Faculty of humanities, Social sciences and Education

The Potential for Empathy Learning through Video Games

Ådne Gerhardsen
Master’s thesis in English didactics, LER-3902, May 2022
Acknowledgements
Writing this thesis was hard and stressful. Thankfully, I learned a thing or two during my
research.

First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Stefan Hans Olof Holander, for always taking the
time to inspire and guide me when I needed direction in my writing. It has been a blast
working with you over these last two semesters.

I would also like to thank my friend, Jonas, for always being the one to count on to take well
needed breaks from writing with.

Lastly, I want to thank my parents for being extra supportive during my writing, and for
believing in me.
Abstract
This thesis has looked at the potential for empathy-learning and exploration of ethical issues
through the use of narrative video games in education. Video games is a relatively modern
medium that is unique in the sense of the level of interaction, player-agency and engagement
it has the potential to produce. Video games can be used as story-telling devices within
education, along the lines of traditional narrative text, while also allowing players to craft
their own player-generated narratives. To explore the potential for empathy learning and
exploration of ethical issues, the thesis presents an analysis of a narrative apocalyptic video
game in the survival genre, Frostpunk (11 bit games, 2018). The video game’s framing of
ethical issues and its potential for empathy learning is examined in relation to the notion of
persuasive games, curricular texts, and genres. Based on the previous analyses, this thesis
includes suggestions of how to engage Frostpunk, and by implication of other similar games,
in both the English subject and to teach interdisciplinary subjects such as Democracy and
citizenship, and Sustainable development.

The study concludes that there is potential to use commercial video games as a platform for
empathy-learning, while acknowledging that there are practical and pedagogical concerns and
challenges with respect to implementing them in an educational setting.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... 3

Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 5

1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Video games in school and research............................................................................ 1

1.2 Aims and research questions ....................................................................................... 3

2 Theory and relevant research ............................................................................................. 4

2.1 Video games as literature ............................................................................................ 4

2.1.1 Analyzing video games as literature .................................................................... 5

2.1.2 Games and their genres........................................................................................ 6

2.2 Using video games to persuade ................................................................................... 8

2.2.1 Procedural Rhetoric ............................................................................................ 10

2.3 Using video games in school ..................................................................................... 12

2.3.1 The Norwegian Curriculum for 2020 ................................................................. 12

2.3.2 The learning potential of video games ............................................................... 13

2.4 Choosing a game ....................................................................................................... 14

2.5 Games, ethics, and empathy ...................................................................................... 17

2.5.1 Mirroring real-world ethics ................................................................................ 17

2.5.2 The Ethics of Frostpunk ..................................................................................... 19

2.5.3 Utilitarianism ...................................................................................................... 20

2.5.4 Deontology ......................................................................................................... 22

2.5.5 The ethics of the “Other” ................................................................................... 23

3 Frostpunk Analysis ........................................................................................................... 26

3.1 Introduction and methodology................................................................................... 26

3.2 Summary of Frostpunk’s Game Narrative ................................................................ 27

3.3 Empathy through immersion ..................................................................................... 27

3.4 How the game world reacts ....................................................................................... 29

 3.4.1 Faith and order path............................................................................................ 31

3.4.2 The great storm and Game over ......................................................................... 32

3.5 Persuasive goal vs. game goal ................................................................................... 34

4 Findings ............................................................................................................................ 36

4.1 Approaches to Frostpunk........................................................................................... 36

5 Suggestions for using Frostpunk in an educational setting .............................................. 38

5.1 Practical challenges ................................................................................................... 40

5.2 The difficulty of Frostpunk ....................................................................................... 41

5.3 Practical application of Frostpunk in an educational setting ..................................... 43

5.3.1 Interdisciplinary topics in Frostpunk ................................................................. 47

6 Conclusion: practical and pedagogical implications ........................................................ 51

6.1 Further research ......................................................................................................... 54

Works cited .............................................................................................................................. 57

Books and articles: ............................................................................................................... 57

Video games: ........................................................................................................................ 58

List of Figures
Figure 1: Postcard made by Theodor Hildebrand & Son in 1900 depicting a broadcast of a
theater performance in the future year of 2000. Taken from rarehistoricalphotos.com. ............ 7
Figure 2: Screenshot of the game, Frostpunk. Taken from Steam.com. .................................. 16
Figure 3: Screenshot of a “Game Over” screen where the player is banished from their colony
within Frostpunk ...................................................................................................................... 25
Figure 4: Screenshot of the game Frostpunk. Taken from Steam.com. ................................... 29
Figure 5: Screenshot of the choice between the “order” and “faith” path within Frostpunk. .. 31
Figure 6: Screenshot of the user interface within Frostpunk. Taken from Steam.com. ........... 42
Figure 7: The didactic relationship model. Taken from the wikipedia page, "Didaktisk
relasjonstenkning" .................................................................................................................... 44
1 Introduction
1.1 Video games in school and research
Video games have grown in popularity across the globe in the last decades and most teens in
Norway have a connection to video games outside of school. A research report from
Medietilsynet shows that 86 percent of 9- to 18-year-old children (n=3400) play video games
(Medietilsynet, 2020). As a response to this development, the use of video games in
classrooms is on a steady increase. A possible reason behind this increase may be the sense
that video games, due to their popularity, may have a capacity to build bridges between the
students’ every-day life and their life inside school. Even so, there is a lack of research about
using video games in school and education. Practicing teachers might plausibly have different
opinions about how video games should be applied in school, and to discuss the efficiency of
learning through video games we need to achieve a deeper understanding of their potential for
learning.

A concern for teachers wanting to engage with gaming culture is bullying. The Student
Examination 2020 from the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training shows that 5,8
percent of the students in Norway experienced being bullied two to three times every month
or more, often at school, while 2,2 percent experiences reported being cyberbullied
(Wendelborg, 2020). Video game culture is often surrounded by negative expectations in this
respect, since gaming addiction, cyberbullying and harassment continue to be problems
within gaming environments. The online far-right social movement GamerGate, which
started in 2014 to counteract the rising influence of feminist influence on the gaming industry.
GamerGate began as a harassment campaign directed towards female game developers, but
consequently a discussion of social justice within the industry was brought to the internet
mainstream.

This was still possible to see in the many strong negative reactions from gamers in comments
sections and on social media regarding the release of The Last of Us 2 (Naughty Dog, 2018),
where the female protagonist, Ellie, was revealed to be in a relationship with another woman
in the game. Such examples show us that bullying, harassment and xenophobia are problems
that still exist on the internet and in the everyday life of Norwegian students. How can
teachers, then, use video games to counteract students’ negative social attitudes?

The core curriculum of 2020 states, under Social learning and development:

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 When interacting with their pupils, the teachers must promote communication and
collaboration that will give the pupils the confidence and courage to express their
own opinions and to point out issues on the behalf of others. To learn to listen to
others and also argue for one’s own views will give the pupils the platform for
dealing with disagreements and conflicts, and for seeking solutions together.
Everyone must learn to cooperate, function together with others and develop the
ability to participate and take responsibility. (Norwegian Directorate for
Education and Training, 2020)

This means that the teacher must have an active role regarding the promotion of empathy and
teach the students to handle difficult social interactions. Every interaction is different, and as
teachers we must adjust and find our own ways of teaching empathy efficiently. Such
concerns have already started to influence game development. The Center for Healthy Minds
produced a videogame called Crystals of Kaydor in order to study the efficiency of using
video games to develop young people’s empathy through learning to read face expressions
(Kjørstad, 2018). To test if the game made players more emphatic, they instructed half of the
74 participants within the age gap of 11-14 years old to play Crystals of Kaydor for two
weeks, while the other half was instructed to play the commercial game Bastion. The results
of the research showed changes in the neural pathways in the brains of the participants which
are connected to empathy, which could indicate that it is possible to use videogames to affect
the learning of empathy. However, while they did see concrete changes within the brain, there
was no concrete evidence as to precisely what those changes meant, and there were no
measurable changes in behavior among the participants. Studying empathy by measuring the
brain contributes to an overall understanding of how the humans develop empathy, but it is
difficult to arrive at conclusions of how effective empathy learning is with this kind of data
material.

While Crystals of Kaydor is an example of game design that actively tries to teach the players
something, commercial video games are designed primarily for entertainment purposes.
Although commercial media is driven by their consumption, it is still possible to learn from
commercial story-telling in all forms. Likewise, story-driven or narrative video games, serve
as a platform for a variety of stories that can provide insight into other cultures and lives.
Narrative games like Gone Home (The Fullbright Company, 2013) puts the player inside the
thoughts of a young woman who arrives at her childhood home and is trying to find out what
has happened with her missing parents. The player is given little instruction about what to do
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and minimal introduction to the story of the video game. In this way, the player has to explore
and piece together the story independently. As the player gets to know their character through
narration and notes they find, they form their own interpretation of her. In the later part of the
video game, the player can find notes about her relationship with another girl. This allows the
player to humanize and empathize with the character before it is revealed that she has a
different sexual orientation which is often met with homophobia. This makes Gone Home is
an example of a believable story that has the potential to affect players and could have the
potential to change their attitudes and opinions.

The English subject is both a subject in its own right with an interdisciplinary identity,
spanning language, culture, history, and society. In this sense, the English subject can, and
should, be opened up for collaboration with other school subjects as part of interdisciplinary
teaching. Language subjects have great potential to be taught in a great deal of ways to both
explore new and exciting subjects while, at the same time, teach language. In the relatively
new curriculum for 2020, compared to the curriculum for 2006, competence aims has been
formulated in a way that allows teachers to be freer in what methods and topics to use in
classrooms to teach. Using narrative texts and feature films in English lessons is a common
way to contextualize language learning through content-based teaching.

Video games could be also be beneficial to contextualize content-based learning, but could
also be beneficial to contextualize language learning though cooperation-based games and
communicative exercises. Video games can contribute to a visual and interactive learning
experience and every game is unique in presentation and functions. We can see that there is
potential in video games to tell stories with complex themes and detailed characters that can
promote an emotional response from the player. In the research about the connection between
narratology and ludology (the study of games) there is a discussion about the extent to which
video games can be defined and used as literature in teaching.

1.2 Aims and research questions

In his doctoral thesis, Reading the Game (2018), Andrew C. Turley has argued that video
games can be interpreted as narrative literature. If we, along these lines, interpret narrative
video games as literature and assume it has potential to be used in education in a similar way
to other literature, such as fiction, non-fiction, movies, comic-books, etc., we can study what
properties video games have that can contribute to learning of empathy. Empathy learning in
school may benefit from the capacity of video games in order to create a deeper immersion in

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stories, which in turn could lead to a deeper understanding of other life-perspectives. The aim
for this research is to find out and discuss what kind of potential that exists in narrative video
games to teach empathy in 8th to 10th grade in Norwegian schools. This master thesis will
attempt to answer this through a research question:

• How can narratives in video games have potential to stimulate students’ learning of
empathy and exploration of ethical issues?

To find the answer to this research question, I will analyze the videogame Frostpunk (11 bit
studios, 2018) with an approach to narratological analysis, theories of ethics and empathy,
analysis of curricular goals and a consideration of essential institutional and material
possibilities and constraints for this kind of material to be used in an educational setting.

2 Theory and relevant research

This chapter aims to discuss theoretical approaches to using video games in educational
settings, and will provide the basis for discussing the potential for empathy learning through
video games. The main themes through this chapter are about interpreting video games as
literature, the persuasiveness of video games and what makes video games suitable to be used
as tools to enhance teaching. With reference to the work of Ian Bogost (2008), James P. Gee
(2003), Andrew C. Turley (2018), I will attempt to establish a theoretical background for
exploring video games in terms of importance of empathy learning and exploration of ethical
issues in education. In addition, I will use the Norwegian curriculum for 2020 to frame the
theory within this chapter to the present state of education and ethical theory to explore the
ethical issues presented in the game, Frostpunk.

2.1 Video games as literature

In The Rhetoric of Video Games (2008), Ian Bogost argues against the common perception
that playing video games is purely beneficial for leisure and entertainment. Instead, he argues,
they may be considered as a new form of expression similar to other playful expressions, such
as poetry, fiction, and movies. While similar to these traditional expressions, video games
make claims about the world which players can understand, evaluate, and deliberate (p. 119-
120). Furthermore, video games allow the player to experience other perspectives through
simulation, player influence and storytelling. These unique features of video games can
provide a platform for stories enabling players to empathize with life situations they are
unfamiliar with.

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Narrative games also share narratological elements with feature films and literary fiction,
such as action, characters and conflict. On this background, researchers James P. Gee (2003)
and Andrew C. Turley (2018) argue that, since narrative games thus also consist of elements
with feature film and literary fiction, such as action, character and conflict, we may explore
their learning potential by interpreting video games as literature and players as readers. But
the research on the topic of interpreting video games as literature shows that only a few games
that have been analyzed as literature, and Turley encourages future teachers and researchers to
explore the relationship between cultivating empathy learning and video games (2018, p.
108).

2.1.1 Analyzing video games as literature

Communicating through visual symbols, such as images, symbols, diagrams, and digital
objects, is very important in modern communication. For example, symbols are often used to
make it easier to decode what function a button has, without explaining explicitly through text
or language. We read images and draw meaning from them, regardless of what the authors
mean by using these images. Video games often use visual elements to provide unwritten
meaning to story or game functions, such as the hearts in The Legend of Zelda games
represent the player character’s hit-points within the game, but also the life of the character.
By using visual symbols in literature, the reader is forced to interpret them if their meaning is
not clearly defined by the author through text and language. The reader is also forced to shape
his own opinion through critical thinking and their own reflections (Gee, 2005, p. 16).
Regarding written texts, one can read sentences literally, but to understand what the author
means one must interpret what is written in context with the rest of the text story (Gee, 2005,
p. 13-16).

