  Much in the same way that people enjoy, from time to time, the pathos of
consuming a tragic film or piece of literature, designers of digital games are
increasingly including elements within their games that evoke uncomfortable or
negative emotions in their audience, allowing players to introspect and explore
"adult" themes and topics, including loss, regret, powerlessness,
mental-health, and mortality. In this paper we examine a number of recent games
as case studies and explore the way in which they use their mechanics to evoke
feelings of discomfort in their players, and the way in which pathos serves
play. Through this, we highlight a number of different techniques used by game
designers and conclude by proposing further work in this space to determine
exactly why players are drawn to these types of games, and to explore the ways
in which research in this field could be used to drive yet more emotive and
empathetic games.
