Digital games enriching everyday lives: exploring meaningful, resonating, and transformative player experiences
| Published: 10.08.2026 | Thesis Supervisor: Janne Lindqvist |
Abstract
Digital games have evolved from an entertainment form that is equated with fun and pleasure into a medium that is capable of also allowing a rich spectrum of emotionally complex, thoughtprovoking and deeply meaningful experiences that can affect players in profound ways. Such encounters are commonly grouped under the label of eudaimonic experiences, which are associated with, for example, notions of emotional challenge, reflection, resonance, meaning, fostered wellbeing, and personal growth or change. Such eudaimonic experiences have typically been seen to emerge through the player’s affective and cognitive engagement with elements in the game’s narrative but less has been said about how different levels of interactive gameplay mechanics or various personal and contextual factors may play into the formation of eudaimonic experiences in gaming.
This thesis explores the broader phenomenon of eudaimonic game experiences, particularly, by investigating how certain gameplay encounters can go on to leave profound, long-lasting impacts on players’ lives outside games. This thesis comprises three research articles, each of which represents an empirical study that offers qualitative insights into players’ experiences and meaning-making processes with digital games. These three research articles approached meaningful or eudaimonic gameplay experiences from three distinct perspectives: (1) how games may produce aesthetic experiences associated with transformative outcomes, as conceptualized in empirical aesthetics, are search field that studies the psychological experience of art; (2) potential mental health benefits of commercial games, focusing on how players described Dark Souls – a game notorious for its mechanically demanding gameplay – had helped them cope with depression; and (3) how to understand the idea that a game resonates with its player, drawing on previous theoretical conceptualizations of resonance from psychology and information science.
A common thread among the investigated game experiences was that, in these cases, players had commonly formed intimate, personal connections with the game through gameplay, relating their game experience to some aspects of their own lives, such as sense of identity, ongoing struggles, and lived experiences of the past. Moreover, this thesis illustrates how such relational experiences can linger with players beyond gameplay and prompt reflection and meaning-making, which could foster players’ well-being and lead to various positive real-life outcomes.
Particularly, the findings highlight the theoretically supported concept of resonance as potentially fruitful future framing for both depicting and designing for such relational experiences in the interactive medium of digital games. Taken together, this research work helps to understand why some gameplay encounters can stand out for players as profoundly emotional, deeply meaningful, moving, and even transformative experiences.