As these forms of reading and writing can be found in many different forms of media, Gee
(2005, p. 17-18) argues limiting the definition of what literacy is to traditional terms of
printed text is counterproductive and video games especially could be defined as literacy. Gee
uses the term semiotic domains to talk about the communication of meaning in multimodal
practices, which can be seen in how terms, symbols or gestures mean different things
depending on the domain. An example of a semiotic domain could be the genre of first-person
shooter (FPS) games, where the term “ace” is not used to describe the ace in a deck of cards,
but rather when a single player kills all the opponents in a single round. Another term within
the semiotic domain of FPS games, “camping” does not mean the act of spending the holiday
in a tent, but rather sitting still for an extended period of time to catch their opponent by
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surprise. This means that a player can be literate enough to read and write within the semiotic
domain of a video game genre, while being illiterate in other domains.

Narrative video games are unique in how they respond to the player who reads them and is
often designed to provide the player with individual experiences based on the player’s actions,
which can be called player-generated narratives. Turley (2018) presents a theory of player-
generated narratives which describes the relationship between playing / reading the video
games and their mental decoding. In this relationship, which distinguishes video games from
literary narratives, players become a kind of co-author and participant in their own generated
narrative, at the same time as they are observers of what happens in the narrative (Turley,
2018, p. 11-13). This means that the game narrative will always vary, and players may
experience different things based on their actions within the game because the players that
place themselves in the game narrative are different in nature. Turley argues (2018, p. 112-
114) that bringing video games into literature classrooms is not unlike using film, television,
comic books or other types of literature in educational settings. Yet, video games provide
additional unique reader participation to produce within the work rather than just consuming,
which could be beneficial when using literature in classrooms.

2.1.2 Games and their genres

A game such as Frostpunk can be described in terms of several game sub-genres, such as
strategy games, city builder games and colony simulator games, but can best be understood as
a survival game. In the survival genre, the goal is to survive difficult circumstances that
challenge the player and his/her character(s) for as long as they can. In such games there is
often no end goal, and the game can last for as long as the player survives. The player often
begins with little access to resources and must find new sources of resources to continue
surviving. Survival games evoke feelings of desperation and worry when the player is in dire
circumstances but can evoke feelings of progression and skill when you overcome the
challenges the game provides.

Frostpunk can also be described with reference to the genre of dystopian literature, which can
be defined as a genre and literary tool that presents a future in which society changes
drastically for the worse due to a worldwide event, such as environmental disasters,
technological surveillance and government repression of individual freedom and expression.
Arguably, the most famous example of dystopian fiction is George Orwell’s 1984, which
portrays an ominous mass surveillance caused by the idea of “Big Brother” in a futuristic

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Great Britain. By using such a depiction of the future, the player is made to reflect on the real
society that exists in the present, as well as how our reality can develop into a dehumanizing
and frightening dystopia (LiteraryDevices Editors, 2013).

Frostpunk, not least by virtue of its name, recalls the steampunk genre, a retro futuristic
subgenre of science fiction, where 19th century industrial revolution technology and ideas are
portrayed as efficient enough to keep the culture and the aesthetics for the period of time from
developing or evolving for decades after the real-world period ended. The steampunk genre is
often used for writing alternative histories and is characterized by the use of steam powered
machinery and clockwork mechanisms, technologies that have been replaced by efficient
computer technology in the present. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea written by Jules
Verne (1870) is considered to be one of the first depictions of steampunk, where the story
follows the crew aboard a high-tech submarine called Nautilus during the 19th century. Two
popular video game franchises, Bioshock (Irrational Games, 2007) and Fallout (Black Isle
Studios, 1997), explore the similar style of dieselpunk, which depicts the interwar period of the
1950’s in America with a retro futuristic expression. The inspiration for the steampunk genre
is most likely taken from the predictions of the future portrayed by artists and inventors living
during the industrial revolution.

Figure 1: Postcard made by Theodor Hildebrand & Son in 1900 depicting a broadcast of a theater performance in
the future year of 2000. Taken from rarehistoricalphotos.com.

The conflicts particular to Frostpunk are created by a global environmental freeze and the
dictator-like role of the player. In a world constituted by elements from survival games,

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steampunk, and dystopian literature, the Frostpunk player’s needs to make difficult ethical
choices for the characters to succeed in surviving. To survive, the player has to manage and
maintain several different systems, such as gathering food and building infirmaries, that are
paramount in order to keep the population within the video game’s world alive. In dire
situations, the population confronts the player and requires them to make ethical choices to
ensure survival or risk being thrown out of the colony.

2.2 Using video games to persuade

Narrative genres as such, beyond Frostpunk’s particular world, have their own way of
creating different possibilities for creating gaming experiences and therefore also pedagogical
possibilities. To persuade can be defined as to change someone’s perception, thoughts and
feeling of something through reasoning or argument, but games, however, operate differently
regarding persuasion, mainly through immersion and engagement. To persuade is a part of the
pre-emptive actions taken against xenophobia. If teachers want to do this, they have to find
ways for students to understand what others think, feel and experience (Norwegian
Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). Literature is already frequently in used in
teaching to provide an understanding of other perspectives and lives. But for literature to be
persuasive, it is not enough to explicitly tell the reader what morally correct attitudes and
thoughts are, but rather show and enact moral dilemmas and conflicts.

In Persuasive Gaming in Context (de la Hera, T. Jansz, J. Raessens, J. & Schouten, B., 2021)
the authors propose different strategies that game developers use to create more persuasive
games. In order for teachers to influence the empathy learning of the students and persuade,
the authors argue, one must find good ways to present why they should change their mind.
Bogost (2008, p. 113) argues that a good persuasive game does not attempt to “brainwash”,
but rather provides an understanding for further inquiry, agreement, or disproval. Video
games are often created to express something about the real-world which players can learn to
read and critique. By using a video game to educate students about a problem within society,
teachers can help them address these issues in the real-world (Bogost, 2008, p. 120).

Virtually all games convey meaning and players are influenced and persuaded in different
ways, as well as in varying degrees. De la Hera and Raessens (De la Hera et al., 2021, p. 58-
60) therefore argue that there are definable characteristics in video games that can be used to
produce effective persuasion. In order for players to be persuaded by video games, one must
try to shape, strengthen or change the attitude of the players. Attributes such as giving the

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player more player-agency (the player’s ability to influence the game) and freedom to make
their own choices are positive for being more persuasive because the player is given less
explicit instructions on how to behave (De la Hera et al., 2021, p. 60). It is also argued here
that it is not only the rules of the game that convey meaning, but it is also important to
recognize that other video game elements, such as the visuals, the sound and the story can
affect how the player perceives the content of the game (De la Hera et al., 2021, p.61).

Empathy has been explored through the study of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), which
attempts to examine the interplay between technology and human input. The goal of HCI
research is to discover new and more efficient ways that computers can emulate human
interaction with other humans, which in turn makes computer technology easier to use and
reduces the requirement for technology competence use it. This concept is used in products
such as operating systems such as windows, or smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone to make
the user experience easier for consumers of such products. Regarding the study of HCI, there
is made a connection between the level of immersion and inclusion of human experience
within games to foster empathy arousal within players (De la Hera et al, 2021, p. 97-98). De
la Hera and Raessens argue that system-immersion can help players temporarily inhabit
another person’s perspective and to feel what they feel (De la Hera et al, 2021, p. 114). In
light of this, the level of immersion of a player could be based on the quality of human senses
a game manages to emulate, such as visual perspective, physical movement and emotion. For
example, playing video games with a first-person perspective through a Virtual Reality
machine might help players empathize with characters that are human-like in the way they
display emotion and expression. Such immersion within a video game allows the players to
more easily project their own identity onto the character of the game, which can meld the
player and the player’s character, and make them perceive their characters decisions as their
own.

A persuasive video game can either shape new attitudes, reinforce attitudes or change
attitudes. To accomplish this, there needs to be established a balancing act between the
game’s goals, which could be, for example, to help refugees get over a border, and persuasive
goals that can affect the level of persuasion. An example of a persuasive goal within a game
could be to create compassion for refugees who are trying to escape from war. If the player
has little to none established knowledge or opinions regarding a persuasive goal, a game
could be used to shape new attitudes with the player. When trying to shape new attitudes with
a player, De la Hera and Raessens claim that the most efficient way to achieve this is by

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having the persuasive goal and game goal overlap. Meaning, that to persuade a player to
behave a certain way, the player is encouraged to play with the intended behavior to achieve
victory in the game. In the example of helping refugees over the border, the persuasive goal
and game goal overlap in this way to shape a new attitude (De la Hera et al., 2021, p.63-64).

Depending on the player’s already existing attitude toward such a persuasive goal, persuasive
games could also be used to reinforce attitudes or change attitudes. De la Hera and Raessens
claim that if one wants to strengthen the player’s attitude, the goal of the game and persuasive
goals should be aligned, and not overlap, which will be positive because the player is already
geared towards the same goal. They also add that the purpose of persuading should be to give
extra support or motivation to engage in the specific behavior that is wanted (De la Hera et
al., 2021, p.64-66). If the player already thinks it is positive to help refugees, to reinforce their
attitude the most efficient way could be to provide deeper context by framing the game in a
different setting to the persuasive goal. For example, a game could be designed around the
premise that a lonely duck wants to cross a road to reunite with their family on the other side
but needs the player’s help to convince the road workers to stop working for a while so the
duck can cross safely. In this way, the game goal is related to the persuasive goal, but does
not overlap directly with it.

If the player should have the opposite opinion to the explicit or implicit persuasive goal of the
persuasive goal, knows a lot about the topic from before, and has laid the foundation for their
opinion, there could be resistance to change attitudes. If such resistance to being persuaded
arises, De la Hera and Raessens claim that it is better that the goal of the game and the
persuasive goal is completely different from each other. (De la Hera et al., 2021, p.66-68). For
example, this could happen when the player is a border guard tasked with shooting people
trying to cross the border illegally and is rewarded in-game for doing so, but the games show
the refugees’ genuine cries of agony and families grieving over their lost family member. If
such a portrayal the hardships of the refugees is done with authenticity, the player could stop
shooting the refugees and the game could maybe trigger another state of narrative where the
player starts helping them instead by their own volition.

2.2.1 Procedural Rhetoric

The goal of persuasive games is to operationalize the real world within video games and
translating systems from the real-world into representations of those systems within video
games. The problem to be for the teacher to solve is to present real-world issues genuinely,

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while at the same time being able to deploy pedagogically. Here, it is important to distinguish
between the idea of simplifying education and adapted education. While simplifying is a
technique to make an issue more digestible for students with less pre-knowledge about a
specific issue, it also distills the complexity of an issue which in turn could distill the possible
learning outcome. What persuasive games aim for is to preserve complexity and enable
learning by simulating and contextualizing it through immersive computer-based experiences.

In order to explain this practice, Ian Bogost introduces the term procedural rhetoric, in which
the word procedural refers to understanding processes and rhetoric refers to persuasive and
effective persuasion. Thus, procedural rhetoric can be defined as the practice of using of
using processes to persuade (Bogost, 2007, chapter 1, para. 5). Procedural rhetoric
distinguishes itself from other types of rhetoric, such as verbal rhetoric where persuasion
happens through oral speech, because it is specifically used to describe computer-based
persuasion (Bogost, 2007, chapter 1, section 9, para. 1).

The world is full of complexities and using procedural rhetoric to design an experience of it to
teach such an issue is a technique that can be used by game designers. To build models that
represent something from the real-world that a user can experience through computer
processes. Computers can be used as model building machines, where a crafted model
experience could explain and demonstrate through, for example, a combination of visual
elements, simulation and audio to teach and persuade the user. In this sense, limiting oneself
to oratory or visual persuasion could have less impact than, for example, using a multimodal
medium such as video games.

Bogost (2008, p. 119) writes about the game Animal Crossing (Nintendo EAD, 2001), as an
example of a video game where real-world concepts such as long-term debt and consumerism
are prevalent. In this video game the presentation of long-term debt and consumerism,
whether intentional or not, can be interpreted as the developers wanting to draw attention to
their real-world equivalent. Since Animal Crossing is a video game directed towards children
and youth, players of all ages can experience being an adult in a capitalist society through
simulation, with all the positive and negative consequences that entails.

When starting the game, the player is given a deserted island that is filled with wildlife,
characters and resources. On this island the player can farm, build and explore, but as the
game progresses their economical responsibilities start to manifest where they must pay their
mortgage on their house, which often means they must acquire loans to pay them when they

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are due. In this way, players are slowly introduced to adult responsibilities in a natural
progression.

Mortgages and loans and loan interest is hard to explain to children, but experiencing it first
hand in a risk-free environment could illustrate it in a playful and engaging way. This
contextualizes the concepts that the player can learn which could be beneficial for the learning
outcome of the game, but the player does not necessarily connect the in-game representation
of the issue to the real-world equivalent. This is where guided reading, discussion and
reflection outside of the video game is important to relate the player’s learning to the real
world.

2.3 Using video games in school

2.3.1 The Norwegian Curriculum for 2020
The curriculum for 2020 (LK20) consists of a core curriculum, lesson distribution for
subjects, curriculums for subjects and competence aims for subjects. The core curriculum
functions to give a description of the fundamental approach to teach the values and principles
for the primary and secondary education in Norway. Within the core curriculum, there are two
interdisciplinary topics, Democracy and citizenship, and Sustainable development, that could
be relevant to this thesis because of the topics within the chosen video game, Frostpunk. In
Principles for education and all-around development, the first principle of Social learning
and development seem to be relevant because of the topic of empathy, ethics and moral in
education, which are directly related to the research question in this thesis.

