Series: Studies of Digital Media Culture

How do video games and mental health intersect from the perspectives of psychology and game design? In recent years, the topic of mental health has gained tremendous importance for the games industry, affecting both the applied and entertainment games sectors. The former draws from established practices in diagnostics, digital medicine, therapy, and self-help to develop innovative and accessible tools; the...

Gaming has never been disconnected from reality. When we engage with ever more lavish virtual worlds, something happens to us. The game imposes itself on us and influences how we feel about it, the world, and ourselves. How do games accomplish this and to what end? The contributors explore the video game as an atmospheric medium of hitherto unimagined potential....

As the dominant narrative forms in the age of media convergence, films and games call for a transmedial perspective in narratology. Games allow a participatory reception of the story, so that the ontological boundary transgression between the narrated world and the world of the recipient comes into focus. These diverse transgressions—medial and ontological—are the subject of this transdisciplinary compendium, which...