Coping through game design An exploration of the link between the design of emotionally impactful games and coping mechanisms

The design of emotionally impactful games, i.e. games that touch upon emotionally challenging topics has gained an increasing amount of scholarly attention in recent years. The game designers of these games draw on challenging personal circumstances in the process of designing these games, which allows for certain ways of coping with the challenging issues and situations that they find themselves in. There is a gap in the literature where the link between coping with challenging personal circumstances and the practice of game design has not been studied thoroughly yet, which is where this master´s thesis would like to fill a current gap in the literature. Therefore, this master’s thesis aims to answer the following research question: ‘How is game design of emotionally impactful games used as a coping mechanism by designers facing challenging personal circumstances?’ To provide an answer to this research question, a qualitative approach was selected. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with designers of emotionally impactful games. Through a thematic analysis of the of the data collected through the interviews three overarching themes were identified that together compromise the answer to the research question. The main findings of this research are that through game design, designers were able to open up about their challenging personal circumstances. Additionally, the active process of designing games functioned as coping where different concrete coping strategies were identified. Lastly, the game design process had implications for the mental wellbeing of game designers that were both positive and negative, where professional help has to be considered. Conclusions and implications were drawn from the findings and provided where these implications were made for both the field of game design and the field of psychology. The thesis concludes by stating in what manners coping strategies are present amongst game designers during the coping process, but that game design is not the sole solution to the challenging circumstances present. In terms of implications, contributions to the understanding of the game design process of emotionally impactful games as a modus of coping have been established and a more elaborate understanding of the practice of game design has been established.