To use video games in the same sense as literature in education makes specific competence
aims relevant for this thesis. Here, I exemplify how to adapt video games to education with
the English subject, but these ideas could be applied to a variety of subjects. Three
competence aims within English seem particularly appropriate to this thesis:

• “use different digital resources and other aids in language learning, text creation and
interaction”
• “read, interpret and reflect on English-language fiction, including young people’s
literature”
• “read, discuss and present content from various types of texts, including self-chosen
texts” (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020)

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The first competence aim relates to the use of digital resources which can be interpreted as
using video games to aid in language learning, text creation and interaction. When combining
the two last competence aims in a teaching scheme, the work of the students is directly related
to using literature and fiction in classrooms to read, reflect and produce work based on
literature.

2.3.2 The learning potential of video games

Visual symbols take up more and more space in the world and school learning, such as more
pictures in textbooks, multimodal texts, and video (Gee, 2005, p. 13). Due to this increase,
bringing in computer-based teaching into classrooms has become more accepted as a viable
option to be explored. Video games are often overlooked as mere entertainment and not as
teaching tools, yet good learning principles can be found in most good video games, such as
that it allows students to be producers and not just consumers (Gee, 2003, p, 2). Gee (2003)
argues that good games are developed in such a way that naturally structures learning within
them through common gameplay elements, such as tutorials, which makes good games align
with how teachers structure teaching for students to enhance learning. To illustrate this, Gee
discusses 36 learning principles that are common to be incorporated into “good games”. Here
are two examples of these learning principles:

• Good games give information in context of when and where it is relevant for its use.
Contrary to an instructional manual, this progressive spread of information serves to
not overwhelm the player. When students are given too many instructions or
information at a time, it is harder for them to remember later when it is relevant to use
it (Gee, 2007, p. 2).

• Good games introduce concepts and challenges that are easy to solve in the first
stages, and progressively makes them harder to overcome to continuously challenge
the player. In education, teachers adopt the same technique to enhance learning. When
students practice a skill or problem repeatedly while being challenged appropriately it
creates a cycle of improvement which leads to mastery (Gee, 2007, p. 2-3).

These discussions of learning principles show that there is potential to use “good” video
games in suitable educational settings, but what is left to explore is what defines a “good”
game for educational purposes more precisely in terms of empathy learning.

The potential for learning through video games is defined by the different characteristics of
each specific game. Games that are suitable for school are often characterized by the degree
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of difficulty of the video game, short playing time to complete, are entertaining, avoid
sensitive topics and avoid graphic violence. Here, games can be divided into three categories:
Games made for school, commercial games, and political games. Games created with
educational elements are often simple customized experiences that focus on passing on
knowledge or learning a skill, while most games are commercial and independent of having to
learn something from the player. The third category, political games, are games made to
critique and spark discussion about certain topics or offer players a fictionalized
representation of how certain things work in the real world. These political video games are
not necessarily driven by commercial value or their ability to be used in education. An
example of a political game, also known as newsgames, is McDonald’s Video Game
(Molleindustria, 2006), which was a free online satirical parody game that had players
manage the McDonald’s industry while showing the player the various unethical shortcuts the
McDonald’s company takes to ensure profit. For example, the player can add growth
hormones to the cattle’s’ food which makes them produce more meat, bribe health officers or
destroy rainforests to make space for farmland.

While all three game categories could be used in an educational setting, commercial games
might be the hardest to adapt to teaching because of their amount and variety of content.
Commercial games often hold learning potential, yet it requires teachers to have knowledge
about what game to choose and how to extract learning potential from games.

Good learning in games is a capitalist-driven Darwinian process of selection of

the fittest. (Gee, 2003, p. 1)

This means that pulling learning potential from video games is a complicated task that
requires a lot of preparation and planning on the part of the teacher, since there is no set way
and a lack of resources for using commercial games in education.

2.4 Choosing a game

To form criteria to choose a game for this thesis it seemed important to assess games in how
they could be relevant to teach empathy and explore ethical issues in an educational setting. In
order to be able to find video games for use in secondary school, it seemed important to
choose a game that suited the topic of empathy and the use of video games in the 8th to 10th
grade. I wanted the game to foreground ethical issues by using interactive elements forcing
the player to let the player take a stand on ethical issues. The game had to be relatively easy to
play and the game had to have an age limit of 16 years or less to suit 8th to 10th grade students.
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The first video game that was considered was This War of Mine (11 bit studios, 2014) because
it fits the criteria that was made, unfortunately with the exception of its age rating. This War
of Mine is a survival game where the player controls a group of civilian people who lives in a
besieged city, which contrasts most war-games with the player controlling soldiers
participating in war. As This War of Mine portrays how civilians struggle in war, it represents
a perspective that is explored through most literary genres, such as the feature film,
Schindler’s list (Spielberg, 1993) or The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (1947), but
less often in video games.

In This War of Mine, the player’s characters live a torn apart house where the player is tasked
with caring for their characters and scavenges during the night to gather food and supplies to
survive. During the gameplay, the player’s characters meet civilian non-player characters that
are going through the same hardships, such as struggling to gather food for their family. Non-
player characters are the characters within games that the player cannot control. The player
has the option to ignore their request for aid, rob them or even kill other civilians to make it
easier to survive, yet the player’s characters will always be psychologically affected, for
better or worse.

While the player will be encouraged to be morally good to survive, it is not necessary to
complete the game’s narrative and the player will in some cases profit from being predatory.
Even if the player chooses to act in a righteous and empathetic way, the player meets other
civilians that will attempt to rob and possibly kill the player’s characters. The ethical gravity
of This War of Mine rests on this equal co-existence of the NPC civilian’s and the player’s
desperation to survive and showing the intimate face-to-face interactions between them.

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Figure 2: Screenshot of the game, Frostpunk. Taken from Steam.com.

Based on the criteria presented earlier in the chapter, I found the game Frostpunk promising
alternative. Frostpunk has a 16-year age limit and is a survival game and city builder that lets
the player to be the leader of the last city on earth in the 19th century after an apocalypse that
caused the world to freeze over. It was released in 2018 by 11 bit studios and received good
reviews for its ethical complexity. This is exemplified by Caley Roark’s review of Frostpunk
upon the release of the video game.

“Most original, though, are the ethical quandaries that Frostpunk raises, forcing
you to balance the needs of individual and survival of the city without sacrificing
your humanity.” (Roark, 2018).

As the leader of a colony, the Frostpunk player must make choices that affect the inhabitants
who survived the initial freeze, such as deciding what kind of jobs to prioritize, what
buildings to build, and what laws to enact. In order to survive, as I will explore at length
further on, one sometimes has to make ethically difficult choices, such as whether to allow
child labor or to extend the job shifts to the adults. The player is tested on their moral qualities
in the game with respect to these choices and is judged by the inhabitants, by various metrics
such as those of a ‘hope-meter’ and a “discontent-meter”. Frostpunk explores many ethical
and empathy related topics, such as starvation, oppression of civilians, work safety, refugee
crises caused by environmental disasters. Later in this thesis, a discussion will develop an

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assessment of how these topics could be harnessed to raise questions about ethics and
empathy.

2.5 Games, ethics, and empathy

Video games are programmed software which means that all interactions within them are
based on calculated formulas. This makes a reactive game world limited to the level of detail
the developers manage to include, while limiting errors within the software’s coding. This is
one of the many things developers have to account for while making video games that can be
seen as a limitation when attempting to display the intricacies of ethics within our reality.

Frostpunk’s ethics are largely based on the morally ambiguous decisions the player make
throughout the video game, while the game challenges the player to relate to others through
interactions with other non-player characters, commonly abbreviated to NPC’s. As these
decisions are created as a set number of choices, the game-designers force the player into
making decisions that have a profound impact on the lives of the other human characters in
the grim future of the narrative. What makes these decisions relevant as empathy learning
tools is the interplay between algorithmically based software and humans’ ability to interpret,
empathize and give excess meaning to inanimate things, such as the NPC inhabitants within
Frostpunk.

Even if the player chooses to ignore the emotions and attitudes of the inhabitants, the game is
designed to respond to such an ethical playstyle with resistance through questioning from the
inhabitants and the negative consequences that follows. This shows that Frostpunk does not
only recognize and reward “good” or “successful” ethical behavior, but can also allow the
player to explore the “bad” or “unsuccessful” behavior and the ensuing suffering of others.

2.5.1 Mirroring real-world ethics

The ethics of games do not necessarily mirror real-world ethics. This is because the
environment and rules within a game do not encourage or reward commonly perceived moral
behavior, but rather a behavior that contributes to achieving the game’s goals regardless of
real-world ethics. The ethics of play are based on what is perceived as good behavior within
the game-eternal rule-bound activity, where specific actions have concrete consequences for
the outcome of a game. For example, the ethically “good” or “successful” behavior within the
common children’s game of “tag” has a simple objective that is achieved by attempting to not
get tagged, which does not concern itself with the moral questions of what is right or wrong
within the real world. The developers of Frostpunk, however, attempts to bridge the gap
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between the ethics of play and the ethics of human interactions, which lays the premise for a
persuasive game.

Violent online video games such as Call of Duty (Infinity Ward, 2003) or Counter-Strike
(Valve, 2000) encourage players to kill other opponents to win and are awarded with in-game
tools to kill more efficiently. The moral and culture within such rule-bound games is based on
killing as many soldiers as possible, and any player who does not kill efficiently is regarded
by other players as bad for their community. While such violent video games reward players
for being a mass-murderer within the video game, it does not translate the motivation for
killing to the real-world. Most players regard violent video games as a way to escape reality
and play with concepts that have real-world equivalents in a consequence free environment,
the same way children entertain themselves by playing war.

The setting within Call of Duty and Counter-Strike is about morally good soldiers attempting
to save the world from terrorists and evil world leaders’ military forces, yet there are
examples of real-world shootings where shooters name such games as inspiration for their
murders which has sparked countless debates about the effects of violent video games within
the mainstream media. Abstracting the adult themes in violent videogames leaves the core
game mechanics and rules to be explored. Counter-Strike, as an example, has similarities to
the sport dodgeball in which two teams compete in rounds to eliminate other players by
hitting with a projectile or win more rounds. The underlying gameplay of these two games are
proven to be entertaining by themselves and can theoretically be applied to vastly different
settings and scenarios. Splatoon (Nintendo EAD, 2015) is an example of stripping the
common war scenario from shooter video games where soldiers are replaced with cartoon
humanoid octopuses that use ink and paint to eliminate other players.

The setting of a video game could be important to address real-world problems and ethics,
specifically regarding narrative video games. While video games are able to simulate
representations of real world systems to teach the player through in-game systems and
mechanics, the setting of video games also contextualizes these elements to relate them to the
real world. In Frostpunk, for example, contextualizing the video game in a less serious setting
could theoretically negatively impact the persuasiveness that could be achieved. When
Frostpunk deals with serious topics such as death, oppression and suffering and the
persuasive goal of the game is to show the player how citizens react to oppression, it is
reasonable to believe that the game needs to handle these topics in a serious setting.
Frostpunk’s setting is fictional, however, but the ideas of death, suffering and oppression
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naturally fits into the narrative. The setting can also portray real-life systems in a totally
fictional world with, for example, inanimate objects with human traits, where the reader could
make their own interpretations and translations to the real world. But subtracting the
humanity from the characters within the game would be counterintuitive for the video game’s
capacity for player persuasion

2.5.2 The Ethics of Frostpunk

The capacity and readiness to feel empathy with others will have a different place and
function in different ethical traditions. To discuss the ethics and potential for empathy in
Frostpunk, it could be useful to refer to some of the dominant ethical traditions, such as
utilitarianism, deontology and the ethics of the ‘Other’, and what distinguishes them from one
another. There are two sides of ethics that are going to be explored, the ethics of the player
and the ethics of the game world. The ethics of the player is about what kind of ethical
behavior the different players project into the video game, while the ethics of the game world
is meant to represent how the game is programmed to react to different types of ethical
behavior.

Empathy can be defined as “to understand and be able to experience the emotional state of
another being”. In education, the learning of empathy cannot be isolated from learning in
other school subjects, since it is central for the social development of students (Norwegian
Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). Empathy can be regarded as a social skill that
is necessary to build good relations with others and prevent practical, psychological and
social problems within schools, such as bullying. The notion of ethics is based in the question
of what virtuous behavior and being “good” within a society or culture is. The relationship
between these terms regarding empathy specifically, is that philosophies of ethics often
discuss what the correct behavior should be towards other beings. An example of this could
be the “Golden Rule” that can be found across many cultures, religions, and ethical
philosophies, which is often formulated “treat others the way you want to be treated”.

The player might implicitly choose their approach to the ethical dilemmas in Frostpunk by
either projecting themselves as the leader of a colony or adopting a persona with certain
characteristic ethical behaviors. This ethical behavior varies based on what the player feels in
the moment of playing but it could also be possible to draw similarities from their overall
approach to ethical theories. Frostpunk is a game where the ethics and empathy of the player
is shown through actions that are reflected back upon them through feedback from the non-

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player characters. While the players’ ethics and degree of empathy differs between players,
Frostpunk’s persuasive goal and manifestation of ethics remains static within the game’s
algorythm.

