4. Empathy
This last point is my favourite and in my opinion the biggest place that video games have the potential to change everything about how the medium can grow moving forwards. Video games are uniquely able to provide a venue for teaching empathy and allowing you to understand a little of what it is like to be in a situation you will likely never experience for yourself. Spec Ops: The line throws you into the shoes of a Squad of soldiers who go through such horrors and struggles, situations that will leave them with such unimaginable guilt, that we can begin to imagine how they must feel. However, the beauty of having you make the choices for these people is that you are the one responsible for what happens. You are responsible for the breakdown of your crew, for consequences of there reactions and the path the story takes. While most of us will never have to make choices nearly this difficult in our lives, we don get to understand why someone would make them, and how it would feel to do so. While Spec Ops does this very well, I think it is just the first step on the path to a very exciting future for video games. Imagine a game with a lead character with schizophrenia, or undergoing gender transition. The possibility to give people a window into the lives of people with conditions or in situations very different to our own could be a major step towards increasing understanding and acceptance of conditions that currently are widely misunderstood or prejudiced against by those without them. The potential of video games to be a medium for empathy is huge and Spec Ops shows that it is possible to create a game that allows you to feel things from someone elses perspective. What do you think? Do you see any of these being a bigger part of games in the future? Are they done right in Spec Ops: The Line? Do you have any ideas of bigger improvements games need to make in the future? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.