A video game player who attempts to “share” the feeling of a character represented on screen, especially when that feeling emerges from experiences of marginalization, is involved in affective appropriation. Under the banner of empathy, players are invited to visit the experiences of others, trying on their identities like foreign attire and turning their lives into novelty destinations. We might even say that the rhetoric of empathy promotes a colonizing of affect: an invasion, occupation, and subjugation of others’ experiences. (Ruberg 61)

Ruberg argues that, though games might be labeled empathetic, the player is allowed to "walk a mile in" the identities of the marginalized characters. This cheapens their experience into "novelty destinations" - things the player only superficially cares about, while, simultaneously, minimalizing the experiences and identities of the marginalized into games for the privileged (61). Gone Home avoids reducing the experiences of queer people by having the player perspective be Katie, an outsider, rather than Sam, the actual queer character who experienced homophobia. This picture explicitly shows that Gone home  does not try to reduce the experiences of queer people. By making the game from Katie's perspective instead of Sams', the game is able to tell a story about queer relationships showing all of the intricacies without appropriating the experience.