Such a static manifestation of ethics is not necessarily the case for other games. For example,
the video game series Uncharted (Naughty Dog, 2007) features a heroic adventurer akin to
Indiana Jones who is generally acts and is perceived as a morally good character, yet here the
main gameplay function is to shoot and kill several thousands of soldiers on their quest to
discover ancient artifacts. As these goals of the main character are considered opposites of the
protagonist’s moral character, it causes an ethical discord that is common in video games.
Frostpunk’s protagonist, however, is a nameless and shapeless entity that players project an
identity onto, most likely their own or at least based on their own conception of what the role
requires. This allows the video game to hold the player directly accountable for their actions
with the limitation of predetermined number of choices within the video game. The non-
player characters in Frostpunk are used to show both their collective ethics as a group and
individual thoughts about ethics.

2.5.3 Utilitarianism
The utilitarian ethical tradition, typified by 18th and 19th century thinkers such as Mills and
Bentham, and more recently Peter Singer, is one of the central ethical theories in the
philosophy of moral and is based on choosing the actions that lead to the most happiness or
welfare possible combined (Anfinsen & Christensen, 2013, p. 112-113). Since utilitarianist
ethics is not based on religious morality, but rather an instinctual drive which is apparent
within all humans, it can be practiced without the belief in religion. In utilitarian thought
humans are driven by the feelings of wanting and pain and the reason humans want is, in most
cases, to increase their own happiness. Utilitarian ethics is related to consequentialist strands
of ethical philosophy. It holds, broadly, that it is an act’s consequences that determine if it is
morally defendable, and not the action itself or the motive behind the action. People who
adopt this philosophy should act the way that they make the world a better place to be for as
many people possible, and one’s happiness and welfare should not be of more worth than
someone else’s.

Utilitarianism was formulated by theorists such as Jeremy Bentham, who attempted to devise
a mathematical-like ethical system in order to measure how much happiness is produced from
an act. However, this way of thinking has been criticized for not taking into account

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individual rights and a means to conceptualize justice (Anfinsen & Christensen, 2013, p. 113-
115). Utilitarianism in practice shows that committing to acts based on a mathematical
approach does not prioritize any specific person, which creates problems around a person that
adopts a utilitarian view of ethics. For example, if Person A borrows 100 dollars from Person
B that has to be paid back to person B eventually, it would be unethical to pay the money
back if Person A has the option to use the money for something that would create more
happiness.

Adopting a utilitarian approach to the gameplay of Frostpunk could translate to the player
trying their best to please the inhabitants of the colony with minimal conflict, which would be
in line with the game’s orientation towards survival. In the main game mode of Frostpunk, the
characters can be identified with groups consisting of workers, engineers, children, emigrants,
immigrants, etc. These groups can have different jobs, ideals and motivation which lays the
foundation of the main conflict within the colony’s inhabitants.

An example of conflict that the player must deal with is the rescuing of refugees from other
colonies. If the player chooses to accept all refugees, including sick ones, the “discontent-
meter” will rise and the inhabitants of the colony will express their dismay through messages
to the effect that they are concerned that the colony’s supplies will not be able to supply
everyone, regardless of whether there is enough for everyone. A morally right decision from a
classic utilitarian perspective could be to accept all refugees, which could be perceived as
outweighing the unhappiness of the inhabitants that oppose this decision. But since this may
not be a popular choice with the inhabitants, the player could be exiled from the colony and
lose the game if the “discontent-meter” reaches maximum capacity. This reaction from the
inhabitants could be interpreted as the game showing that a strict utilitarian approach to be a
leader is not always the best option to stay in power. Mill shows how to qualitatively
differentiate different forms of enjoyment and happiness and states that “It is better to be a
miserable human than a satisfied pig.” (Anfinsen & Christensen, 2013, p. 115). The
measuring of happiness in Frostpunk does not really account for such differences, since
happiness can also be linked to, or be replaced by, certain forms of meaningfulness and
identity as in people sacrificing their lives for something they believe in, or agreeing to live a
miserable life in exchange for making someone lese happy.

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2.5.4 Deontology
Just like utilitarianism, deontology which was formulated by theorists such as Immanuel
Kant, is an ethical philosophy that attempts to find a universal truth of what good and bad acts
are. But deontology’s moral acts are not based on achieving a human constant, such as
happiness, but rather to establish general perceived norms and moral of society and logic,
such as that it is morally bad to steal and kill. Autonomy is emphasized in deontology, where
each individual human should be treated as a self-sufficient and reasonable person. In other
words, it is the human ability for reasoning that lays the foundation for the ethics of
deontology (Anfinsen & Christensen, 2013, p. 125-126).

Another difference with respect to utilitarianism is that it is not the act’s consequences that
determines if it is morally right or not, but rather a set of limitations created based on
reasoning to judge the act itself. This set of limitations is called the categorical imperatives,
which was formulated by the creator of Deontology, Immanuel Kant. One of these categorical
imperatives is called the universality principle, which states that if an act is to be considered
to be morally correct, everyone should be allowed to act the same. For example, if a person
lies someone they are acting as if everyone should be allowed to lie, which is not considered
by people to be beneficial for society, ergo it should be considered to be morally bad to lie. If
an act is considered to be morally bad, according to deontology, the act should not be
practiced under any circumstances.

However, regarding the example of lying, deontology is criticized for being too rigid in
defining what is morally right or not. If people cannot lie under any circumstances, they
cannot lie to spare someone from getting hurt or to save a life, which could cause equal or
greater damage to society as a whole (Anfinsen & Christensen, 2013, p. 127-128). It could
also accomplish a state of weakness which is not useful in a survival game: An example is
DC’s superhero Batman, who does not allow himself to kill which could be interpreted as
living by the universality principle, even though his arch nemesis, Joker, kills whenever he
pleases. The common literary trope of their story is that Batman always catches Joker and
imprisons him, but he always manages escape from imprisonment and continues killing. This
poses the ethical question if Batman should kill the Joker to save all the people Joker
inevitably will kill in the future to be considered a morally good character.

Abstaining from acts that are considered morally bad in real-world ethics might cause
problems to achieve the goal of games with differing moral guidelines compared to real world

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ethics, such as realistic shooter games that require killing to win or achieve its goals.
Frostpunk does not necessarily require the player to commit morally bad acts, but since there
are decisions that makes the player commit morally gray acts a player that strictly follows
Kantian ethics will not agree with. The video game is designed to force the player to make
these choices to be able to survive and if they abstain, it will most of the playthroughs result
in the player losing the game. It is possible to complete a strictly morally good playthrough
without killing, lying or stealing, yet in this case, the player has to be efficient enough
because it is not encouraged by the video game’s systems. In a game world where sacrifices
are almost inevitable to ensure survival, it is harder to commit to being morally good in a
Kantian sense.

2.5.5 The ethics of the “Other”

The ethics of the “Other” by Emmanuel Levinas seems especially relevant for the topics
presented within Frostpunk and other empathy related video games. Levinas was a
philosopher that questioned the increasing inclination towards self-adulation and indifference
in western society. Levinas, criticizing the commonality of self-centering and attempts to
show the importance of selflessness. His writing about the ethics of Others shares core ideas
of selflessness with common expressions such as The Golden Rule: “treat others the way you
want to be treated”. In religious scriptures, we find this type of selflessness within core
religious doctrines such as the biblical phrase “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”.

As Zlatan Filipovic points out, Levinas describes society’s focus on one’s self as a reign of
egotism, thus describing how the ethics of the Other and the need for human solidarity is
often overshadowed by a preoccupation with our own being (Filipovic, 2011, p. 58). The
“Other” can also be defined as the manifestation of other people, groups or someone outside
the self’s culture, such as refugees or people with religious beliefs different than one’s self.
Levinas argues that the meaning of the face of an Other is immediately ethical because seeing
one’s face immediately humanizes people and demands to be recognized as another being.
Levinas writes that the face of Others shows vulnerability, mortality and forbids us to kill
(Filipovic, 2011, p. 67). In other words, being in the presence of Others makes us aware of
their mortality and vulnerability, which in turn makes the us question our self-righteousness
and our presumed ownership of the world (Filipovic, 2011, p. 59).

“This gaze that supplicates and demands, that can supplicate only because it
demands, deprived of everything because entitled to everything, and which one

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 recognizes in giving ... this gaze is precisely the epiphany of the face as a face.
The nakedness of the face is destituteness. To recognize the Other is to recognize
a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master, to the
lord, to him whom one approaches as 'You' in a dimension of height.” (Levinas,
1969, p. 75)

This citation by Levinas is about the face of the Other and its challenging gaze, and includes
the simultaneous poverty and superiority of the Other, as completely other to you. This could
provide relevance to the Others of Frostpunk in the sense that the player never meets the
challenging direct gaze of the inhabitants, unless the player is conscious of recognizing the
humanity of the inhabitants that approach the player through in-game text. The players visual
perspective is always top-down, so they are always looking down upon the inhabitants where
they cannot see their faces. The only time we get to see the faces of the inhabitants and read
their expression is through paintings, which begs the question of how genuine the player can
perceive the NPC’s as human entities with their own feelings and ambitions. The player could
theoretically add their own meaning to the inhabitants through imagining their individuality,
yet each individual NPC can only be identified by the appearance of their model, their job
within the colony and name they are given. This absence of individual identity among the
inhabitants could also be interpreted as being a feature of the game. A world leader or dictator
can meet the challenging gaze of their population, but the idea that they cannot easily see the
intricacies of their true identity could be the developers intentional design within the game. In
this case, the persuasive nature of the absence of identity could be a positive aspect for the
persuasive goal of the game, which could be interpreted as showing the player how civilians
are dehumanized and oppressed by their leader.

Levinas describes reducing Others to knowable categories such as race, gender or other fixed
identity, which they inevitable exceed as the term, totalization. As Others are bound to exceed
such limiting categories, any attempt at totalization is inevitably reductive and unethical
because it strips them from what makes them unique and complex in character (Filibovic,
2011, p. 64-65). Totalization often occurs when dictators or world leaders divide civilians into
groups or entities, which can be seen in Frostpunk through its division of groups, such as the
“workers”, “engineers”, “adults”, “children” etc. The player is not able to meet the inhabitants
individually and does not experience the hardships of living through a frozen environmental
apocalypse. This disconnect essentially functions to physically separate the leader of the
colony from its inhabitants and point out that they are not equally at risk of suffering. The
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only real risk of the player’s character within the game is to be banished from the colony,
which is depicted if the player loses the game.

Figure 3: Screenshot of a “Game Over” screen where the player is banished from their colony within Frostpunk

This divide between the player’s character and the NPC’s of the game could be interpreted in
different ways. The player’s perception and immersion vary between players, while some
might acknowledge the divide and be less immersed into the narrative and others might give
additional meaning to their character and perceive themselves as part of the population.
Regardless of their characters perceived meaning within the narrative of Frostpunk, the
feeling of being a separate entity from the NPC’s could lead to an inner reflection about
privilege within society. In the real world, we can see similarities to world leaders that are
cared for financially and protected for the rest of their lives by the government. A common
critique towards politicians or world leaders that have high income or an advantageous
position in society is that they might lose the perspective of the marginalized population
within societies while they decide the majority of how they will be treated. By playing
Frostpunk, the players will experience what it is like to not be able to consider the individual
and totalize the population while making choices that affects each individual in different
ways.

The player’s character’s purpose within Frostpunk is to care for everyone within the colony,
while themselves are not exposed to any risk other than getting thrown out of the colony or
die with it. For example, the player does not need to concern themselves with their character’s
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basic needs, such as eating, sleeping or other aspects of wanting, even though they are
technically playing as a human within the game. The character they play lives to serve their
colony and cannot be greedy for their own sake, unlike real world-leaders. This makes it
easier to adopt a utilitarian-like approach to the game, because their character’s only possible
outcome is either to survive happily or die from freezing. The inhabitants, on the other hand,
have to experience living and working in the cold if the player fails to keep them warm or
starve because there is not enough food for everyone. This asymmetry in the treatment of the
leader and the inhabitants is not brought up within the narrative of Frostpunk which makes
the leader-figure appear unrealistic, yet it serves to give the player a role where it is easier to
be selfless in their actions. The notion of wanting to stay in power as a leader is a selfish
want, and it could be argued that this is portrayed effectively within the video game. The
player can bend their morality to extreme lengths to ensure that their colony will not revolt
and banish the player from the colony because of the player’s failings to care for them.

The relationship between the player and the player’s character could be thematized and
discussed in an educational setting. As the players are effectively playing as dictators that
could all to easily dehumanize their population, it serves to illustrate how distant world
leaders and politicians could be to how lower-class citizens live. This is directly relatable to
the interdisciplinary subject of Democracy and leadership and the principle of Social learning
and development.

3 Frostpunk Analysis
3.1 Introduction and methodology
The aim of this chapter is to analyze the video game, Frostpunk, and explore the potential of
persuading players through game mechanics and narrative. I will consider it as a narrative text
and with reference to the notion of ‘persuasive games’ and procedural rhetoric to look for
potential for empathy learning and exploration of ethical issues through the video game. The
analysis will also be used to further explore video games in general for pedagogical use.

Narratives can not only convey information but bring information to life and model the world
(Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2018, p. 664). As video game narratives can be vastly different
from each other depending on the game, genre, player and game-systems. Video game
narratives also does not fit the linear progression of traditional narrative texts, which makes it
so that there are not many analytical frameworks that could fit analyzing a video game such as
Frostpunk to look for empathy learning potential and exploration of ethical issues. I will use a
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narratological approach to analysis of video games. The construction of the narratological
analysis is based on examining the narrative’s chronology, characters, perspectives, main
events of the narrative, the main possible decisions of the player character, the possible story
arcs the video game provides and the setting of the video game.

