It is time to start calling the emotions and experiences that currently cluster under the umbrella term “empathy” by their names. Out in the open, without the cover of empathy as a catchcall buzzword, sympathy, depth, and allyship become more visible and therefore more accessible for critique. Caring, compassion, sorrow, loss, and queer entanglement are powerful concepts that deserve to be spoken out loud, not lost in the rhetoric of empathy. . . . More valuable than a video game that allows players to identity with someone else is a game that requires players to respect the people with whom they cannot identify. (Ruberg 68)

Ruberg emphasizes that empathy is often oversimplified to falsely describe the emotions that players feel, such as sympathy, queer entanglement, and allyship. Often times video games fail to capture the true emotions of the characters they represent (Ruberg 68). Gone Home captures the essence of what Ruberg argues in this excerpt and is also summarized. Rather than playing as Sam, we play in the perspective of Katie who is learning about the truth of her sister alongside us. Through this game style, we get a better experience with respecting the character's choices rather than trying to influence the certain choices made which it could have been like if we played in Sam's perspective. This is also affirmed by the game's ending where Sam asks Katie alongside us to respect her choices even though it may not make sense to people who don't identify similarly to Sam.





The player is constantly reminded that they are not playing from a first person perspective; the family shown is not their own. By reading about Sam's heartbreak, love, and anger, the game simultaneously reminds the player that they are an outsider, while also fostering respect for Sam experiences and choices.