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Can video games make you a better person? Minority Media is betting on it.

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The video game studio operates out of an open-concept loft office in an old building on Montreal’s plateau. The first thing you’re greeted with when you enter is a poster from the studio’s first game, Papo & Yo, a groundbreaking, emotionally driven, independent game praised by The New York Times but misunderstood by many in the industry’s press. The next is a plush red sectional couch adorned with a large, colourful stuffed frog toy. “That’s Vander’s office,” says Minority’s social media director Rommel Romero.

“Vander” is Vander Caballero, Minority’s creative director. He’s the former design director for Electronic Arts Montreal, maker of the blood-and-guts masked mercenary shooter series Army of Two. Caballero left the world of big corporate video games in 2010 to found Minority, whose mission is to make games that are non-violent and have “meaningful impacts on people’s lives” — to make players feel something other than aggression. Minority calls these types of products “empathy games.”

While some fear that the increasing use of technology is robbing us of our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and understand their emotions, Minority is on the crest of a wave of game design that’s swept up some of the biggest names in the industry. EA’s Dragon Age series, for instance, requires you to understand the emotional needs of your party members so they can better fight monsters. EA founder Trip Hawkins has also created a tablet game for six- to 12-year-olds called IF, which focuses on emotional skills. Meanwhile, Ubisoft, a company with offices around the world, is applying empathy in their blockbuster game series such as Assassin’s Creed, which deals with the emotional damage caused by violence — while still being a relatively violent game.