3.2 Summary of Frostpunk’s Game Narrative

The main goal of Frostpunk is surviving an apocalypse that made the world freeze over while
building the first society as an appointed ruler. To manage this, the player must utilize a heat-
generator which is fueled by coal to ensure the inhabitants stay warm. Caring for your
inhabitants is the main goal of the game and as the game progresses, their needs increase.

The inhabitants’ needs align with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When starting a new game of
Frostpunk, physical needs are the first needs that need to be tended to, mainly food, shelter,
and sleep. Building houses, managing workdays, employing hunters are measures that help
meet their needs, but there are variables that can impact how successful these measures are.
As the game progresses and requirements are met, safety needs must be tended to because the
standards of living increases. New challenges arise, such as the inevitable first death in the
colony, which means that inhabitants demand better healthcare, work safety and a way to
properly deal with the deceased.

3.3 Empathy through immersion

The setting of Frostpunk is apocalyptic and extreme compared to what humans experience in
the real world, yet the setting dilutes moral and ethical dilemmas without the interference of
complex elements, like global politics. While the distinction between right and wrong is
portrayed in concrete game systems and simplified dilemmas in Frostpunk, it serves to not
overwhelm the player and make the decisions relatable to the real-world. For example, the
real-life concept of hope is complex, individual and cannot be measured by conventional
measurements, but the game portrays this as a game mechanic with points on a scale which
can be maxed out or fully depleted. The consequences of having high and low points on said
scale is also consistent for each playthrough, where having low points for a specified period
of in-game time equates to being overthrown and losing the game. Frostpunk’s game
mechanics is not explained in great detail within the game, but this serves to keep new players
guessing what happens when the “hope meter” depletes. Without knowledge of the inner
workings of the game’s mechanics the player can unintentionally give game mechanics like
the “hope meter” a more complex meaning, while in reality it is deceptively simple.

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Frostpunk shows other concepts, such as dictatorship and a power struggle between the
civilians and the leader, which allows the players to relate their experience within the game to
the real world.

As the leader of the colony, the player possesses dictatorship -like control over the inhabitants
and is trusted with that power to lead the colony’s inhabitants into an apocalyptic winter. This
design choice gives the player agency and freedom to choose their own approach to the game.
The player can freely choose to be cruel to the inhabitants rather than being helpful. Giving
freedom and agency to the player is claimed by De la Hera & Joost Raessens (2021, p. 60) to
be an essential part to secure persuasion through video games. The freedom and player
agency also contribute to immersing the player in their own narrative.

The setting, audio and visuals of video games also serve to immerse the player (De la Hera et
al., 2021, p.61). The audio within video games is often interactive and changes depending on
what happens within the game. In Frostpunk this can be seen within its soundtrack, ambient
audio and responsive audio. For example, when the great storm reaches the colony, the
ambient winds intensify and the somber orchestral soundtrack shifts into a dramatic score that
mirrors the intensity of the winds and drop in temperature. The audio is programmed to
respond to the player’s actions within the game, such as when the player constructs buildings
there are sounds of rubble being placed on the ground, and crowd chatter when inhabitants
gather to protest. During gameplay there is an announcer that shouts a message to the
inhabitants to mark when certain things happen, such as when a new law is adopted, changes
in temperature, and when the work shift starts and ends. The announcer’s lines and demeanor
changes depending on the laws the player adopts, but most noticeably when the player adopts
either the “faith” or “order” approach. For example, when the announcer announces that the
work shift starts, the neutral response is “Move! Time to get to work.”, but when the player
adopts the “order” approach it changes to “Our leader calls us to work. Slackers will be
severely punished” or “Work is virtue. Praise our great leader”. These responses in audio
show how the narrative is altered to value the leader more than the workers through the
player’s actions. This could impact the players perceptions of their actions.

The visuals and setting of Frostpunk is largely depicted with realistic imagery and 19th
century aesthetics, with the exceptions of retro-futuristic elements. The technology within the
game is crude and mechanistic which serves to illustrate the living conditions of the
inhabitants similarly to civilian life under the industrial revolution. Civilians are depicted
wearing tattered worn clothing who are struggling to keep warmth and the world is generally
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depicted in gray colors. There are also no instances of humor throughout the game. These
elements within the visual storytelling invoke feelings related to dystopia, survival and
steampunk which makes the world seem grim and hopeless. As these genres are reflected
through the entirety of the game’s elements, it might implicitly affect the player’s choices to
reflect the serious tone of Frostpunk.

3.4 How the game world reacts

In Frostpunk, the player functions as an actor in a computer-generated play where the
computer holds the player accountable and generates consequences for their actions.
Consequences vary from how the physical world and the non-player characters react to the
player’s decisions, for example if the player spend all the coal too quickly the physical world
will react by shutting down the heat-generator which is essential for survival. The NPC’s
consists of the inhabitants of the players colony and the people outside the colony. These
entities serve as the supporters and reactionaries of the policies and actions of the leader. The
NPC’s ultimately decide if the player is fit to be their leader and are able to permanently
overthrow the players regime. The first impact the NPC’s has on the narrative is the “hope”
mechanic and the “discontent” mechanic, which is measured in their respective meters in the
game.

Figure 4: Screenshot of the game Frostpunk. Taken from Steam.com.

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The player’s choices and performance in the game affect how discontent or hopeful the
inhabitants are. The level of complexity to this game mechanics varies throughout the
videogame. Sometimes the player is shown how many “hope” and “discontent” points is
added/subtracted for specific actions, for example, choosing what building to build. While in
other situations it is uncertain to the player how their actions are going to be received by the
inhabitants, for example, when inhabitants are affected by the cold temperatures. As these
meters rise, the inhabitants will react through messages and actions to the leader where they
express their thoughts about their leadership.

Regardless of the player’s performance, the problems the player must solve has no correct
solution, but instead needs to choose between sacrifices. As an example, if the colony
depletes its food rations and there is an urgent need of more food, the player can sign in a law
increase the amount of food; either to demand the production of soup or demand the
production of meals with added sawdust. Both choices will create a larger quantity of food
but may also compromise quality which adds “discontent”-points to the meter. If the player
chooses to make sawdust meals there is produced more food than the soup solution, but
sawdust meals have a chance of poisoning inhabitants. In this case, an ethical dilemma
occurs. Is it more ethical to adapt the “soup”-law and risk not having enough food for the
inhabitants, or adapting the “food additives”-law which will produce more food while risking
the lives of inhabitants?

If the player choses to adapt either one of these laws, the player unlocks the ability to adapt
the “alternative food source”-law, which allows cookhouses to use corpses to produce large
quantity of meals. The consequences of adapting and using this law to produce food are
immense. When adapting laws in Frostpunk they are announced to all your inhabitants, but
only the player knows when they are using it. After the initial adaption of the “alternative
food source”-law, hope falls drastically and there is a 50% chance of inhabitants finding out
they are eating human meat, which will raise discontent and lower hope dramatically.

Inhabitants will cause a series of confrontations if they are not content with the players
actions. For example, the lack of healthcare is one of the problems that can confront the
player, starting with the problem that more sickbeds are needed. The player can choose to
promise to open a new medical structure in four days, promise to treat the sick in three days,
or the player choose to not address the problem right away. Not addressing the problem will
increase discontent, which leads to further protest and eventually riots.

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Later in the game’s narrative, a movement in the colony is started by some inhabitants that
want to leave and find another settlement in London. This movement is called “The
Londoners” and they will attempt to gather an increasing number of inhabitants to join their
cause because of your failings as a leader. To counteract this, the player can either do a better
job as a leader, which will drive down how discontent the inhabitants are and decrease the
number of inhabitants that want to leave. Another possibility is to violently suppress those
who want to leave the colony, which is an easier option to force the inhabitants to stay, but
will result in the injury and deaths of some inhabitants.

3.4.1 Faith and order path

If the hope meter depletes, the inhabitants of the colony will confront the player and ask to be
guided through tough times. Here, the player must choose between two paths: “faith and
spiritual strength” or “order and discipline”.

Figure 5: Screenshot of the choice between the “order” and “faith” path within Frostpunk.

The inhabitants are looking for hope where ever they can find it, and the player is perceived
by many inhabitants to be the solution to their uncertainty. When choosing a path, a new set
of laws can be unlocked to keep inhabitants under control. While these laws are useful to keep
discontent low and hope high, there are some laws that challenge the morality and empathy of
the player. In the order path, the colony employs inhabitants as guards to ensure that
wrongdoers are punished for their opposition to the player. The player can employ secret
informers, build propaganda centers and prisons, and torture the prisoners to force
compliance. In the faith path, a similar control is created through religion by faith keepers to

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break up protests, public penance of evildoers and the players’ promotion to “Protector of the
Truth”. The last laws in both paths are “new faith” and “new order” which brands all who
opposes the player as enemies which always keeps the hope meter at max value permanently.
This last law could also be argued to have the most impact on how the inhabitants view the
player as a leader. In these two scenarios, some of the inhabitants will express gratitude that
they are governed by an all-powerful wise leader that will save them from the hardships of the
apocalypse, while a great deal of inhabitants will violently oppose the player’s oppressive
regime by, for example, sabotaging the generator, stealing food or riot in the streets. In these
events, the player is able to viciously strike down on wrongdoers without consequences for
the other inhabitant’s hope for surviving.

3.4.2 The great storm and Game over

Later in the narrative of Frostpunk, The Great Storm will arrive to the players’ colony.
Temperatures start dropping gradually, down to -130 degrees Celsius and makes it impossible
to gather food and the colony must live off stockpiled rations. If the player has not
experienced the game before, The Great Storm creates an urgency to prepare for the worst
since it is uncertain how it will affect the colony. The Great Storm is the final event before the
game ends and the credits sequence shows the outcome of the players’ actions with a montage
of the colony developing. The player is notified days in advance of a storm incoming by the
scientists within the colony told through in-game text messages. Here, the player is given a
quest to stockpile a set number of rations, recall all scouting parties and rescue as many
refugees outside the colony as possible.

“A howling gale bursts upon the city and the Generator creaks and groans under
the weight of the wind. Pale faces turn towards rattling windows; trembling lips
utter words of prayer.

The cold will be brutal. Hunting is impossible. The soil in the Hothouses will
freeze. We’ll have to make do with the food we’ve stockpiled.” (11 bit studios,
2018)

The last weeks of in-game time tests the players infrastructure and ability to conserve supplies
for a severe arctic winter. From this point onward, the player is tasked to sustain and
compress the colony, rather than trying to improve and expand. As the storm hits it becomes
increasingly hard to keep workplaces in workable temperatures, but in most cases the player
must send inhabitants to work in deadly freezing coal gathering stations to be able to keep the
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main generator running. This effectively means that some, or a large part of the inhabitants,
will die, yet if the player manages to keep the “discontent meter” low and the “hope meter”
high, inhabitants will not protest and expresses that they trust that these sacrifices are
necessary to keep the colony alive. The Great Storm is the most extreme part of Frostpunk
where the hardest decisions have to be made.

There are scripted events that will happened over this duration that can be experienced as
tough dilemmas, for example that the coal mines are on the verge of collapse because of the
freezing temperatures and the player has to choose between three two options what to do
about it. The first option is to send volunteers to replace the supports which risks killing 10
inhabitants, while the second option is to abandon the lower levels of the coal mines which
effectively loses 80% of the coal harvesting in all coal mines. If the player has a low stockpile
of coal, losing 80% of the coal mines’ potential could mean that the loss could possibly be
greater than 10 inhabitants, or that the entire colony will not survive.

This dilemma is similar to the thought experiments of the Trolley Problem, apart from the
ambiguity of how many will die because of the player’s decision. The Trolley Problem can be
presented in many ways, but the most frequent version of the scenario is that there is an
incoming train that will run over 5 people if nothing is done. In this scenario, you are the
bystander who can pull a switch that will change the course of the train and on the other
course there is one person. Saving the 5 people could seem like the optimal solution, but the
dilemma can be hard because if the bystander pulls the lever that switches the course, the
bystander is directly responsible for the death of the one person. In Frostpunk’s adaptation of
the Trolley Problem, the player could be directly responsible for a random amount of the 10
inhabitants who might die or risking to not be able to keep people from freezing to death.
Here, the way the inhabitants could die can also be ethically problematized, where freezing to
death slowly could be arguably worse than being crushed in a mine. The player will not be
able to see how the inhabitants die visually, but if the player is conscious of this it could affect
their decision.

The playthrough of Frostpunk can end for several reasons before The Great Storm which is
largely based on the player’s efficiency and skill when playing. For example, the game’s loss
conditions can be that inhabitants overthrow and banishes the player, the heat generator
explodes from overheating, or that all adult workers die. Perhaps the worst possible outcome
for the player is being publicly executed by the inhabitants, which could happen if the player

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has chosen one of the “order” or “faith” paths within the game, has constructed the execution
platform, or has maxed out the discontent meter is maxed out for an extended period of time.
This last ending is different from the others in the sense that if the player sacrifices their
humanity by adapting laws like the execution platform and they still lose the favor of their
inhabitants, the player is perceived by their inhabitants as cruel with no ulterior motive to
save them.

3.5 Persuasive goal vs. game goal

Both paths of “order” and “faith” mimic real-world autocracies and theocracies, where
absolute power belongs to a single person. The order path has similarities to police states not
unlike the Soviet Union, while the faith has similarities to, for example, the Islamic theocracy
of Iran after the revolution in 1979. As several of these laws portray real world equivalents,
we can see the game authors’ intents of persuading and affecting the players’ political views,
empathy, and morality. As established before, the player is given a substantial degree of
player-agency during gameplay and the inhabitants serve as the main way of providing
feedback to the players’ actions. This means that the player’s input can serve to reflect their
morality, empathy, and political views to varying degrees and the inhabitants’ responses
reflect the same aspects from the authors of Frostpunk.

