking "Thanks again!" if the player walks by
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On the flipside, bringing back a character later in the game to say "Hey! Fancy seeing you here... thanks again for your help." - this is a great way to enhance emotional investment! It makes them feel like they have real lives outside the player, and everyone likes a callback
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In the end it's impossible to hide every seam. Authored content is finite and players are diligent, so repeats are inevitable. The focus then as a game writer is to a) find clever ways to delay the break in the illusion of life as long as possible and
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b) do the best possible job to ensure parity between the amount of written content and the amount of game content
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The goal in this design process is to produce and deliver narrative in such a way that the curtain cannot be pulled back until mechanical gameplay has also reached its “end”. (Even better if gameplay is exhausted before written content, IMO!)
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End of conversation
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