by Austin Xie, International Junior Research Associate, The University of Chicago, in conversation with Prof Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden Austin Xie has spent two months at the Landecker Digital Memory Lab on the University of Sussex’s International Junior Research Associates (IJRA) programme. He tells us about what he’s learned and elaborates on the design of his own Holocaust-themed game, along with the ethical challenges he encountered. Dr Victoria Richardson-Walden: you’ve been working on a practice-based research project considering the challenges and opportunities the medium of computer games might offer to Holocaust memory and education.  What did you learn from studying existing games? Austin Xie: The majority of Holocaust games fall into two categories: Nazi-killing games, and what I’d consider more Holocaust memory games than Holocaust games. They take place after the Holocaust, and usually involve a character trying to uncover the story of a relative by investigating artefacts or talking to people. Their gameplay is that of remembering the Holocaust, rather than the Holocaust itself. Games other than the Nazi-killing ones circumvent the problem of a Holocaust victim/survivor game through a variety of strategies, like setting the game after the Holocaust, creating a fictional world that is an allegory for the [...]