Frostpunk explores many ethical themes and topics that can be interpreted as parts of
persuasive goals of the game, such as starvation, work safety, global warming, and
immigration. While these themes are explored thoroughly throughout Frostpunk, an
interpretation of a main persuasive goal could be that this video game is designed to help
players understand how civilians are often oppressed and dehumanized by dictators and world
leaders and to help players understand how they feel, live and deal with it. By showing the
player the perspective of a leader instead of the civilians, the player is exposed to and held
accountable for their mistakes or wrongdoings by the same people they are trying to protect.
However, there are several topics that could be interpreted as persuasive goals, such as how
the player can impact the earth’s climate, how the player can maintain their humanity in times
of distress, or how the player can consider the ethics of work safety.

The goal of the game from the player’s perspective is to survive themselves during the
freezing apocalypse while caring for the characters within the colony to not be thrown out of
the colony. Everything else can be considered optional, such as being good willed towards the
inhabitants, saving the lives of inhabitants or taking in refugees into the colony. In this sense,

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the game does not insist that there is a set “correct” way to play the game, which is reflected
in the game’s achievement-objectives that the player can complete. Achievement-objectives
are, in a sense, goals or trophies that can be completed when the player fulfils a set requisite
provided by the developers. For example, the player gets a trophy if the player manages to
complete a playthrough without building a single house for their inhabitants, leaving them out
in the cold to freeze.

While there are not many of these “ethically bad” achievements, the developers encourage
exploring the extreme ways the game can be played, but the player is not explicitly told that
this is a viable way to play the game. There are mostly achievements that encourage “ethically
good” playstyles, such as finishing a playthrough without anyone dying. Despite the game’s
“open to interpretation” ways of playing, the rhetoric of the game implicitly affirms that the
player should be invested in the lives of their inhabitants and should treat them well. In other
words, the player is rewarded by the in-game systems when acting ethically or righteously
towards the NPC’s of the game, while being punished if they are not.

This effectively means that in “ethically sound” playthroughs, the player might perceive the
game goal to be to survive with their inhabitants and if the game’s persuasive goal is
interpreted to be that the game tries to help the player understand how civilians react being
oppressed or dehumanized by leaders, the goals overlap with each other, something which De
la Hera and Raessens claim could shape new attitudes (2021, p.63). It is then reasonable to
believe that Frostpunk is suited to shape new attitudes rather than reinforce attitudes.
However, if the player genuinely does not empathize with others and wants to be cruel
towards the inhabitants their perceived game goal could be that they only want themselves to
survive and stay in power. Yet, the persuasive goal of the game remains static. Since being
cruel and focused on their own survival is completely different from the interpreted
persuasive goal, it could possibly mean that Frostpunk could be suited for changing attitudes
as well.

This seems to be interesting to test and research in a practical educational setting to see if
players learn to be more empathetic, change their opinion or shape new attitudes. However,
measuring the effectiveness of empathy learning by way of neuroscience seems to be difficult
because of our limited understanding of the brain and how empathy relates to observable
changes in the brain. This is what the study of Crystals of Kaydor concluded with, where their
observed changes in the brain could not be used to conclude how efficient the game was when
teaching empathy (Kjørstad, 2018). Perhaps a better approach to this could then possibly be
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measured in different forms of student testing at school, course evaluations and didactic
research, where interview-based research or action research is most typically used.

4 Findings
When the player is given this amount of control over people, albeit fictional characters, it
poses a question of how they will react. How far will the player bend their morality and
empathy to ensure the colony survives? All laws in Frostpunk are largely optional to enforce
and it is possible to ignore the laws that could be considered unjust, cruel, and morally
dubious. The player must reflect if it is better to risk losing the game, rather than win at all
costs. In this part, Frostpunk’s playability with be explored through my own playthroughs of
the video game. This part of the thesis will attempt to show the level of player-agency affects
how different playthroughs can be.

4.1 Approaches to Frostpunk

Through playing Frostpunk several times, it became apparent that it is possible to get to the
end of the video game by way of many different approaches and strategies. To study the
different approaches to playing Frostpunk, I played the game three times while adopting three
different play styles. In these playthroughs, one of the inhabitants was named after the player
to follow the progression of a single inhabitant throughout the sessions. Throughout the
playthroughs, the difficulty was set to “normal”.

In my first playthrough, the choices were based on moral instinct and to be as authentic a new
player. This made it increasingly more difficult to sustain the gathering of resources, and the
inhabitants would later overthrow my leadership. The named inhabitant died two weeks of in-
game time into the playthrough. This effectively means that game was lost, but the since there
was a possibility to could go back to a previous save, I could make different choices and be
more efficient to prevent being exiled from the colony. Moving forward, I chose to make
sacrifices and adapt laws such as “child labor” to allow all the children to be used in simple
jobs. The inhabitants respond to this by giving feedback through text messages that appear on
screen, where some inhabitants are in favor of the decision, and some condemn it.

The inhabitants showed that they understand that sacrifices sometimes must be made, but as
the discontent meter rose, they became increasingly resistant to the decisions made. When the
great storm arrived and temperatures dropped, desperate measures seemed to be the only
option to deal with the then unknown consequences that followed. I chose the “faith” path to

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keep order, but the feeling of oppressing and dehumanizing my own inhabitants was clearly
felt. During the great storm, a large part of the colony died and I desperately tried to keep
houses warm and forced most inhabitants to work overtime in freezing coal mines to keep the
generator running. As the storm passed, the game was over.

In the second playthrough, I tried being as efficient as possible while not being influenced by
moral consideration and ignoring the inhabitants’ requests. The goal was to ensure the
survival of the colony at all costs while trying to stay in power for as long as possible. As I
had more experience with Frostpunk it was easier to manage the colony, which resulted in
increased efficiency. This allowed me to make greedy and immoral choices while trying to
manage not to be overthrown by the inhabitants. The inhabitants reacted with an increase of
the discontent meter and riots in the colony. Even though the harshest of the laws were
adapted, the playthrough was successful, but seemed to be possible only because of my ability
to be efficient in gameplay.

The third playthrough, I attempted to complete the game by trying to adhere to the inhabitants
demands and suggestions as much as possible, while attempting to save all inhabitants
allowing all immigrants that needed refuge. I also could not adapt any laws considered to be
immoral. During this playthrough, it became apparent that it is not possible to please
everyone in the colony. Some neutral choices and laws meet resistance even if it is being
praised by other inhabitants. An example of this is the choice between “sustain life”, which
allows gravely ill inhabitants to be cared for in care houses, and “radical treatment”, which
allows invasive surgery to cure the gravely ill while risking amputations. This could be
considered a morally gray choice and has no “right” answer.

Because all the playthroughs were played on the normal difficulty, one might assume that this
could be a source of error. As I was the only player during these playthroughs, my experience
with Frostpunk allowed me to be increasingly efficient which made it more likely to succeed
in adapting the playstyles in the second and third playthrough. An unexperienced player
playing on “normal” difficulty would meet these playstyles with more resistance from the
video game and risk losing. The intended balance of the difficulty could be shown here from
the side of the developer to create a persuasive experience. In other words, if the player meets
little to no resistance because of their ability to play Frostpunk correctly and efficiently, the
intended game design could fail to persuade. If the player would increase the difficulty for
each playthrough, the results could be more align of the gameplay experience of a new player.

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I experienced the persuasiveness of playing the game to be quite impactful, especially during
the first playthrough. This could be because of the uncertainty of how your actions will have
consequences later in the game’s narrative and how the player’s actions might be affected by
this. In the second and third playthrough there was many reoccurring events that I recognized
from the first playthrough of the game, which made me aware of exactly how the game
systematically decides what the outcome of a decision is. Before playing I already had
knowledge of how civilians are oppressed and how they react to being governed by this,
through own research and by playing This War of Mine, which features a persuasive goal
similar to Frostpunk. However, after playing the game myself, it seems reasonable to believe
that a student without much knowledge about this topic could shape new attitudes by playing
Frostpunk.

The video game’s presentation of civilians’ suffering, death and poverty is perceived as a
genuine representation the real-life counterpart. However, it could be argued that the
commercial entertaining part of Frostpunk also plays a part in how persuasive the game could
be. During all my playthroughs I experienced that the video game is inherently fun to play
while forgetting the “seriousness” of my actions, but I became aware of this and discussed it
in detail in this chapter. If students experience the same disregard for the NPC’s within the
video game, it could possibly also be discussed in an educational setting and frame it as how
it could be easy for

5 Suggestions for using Frostpunk in an educational

setting
Frostpunk is inherently a commercial game not a game made specifically for educational
purposes. Due to the amount of the content within the game and length of a normal
playthrough, it is harder to adapt to fit education, compared to other video games made for
educational purposes. To adapt to this, the teacher can limit the length of play-sessions to
create focus on elements that are relevant for the subjects that are being taught. While the
difficulty of adapting Frostpunk to classrooms is present, the possibilities of such a
commercial game are perhaps greater to fit several different teaching styles, methods, and
subjects. This is specifically apparent with the subjects of English, Social science and other
interdisciplinary subjects, such as Democracy and citizenship and Sustainable Development
(Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020).

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Since teaching with video games is still an alternative teaching method and not very
widespread within education, it is appealing to many students to stray away from their regular
traditional education. Video games offer a new world and narrative setting to be explored in
an entertaining and playful way. As such untraditional and new methods often increase
motivation among students which could lead them to perform better, it is important to
recognize the potential fallacy that might occur if one is measuring the efficiency of using
video games in education. Even though such motivation might be temporary for a new
teaching method, it could be positive for students’ learning potential to do something out of
the ordinary. Bringing video games into teaching bridges the gap between students’ school
and home life, or in other words, modernizing education to fit the interests and lives of the
current generation of students.

This thesis has a focus on examining the learning of interdisciplinary subjects, and empathy
and ethics learning regarding video games, but video games can also be used as content to
supplement regular language teaching. Since Frostpunk uses the English language as its
standard language setting, the game can also be used to teach English as a Foreign Language
(EFL). Using literary works to supplement language learning is common within education,
and it is also used to contextualize language learning in a practical environment. For example,
by watching an English movie in EFL education allows students to use their language to
decipher what is being said, which contextualizes their use of the English language to a
practical situation they might encounter in their time outside of educational practice. English
video games would provide such a context for the use of language, but there are aspects with
video games that can contextualize language learning further. For example, to “win” in
Frostpunk the player needs to use the English language to decipher the text and speech within
the game visually and audibly, while also understanding the text that describes their possible
actions and their consequences. This challenges the player’s vocabulary, their understanding
of verbal speech, and textual understanding.

Beyond the variables of language learning that can be found within Frostpunk, teachers can
use supplementary tasks and methods to incorporate language learning elements such as
verbal communication practice, pronunciation practice and practicing to produce written
work. This type of language practice could be implemented with activities such as having an
oral discussion in class in English, talking with a study partner about the game in English and
writing a “game-diary”.

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5.1 Practical challenges
To implement Frostpunk and video games in general into an educational setting brings
practical challenges to be overcome. As technology is becoming increasingly more efficient,
it becomes more present in classrooms and allows video games to be a viable option to use in
education.

One of the challenges to overcome is the cost of the purchasing licenses for video games for
educational use. Video games are software that, in most cases, does not allow for several
users to use a single license. Frostpunk specifically can be purchased as physical copies on
compact discs or digital licenses that allow for the game to be downloaded through digital
distribution platforms, such as Steam.com and GOG.com. This means that purchasing video
game licenses for a class of, for example, 30 students could be too expensive for schools.
Another challenge of bringing video games into an educational setting are using digital
distribution platforms to provide licenses to students. There are solutions to this problem,
notably through STEAMWORKS’ Steam PC program, which is advertised to be available in
Norway and supports single licenses to be used by several users. While the program seems
promising for making video games more viable to use in education, it requires the permission
and planning from school organizations and/or the overarching education systems within a
country. One notable exception to this standard is the Minecraft: Education Edition (Mojang
Studios, 2016) which operates independent of major digital distributors and provides licenses
for schools with a yearly subscription. In some cases, developers are willing to donate free
video game licenses to teachers to aid in bringing video games into educational practice.

Equipment such as computers and tablets vary between schools and might not be able to
support video games, such as Frostpunk, which could impact how the teacher needs to adapt
in order to use video games in an educational setting. It is worth mentioning that
Gratisprinsippet, the Norwegian principle of that all students should be able to attend school
regardless of economical differences, impacts what possibilities there are to adapt video
games to education. For example, in the primary education, access to internet in students’
home is not covered in Gratisprinsippet which could affect what kinds of homework the
teacher can give the students. Playing a game on a distribution platform, such as Steam
requires internet for logging into accounts and downloading video games. Gratisprinsippet
does cover the purchase of teaching materials, such as PC’s or tablet computers, but there is
no consistency between what kind of computer is purchased between schools (Norwegian
Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). This means that students might not have

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access to a computer that is able to function with a video game such as Frostpunk. This could
be worked around by playing a video game on projector with the entirety of the class, but this
could possibly limit the persuasiveness of the video game.

