Sometimes, video games can lead to powerful messages. Recently, I've watched a pair of people play though a game live, streaming their playthrough, and their reactions through the internet. In the game, Life is Strange, you get to control the main character, Max, and go through a crazy week where she learns she has the power to rewind time, and uses it to try to "fix" what is going on. You make choices throughout the playthrough that can have a butterfly effect, leading to many different results, but at the same time, ultimately leading down the same story. At the end, the two streamers faced a choice that had a big impact on the final results of the game. The choice they made, caused them, and their audience, including myself, to end up in tears. The connection you have with Max. and the relationships she develops, you're able to relate to all of it thanks to the game designers. You developed an emotional status, you actually care for her and her friends like she was a real person.
It's sometime a little weird, but this game is but one example that shows how powerful a simple video game can be. Even without actually playing the game myself, but simply watching this duo play through live, I connected with the fictional "hero" of the game and her fictional life. Video games can be used simply as entertainment, but that's not their only function. Video games can also tell a story, just like a book or a movie. If you get a good team together, you get games like Life is Strange or Undertale, that can be so powerful that you relate and feel emotions for the choices or decisions that the character takes or goes through.
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