One of the main challenges regarding using video games in education is the consumption of
time, put up against the limited time available in school. A notable example of resources to
aid teachers in planning teaching schemes with video games is Spillpedagogene.no, but the
video games that are explored and researched there are limited. Even if the teacher prepares a
teaching scheme good to mitigate time-loss, there are many practical variables that video
games bring that takes time away from effective teaching. Common practical variables could
be, for example, technical problems that occur in computer-based teaching,
hardware/software problems or students forgetting login-information. Another problem that
could consume time is the variables within each specific video game. Students must learn
how to play the game in question and that could be difficult and more time consuming for
some individual students. Frostpunk specifically is a game that can be lost if the player is not
efficient enough in their play and could be perceived as complex in its game-progression for
people unexperienced with video games. However, difficulty in video games can often be
customized and adapted outside of video games.

5.2 The difficulty of Frostpunk

The level of difficulty experienced in Frostpunk can be described by the level of
understandability, complexity of game mechanics and gameplay, the length of the game, and
adaptability of difficulty.

When starting a new campaign, the player gets the option of setting the level of difficulty,
which cannot be altered during the game. There are four difficulties to choose (easy, normal,
hard, expert) which affects the needs of the inhabitants, economy, weather changes and the
amount of points added and subtracted to the “hope/discontent-meter”. There is also an option
to create a custom scenario where the player can tweak the difficulty of these elements to
extremes or to be removed from the game completely. When playing the player has the ability
to pause, set normal time progression and faster speed progression to manage the colony in
their own tempo. It is also possible to save and load save files so the player can reload if the
need arises.

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Figure 6: Screenshot of the user interface within Frostpunk. Taken from Steam.com.

To understand Frostpunk’s game systems, interface and gameplay was experienced by the
researcher to be complex, but manageable after some time playing the video game. The way
the player interacts with the various game systems through buttons with icons that are
depicted mostly with items and illustrations of known concepts, rather than language. In
figure 3, the main user interface of Frostpunk is displayed. As an example, the four buttons on
the bottom middle of the screen are called, from left to right, “technology tree”,
“construction”, “book of laws” and “economy”. The “technology tree” button is depicted with
a diagram of something akin to a family tree, while the “construction” button is depicted with
a hammer which is often associated with constructing buildings. The association between a
hammer and the concept of construction could be easy for the player to make, but since there
is no real-world equivalent to a “research skilltree” it could be a harder concept to grasp
without further inquiry into the game system. This example shows that the developers attempt
to simplify the visual user interface, yet some of the concepts in Frostpunk are specific to this
video game or genre and needs further explanation through in-game descriptions and tutorials.
In an educational setting, the time required to understand concepts and game mechanics could
cause an interference with the goal of educating and persuading students.

Frostpunk’s language settings defaults to English, but can be changed to other languages, but
unfortunately not Norwegian, which can make it difficult for students. Norwegian students
are taught English as a second language from first grade, which means that most students

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have the language competence to read basic English in secondary school. The students’ level
of language competence always varies and there are situations where some students have little
to no competence in English.

In an educational setting it seems to be possible to use Frostpunk despite its comparative

difficulty with some additional preparation from the teacher. Playing on easy difficulty makes
the game manageable for most players with an understanding of basic systems and game
mechanics within video games, but it could affect the severity of consequences of the players
actions. The persuasiveness of the game could be impacted if the player chooses to play on a
difficulty that does not punish the player with the right number of consequences. The NPC’s
of Frostpunk will, regardless of difficulty, express how they feel about the player’s actions,
where it could be argued that playing on an easier difficulty could achieve some degree of
persuasion.

5.3 Practical application of Frostpunk in an educational setting

Frostpunk is a game that involves several themes and topics that show commonality with
subjects such as English and Social science. It also explores interdisciplinary subjects present
in the curriculum for 2020, such as Democracy and citizenship and Sustainable development
(Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). In practice, Frostpunk is suited to
be used to teach social science through a variety of subjects, such as forms of government,
global warming, or government oppression. In the English subject, the video game can be
used to supplement language learning and communication practice, but there is also a
possibility of making Frostpunk the central topic with a focus on ethics, empathy and
literature analysis. In this chapter, I will provide an example of how teachers could form a
teaching scheme to teach about ethics, empathy, and literature analysis in Frostpunk.

There are three competence aims in the curriculum for the English subject (Norwegian
Directorate for Education and Training, 2020) that seem the most relevant to form a teaching
scheme with Frostpunk with a focus on ethics, empathy, and literature analysis.

“use different digital resources and other aids in language learning, text creation
and interaction”

“read, interpret and reflect on English-language fiction, including young people’s

literature”

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 “read, discuss and present content from various types of texts, including self-
chosen texts” (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020)

The methods of learning in these competence aims are mainly focused on reading texts, which
can be applied to reading video games. The students are supposed to produce work through
interpreting, reflecting, discussing and presenting, which could be attainable in a teaching
scheme that spans several teaching sessions.

Figure 7: The didactic relationship model. Taken from the wikipedia page, "Didaktisk relasjonstenkning"

The didactic relationship model can be used to assess what needs to be taken into account
when planning and forming a teaching scheme. The meaning behind the model is that these
six teaching categories (student pre-requisites, learning goal, learning process, framework,
content, assessment) are of equal importance and tie into each other. For example, to establish
what the learning goal of a lecture is, teachers need to think about what content is relevant to
achieve such learning goals. To illustrate how teachers could plan a teaching scheme around
using Frostpunk, I will attempt to discuss how it could be formed with basis in the three
competence aims presented earlier in this chapter and the didactic relationship model.

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A teaching scheme that uses the video game as its basis for the main activities could need
some time to allow students to play through a portion of Frostpunk and the teacher needs to
ensure that the classroom has the necessary equipment to have the students play the video
game. The learning goals for the lesson could be that the students are supposed to learn how
what oppression is and that they can explain it with relevant examples from the real-world
and in the video game. Students’ competence in English always varies within classrooms, so
there needs to be taken specific actions to adjust the teaching to this. To assess, there needs be
established work that can be assessed, which could be, for example, the students preparing
and presenting their playthrough and reflections about the topic of oppression to the class.

An estimated span for such a teaching scheme could be 4-8 sessions to interpret and reflect
about the video game, as well as discussing and presenting for assessable work. As
Frostpunk’s age rating is 16 years and older, it is possible to use in 9th and 10th grade with the
explicit permission from parents and school administration. The only display of violence and
other adult topics within the video game is shown through text and is never shown visually.
That is why it is important to disclaim what could potentially be disturbing content to the
class, parents, and school administration.

The students’ time with the game could last an estimated 3-4 hours, with the option of
instructing the students to play and do tasks at home. The average time to complete a
playthrough of Frostpunk is 6-10 hours, therefore the students will not be able to complete an
entire playthrough in these sessions, yet it will allow them to get a proper understanding and
insight into the narrative of the game and progress close to halfway through. Buying game
licenses for computers, instead of other platforms such as consoles, would be recommended
because of the access of school computers within the classroom.

When starting the teaching scheme, the teacher can introduce the world and narrative of
Frostpunk, with emphasis about explaining key words and concepts such as apocalypse,
dictatorship, ethics, and empathy. This will give the students an indication of the lessons’
learning focus, while also engaging the students. Students can be instructed to play Frostpunk
in pairs to have a discussion partner, practice using English orally, divide work and limit the
costs of purchasing licenses. Dividing the class into pairs also serve to adapt teaching by
placing students to adapt to their individual strengths and weaknesses, for example if only
half the class has experience with playing video games, they can be placed with those who
could use help to navigate the game’s systems. Since the students will not be able to finish the
game’s narrative, it is important to use assignments parallel to the play to guide the reading.
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As an assignment it could be beneficial to instruct the students to write a game-diary during
and after gameplay. A game-diary can function both as assessable work and a way to
document decisions and happenings within the narrative of the game. If this way of work is
prioritized during the teaching scheme, the teacher could hand out specific criteria for how the
students will write. The students can be instructed to write as if they lived the life of a civilian
within the colony of the game and tell a fictional tale of how the leader of the colony treats
them. Showing the struggles of a civilian under a dictator’s rule is part of the persuasive goal
of the game, which makes this a fitting exercise for the teaching scheme. Here, the students
could either create an entirely fictional character or choose an inhabitant NPC within the
game. There is a function to name inhabitant NPC’s in Frostpunk to be able to follow the
journey of a single inhabitant which would be useful in an assignment such as this. Players
can at any time check the inhabitant’s housing, place of work, health and see them living
within the game. This approach would attempt to force the students to reflect and possibly
empathize with the inhabitants of the video game, while creating assessable work.

Another example of an assignment could be to answer questions related to the decisions made
in the video game during or after gameplay. Such an exercise would produce reflection from
students guided towards a specific topic predetermined by the teacher. Answering reflection
questions could be treated as an individual, pair and/or a group exercise depending on the
level of emphasis the assignment has in the teaching scheme. To illustrate how this
assignment can be used, some example questions were created:

1. “Did you make any decisions that you consider to be unethical towards the civilian
inhabitants and do you think they were justified to make sure the colony
survived?”
2. “What does it mean to be a good leader and a bad leader?”
3. “The people in the colony give full trust to the player to lead and there is no
possibility for democracy in Frostpunk. What did it feel like to be the only person
in charge with responsibility for many people?”
4. “How do we choose who survives in the colony? Does certain people have greater
or less value than others?”
5. “How does the people in Frostpunk react to your decisions as a leader? Did you
make changes to your rule because of their reaction?”

As assessment assignments, group discussion and presentations seem suitable as methods to

allow students to showcase their experience with Frostpunk, while presenting their narrative
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and work. When students are allowed to share their experiences with the rest of the class they
can also compare directly and indirectly how their narratives are similar and different from
their own. The students will have differing results and choices made during their playthrough
and some might adopt radically different playstyles. By allowing the students to choose their
own playstyle freely, the teacher might experience some students attempting to be cruel
towards the inhabitants, yet it could serve to engage a discussion and reflection of the
necessary and unnecessary evil of a dictators will. Another method that can be used to create
assessable work is to instruct the students to create dramatized recreations of a situation that
could happen in Frostpunk. Dramatizing as a method allows students to be creative, display
what they have learned and develop their language proficiency. Since Frostpunk leaves much
of the narrative up to imagination, such as the individual inhabitant’s daily interactions with
other inhabitants, there is much room for creative expression from the part of the students.
Dramatizing an event in the narrative is an option to produce assessable work, such as the
waves of refugees or the adaptation of a controversial law.

Presuming that the 9th or 10th class in question has a wide range of proficiency in the English
subject or regarding video games, there are several ways to adapt the teaching to each student
with preparation from the teacher. One way of adapting teaching to those who are less
proficient in the English language is to pair students that could use assistance with reading
with someone who is more proficient in English.

5.3.1 Interdisciplinary topics in Frostpunk

In the core curriculum, the interdisciplinary topic of Democracy and citizenship is defined as
giving students knowledge about democratic processes, values and rules to prepare them for
participating in democratic processes (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training,
2020). In other words, it is more than simply teaching how a typical democracy is governed,
but also as a way of teaching about how human rights ties in with our form of liberal
democracy, such as the right to free speech and assembly and the right to vote. The skills that
are supposed to be developed through this interdisciplinary subject also includes how to think
critically, respect differences in opinions and tolerate disagreement (Norwegian Directorate
for Education and Training, 2020).

Regarding the interdisciplinary subject of Democracy and citizenship, there are several ways
to make Frostpunk relate to it, and enable learning about it. The most apparent themes that are
relevant is the power difference, class struggle and oppression of citizens within Frostpunk.

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Though the presentation of these themes is simplified, it could serve to introduce the main
ideas of what a government is, how it could function and how the different types of
government impact civilian populations, including non-democratic types. This could also be
tied to power configuration to issues of social class differences. Another aspect of Frostpunk
that could be beneficial to learn with respect to Democracy and citizenship, is that the
students are allowed to experience a fictive version of what it is like to govern, which could
contextualize what they learn outside of playing the video game.

Teachers could introduce vocabulary from the realms of democracy, ethics and empathy to
help pupils understand what they encounter in the Frostpunk’s narrative, and the choices it
requires the player to make. Terms such as “democracy”, “dictatorship”, “morality”,
“empathy” and “ethics” seem especially important to define and explain to students before
students explore these themes while playing the video game. It serves to guide the reading
while also preparing the students for understanding the content within Frostpunk and their
ability to use these terms when reflecting in the assessable finishing work later on. Terms can
be explained at varying levels of depth and complexity corresponding to the prior knowledge
of the recipient, but contextualizing these terms within play might open the recipient for a
deeper understanding of what they mean in practice.

Within Frostpunk, there are parts of the game that would be suitable to use of in terms of
reflection and discussion in a teaching scheme that focuses on learning about democracy and
citizenship learning. An example of this could be to discuss the distinct differences between a
democracy and a dictatorship by using Frostpunk as a simplified representation of how a
dictatorship government works. Dictatorship is visible throughout a play of Frostpunk, but it
becomes increasingly apparent the more the player disregards the wishes and suggestions of
the inhabitants. By adhering to the wishes and advice of the inhabitants they are “allowed” to
participate in affecting the decisions of the player, but they cannot force the player to do
anything. With the addition of a discussion about this in the classroom, the elements of
dictatorship can be pointed out and discussed with respect to democracy. In such an exercise,
the teacher can use multiple texts to illustrate the differences, such as pairing playing the
game with a traditional text, either fiction or nonfiction. For example, using a feature film,
such as Schindler’s list (Spielberg, 1993) which also shows the perspective of a dictatorship
that oppresses certain parts of the population. When pairing two or more works, it could be

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beneficial to form reflection questions to guide reading in the direction of comparing how the
issue of dictatorship is present within both works and the real world.

Another example could be to create a reflection exercise of how students can impact how
leaders make decisions, such as voting and expressing their opinion. The inhabitants of
Frostpunk are not afraid of expressing how they feel, but the player can choose to suppress
those who are not in favor of their decisions, especially when adopting the “order” path. This
creates a suppression of citizens that does not allow for participation, and encourages citizens
to pretend to agree with the leader because of the implication of consequences if they do not.
In an “order”-path scenario with the “new order” law enacted, some inhabitants will revolt
and oppose the militant forces, at the risk of death. The player can also build propaganda
centers to spread misinformation: the concept of propaganda, as distinct from simple ‘bias’
built into a difference in opinions, is another element that could be important to explain and
discuss in the classroom.

In such a teaching situation, the teacher could be able to move ‘outside’ the games relatively
scripted world, and compare its parameters for action, emotion and empathy with those in the
real-world. This would perhaps not only allow the game itself to ‘teach empathy’, or the lack
thereof, but also frame it in a larger context, where choices and dilemmas may be different
and perhaps more complicated. A real-world example that could be referenced to draw
similarities to the governing in Frostpunk is the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant accident in
1986 in the USSR, in regards to how soviet scientists and witnesses were forced to lie about
how severe the consequences of the accident were. This spread of misinformation prevented
people to organize damage control of the radiation that spread across large parts of the world,
as a result creating increasing variants of cancer among people affected. Such an example
reflects the ethical consequences of a dictatorship, while highlighting the importance of
democracy and that democracy should not be taken for granted which are central learning
principles within Democracy and citizenship.

The interdisciplinary subject of Sustainable development could be relevant when forming a

teaching scheme with Frostpunk. This topic can be defined as providing understanding of
protecting life on earth and providing for the needs of people without prohibiting the needs of
future generations. It is supposed to give students skills regarding to discuss basic dilemmas
and how developments in society can be dealt with. The topic of sustainable development
learning is also used to reflect on how individual choices are significant regarding issues such
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as climate, poverty, distribution of resources, conflicts, health, equality, demographics and
education. (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2020). In Frostpunk, these
topics are present within the setting of the game. In the literary and cinematic fiction works
that Frostpunk likely draws inspiration from, Le Transperceneige (Lob, J. & Rochette, J,
1982) and Snowpiercer (Joon-ho, 2013), the world’s global freeze is human made. While the
cause of the apocalyptic freeze within the story of Frostpunk is volcanic eruptions that cooled
down earth in a volcanic winter, the apocalypse can be interpreted as a forewarning of how
human made environmental disasters could affect us in the real-world.

In a teaching scheme, Frostpunk could possibly be used to illustrate how global

environmental change and disasters affect people, and how it could disrupt the economy
within a government. While the video game presents an apocalypse that is extreme compared
to how slow the environmental changes act in the real-world, there are real-world examples
that could resemble the way the inhabitants of Frostpunk live. For example, people are
experiencing the consequences of the opposite of a global freeze, namely global warming. As
of the year 2022, the regions in the world that are the most affected by heat waves are South
Asia, Middle America and Northern Africa. Heat-waves negatively affect and cause serious
problems for everything from human health, agriculture, economy and energy consumption.
Coincidentally, these are exactly the problem areas the colony faces within Frostpunk which
the player has to manage if the colony is to survive. When discussing global environmental
changes in an educational setting, it is reasonable to believe that Frostpunk could serve as a
parallel to the real-world to illustrate the human suffering that ensues because of human made
problems and how developments in society can be dealt with.

Another topic related to sustainable development learning that is important within

Frostpunk’s narrative is the scarcity of resources within the colony and how the player must
find ways to overcome this problem within their society, which can be directly correlated to
this interdisciplinary subject. What separates the colony from the rest of the world is a large
wall of ice that surrounds the colony because of the melting caused by the generator in the
middle. When starting out a playthrough, the player and the colony do not know if they are
the only survivors in the world, but the player can put together inhabitants to form scouting
groups to explore beyond the ice walls. Because of the melting of the ice and snow
surrounding the generator, the colony has access to what lies beneath, such as frozen trees,
coal piles and steel wreckages from the time before the apocalypse.

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The progression of the game starts by gathering the resources that are readily available on the
ground, but these piles of resources are highly limited. The player will notice later that there
are not enough resources to sustain the colony as the winter becomes increasingly colder.
However, the player has the ability to research new technologies to find solutions to the
scarcity of resources, such as drilling with large machinery into the ice walls to gather more
wood and steel or drilling into the ground to gather more coal. Technology is framed as
having a purely positive impact in the game world and that the archaic way of using coal to
fuel all machinery is good. Specifically, regarding the use of coal, it does not translate very
well to how we want to preserve the earth in the real-world present time with renewable
sources of energy. It does, however, drive a striking parallel to the necessity to use of coal
during the industrial revolution time period to advance the technological world, which
coincides with the time period the game is meant to portray.

While the use of coal is absolutely necessary within the game world, it has been proven that
coal is not an efficient source of energy and has major consequences regarding the expulsion
of climate gases. Frostpunk does not problematize climate gases or attempt to frame the
global freeze as man-made, which could be important to disclaim, discuss and problematize
within the classroom if there is a focus on teaching about climate change. In practice, an
approach to this could be to draw specific comparisons between renewable sources of energy
and non-renewable energy real world, such as solar energy and fossil fuels. When using
Frostpunk it could also be important to draw similarities to how the resources in the game are
of limited quantity and cannot be renewed.

Both the interdisciplinary subjects of Sustainable energy and Democracy and citizenship are
based on ethics and empathy for other human beings. When teaching these subjects, I would
argue that it is important to explicitly discuss the reason why these subjects taught in the first
place, which is to actively participate in society to help others and future generations.
Acknowledging others as independent human beings with their own ambitions and needs
could be argued to be the first step that needs to be taken to learn how to help shape a society
that is designed to take care of each other.

6 Conclusion: practical and pedagogical implications

This thesis has discussed the potential for empathy learning and the exploration of ethical
issues within video games. To inquire about this topic, a narratological and theoretical

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approach was used to find potential within the video game Frostpunk, along with reflections
about other video games and literary and cinematic texts.

Video games as a form of media is often regarded as nothing more than a means to be
entertainment and that the competence players receive within video games cannot be
translated to the real world. Fortunately, the last couple of decades, parents and teachers are
starting to open to the idea that video games can be used as a means to educate, discuss and
experience topics that can widen students’ horizon of experience. Considering that the history
of video games is comparatively short compared to the long history of literature,
dramatization, and feature films, it could be argued that this media has just started to develop
and integrate into society. Reading fictional texts and feature films coupled with imagination
goes a long way in experiencing different timelines, histories, and culture, yet video games
allow players to act and create their own unique personalized narratives within simulated
worlds, which immerses them in lives they might not have been able to live otherwise. Video
games are used in education as viable teaching tools to motivate and explore stories, but what
use could video games provide regarding empathy learning and exploration of ethical issues?

Immersive technology-based experiences seem very promising to handle difficult moral

quandaries, yet it is hard to visualize how it would be adapted to fit a practical and
streamlined setting within education in the present time. Without further research about
empathy learning in video games, such an approach might be seen as a mere gimmick to
entertain students. Throughout my analysis of Frostpunk as a persuasive game, it seems that
the game challenges the player to question their humanity, both inside and outside of the
video game. Frostpunk frames ethics through the choices of the leader with the response from
the non-player characters. By playing Frostpunk, it seems hard to regard the non-player
characters as nothing more than programmed entities, while in reality they are exactly that.
Video game characters are similar to characters in a play where an audience can greatly
empathize with fictional characters while acknowledging that everything displayed on stage is
a fictionalized representation of real emotional drama. In this sense, video games seem to rely
greatly on immersion to be convincing and persuasive. Frostpunk introduces concepts
through simulation that can be translated to a real-world setting.

The task of choosing videogames for education and defining what a “good” game for
education is has been explored by theorists, such as Gee, Turley and Bogost. While there are
some criteria of what a “good” game for education is, it is still largely up to each individual

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teacher to explore what video games are suitable since the amount of video games available is
massive. Commercial, educational, and political games can be vastly different from another
regarding the potential for learning. Commercial video games are naturally not adapted for
education, while political games and educational games are often condensed experiences.
Commercial games, however, could be the category of games with the most flexibility of how
and what to teach with them, but adapting such a game to teaching schemes requires a great
deal of time, resources and planning from the part of the teacher. After discussing a practical
application of Frostpunk, the findings give the impression of being suitable to be used in
education to teach empathy and explores ethical issues in subjects such as English and Social
Science, and in the interdisciplinary subjects of Democracy and citizenship and Sustainable
development.

The approach and findings of this thesis can be applied to a variety of different games, genres,
and teaching situations. While Frostpunk is mainly a strategy game with a focus on empathy
and ethical decisions, challenges in the realms of ethics and empathy can be found in many
different games and genres of games. The development of technology and the absence of
teaching resources regarding video games seem to be the main impediment for video games to
be embraced within education. Even though students are often supplied with computer
technology in school, it does not necessarily mean that these computers are fit to handle the
computational requirements of modern video games, such as Frostpunk. This is because the
industry of video games evolves faster than educational organizations can adapt to it. This
also means that the teacher needs to do the heaviest work to integrate technology through
bureaucratic systems that the educational organization is based on. However, video games are
still being used and adapted to educational settings despite this, which means that there is a
wish and a drive that motivates the exploration of using video games in classrooms.

I would suggest to teachers who want to explore the possibilities of video games to educate to
experiment and use the resources available to its potential. There are many pedagogues that
specialize and provide guided teaching schemes that is designed to fit many different
educational settings and topics, for example Spillpedagogene.no. To contribute to this
database of resources, teachers can share their own guided teaching schemes to help others
get the most potential out of specific video games.

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6.1 Further research
Empathy learning through video games is a subject that is sparse in the realm of research and
has potential to be greatly expanded upon. As this thesis is based on a theoretical approach to
research, there are several ways to expand the research of this subject by testing it in practical
situations. In order to build on this research, I would suggest forming an action research
project which would complement its theoretical findings. An inquiry into how Frostpunk or
other types of persuasive games work in practice to examine the effectiveness of teaching
empathy. To be sure, the effectiveness of empathy learning can be difficult to measure, but
researching how students react to an approach of empathy learning through an empathy-based
game seems to be relevant to further expand the understanding of how empathy can be taught
in practical educational settings.

Also, a wider narratological exploration of more video games would always be beneficial,
specifically regarding the topic of empathy learning and ethical issues. Such a project might
help teachers assess the suitability of certain games to education and the ways they can be
used practically. A narratologically oriented research project that specifically examines
educational games rather than commercial games could provide additional insight to how
video games can be used in education, where these types of games are compared in relation to
their learning potential.

Another approach to research could be to do a qualitative interview-based study to examine

how empathy learning is framed within education, while testing Frostpunk with teachers as
participants. Individual and/or group interviews would provide an insight into teachers’
thoughts, opinions, and experiences with using video games in education. Interviewing
teachers specifically, in contrast to interviewing students, could provide a more complex
conversation about how user friendly Frostpunk is. In such interviews, it could be beneficial
to ask about their experiences with Frostpunk regarding empathy learning in practical
educational settings, their opinions about incorporating video games in teaching schemes, and
their take on the various practical challenges that could occur when using video games in
class. Here, the interviews could be most beneficial to be semi structured to create room for
follow-up questions, to steer the conversation towards relevant subjects and a natural flow in
conversation. A group interview could be beneficial because the views and arguments that
arise could build upon each other, which could lead to a deeper discussion amongst the
participants (Gleiss & Sæther, 2021, s. 80-81).

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The interview questions could be formulated to, for example:

1. Game related questions

a. What impression did you get of Frostpunk while playing?
b. What was the most important choices you had to make in the game?
c. Did you happen to face some choices you thought was especially hard?
i. How did you choose to approach these problems within the game?
2. Empathy related questions
a. How do you interpret how the game presents ethical choices and empathy?
b. How would you describe the relation you had with the population within your
colony?
i. Did the population’s feedback affect the way you made decisions?
ii. Did you in any way become emotionally affected by what you did in
the game, or how the population reacted to your decisions?
3. Education related questions
a. How would you describe empathy learning within education?
i. How would you define the term, “empathy”?
b. How do you interpret the teacher’s role in relation to empathy teaching?
c. Could you picture how Frostpunk, or games like it, could be used to teach
empathy to students?
d. Could such a survival game be used to persuade students to either change the
student’s opinion or shape new attitudes regarding, for example, refugees,
climate change or poverty?
e. Do you think there is value in bringing video games into education?
i. If you think that there is value, how would you personally use video
games in education?

Questions such as these could provide the research with perspectives of how teachers with
different subjects, experiences and familiarity with video games would adapt video games to
their own teaching. It is also reasonable to believe that teachers will provide varying answers
and present their own unique perspective if they think video games are beneficial to be used
as empathy learning platforms. This could be especially relevant in the sense that empathy
learning and social development is not standardized in any way, except for the guidelines
provided by the curriculum. Teaching empathy through playing video games is only one of
many approaches to do this within practical education. An interview-based research project
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could also be helpful to develop the participants competence regarding video games in
education.

Exploring video games as literary texts regarding the potential for empathy learning does not
have to be confined to the realms of consciously empathy-based games, such as Frostpunk or
This War of Mine. Looking past narrative video games, I believe that cooperation and team-
play within competitive team-based games, such as League of Legends, Rocket League or
Counter-Strike, could be researched to find methods and tools to teach empathy. The research
of regarding online E-sports and empathy also seem to be sparse, which could be another
direction of a research project with a focus on empathy and video games.

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