The ‘Eudaimonic Experience’: A Scoping Review of the Concept in Digital Games Research

Abstract

Digital games have evolved into a medium that moves beyond basic toys for distraction and pleasure towards platforms capable of and effective at instigating more serious, emotional, and intrapersonal experiences. Along with this evolution, games research has also started to consider more deeply affective and cognitive reactions that resemble the broad notion of eudaimonia, with work already being done in communication studies and media psychology as well as in human–computer interaction. These studies offer a large variety of concepts to describe such eudaimonic reactions—including eudaimonia, meaningfulness, appreciation, and self-transcendence—which are frequently used as synonyms as they represent aspects not captured by the traditional hedonic focus on enjoyment. However, these concepts are potentially confusing to work with as they might represent phenomenological distinct experiences. In this scoping review, we survey 82 publications to identify different concepts used in digital gaming research to represent eudaimonia and map out how these concepts relate to each other. The results of this scoping review revealed four broad conceptual patterns: (1) appreciation as an overarching (yet imprecise) eudaimonic outcome of playing digital games; (2) covariation among meaningful, emotionally moving/challenging, and self-reflective experiences; (3) the unique potential of digital games to afford eudaimonic social connectedness; and (4) other eudaimonia-related concepts (e.g., nostalgia, well-being, elevation). This review provides a conceptual map of the current research landscape on eudaimonic game entertainment experiences and outlines recommendations for future scholarship, including how a focus on digital games contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of eudaimonic media experiences broadly.

The Bright and Dark Side of Eudaimonic Emotions: A Conceptual Framework

“…Characteristic items for assessing appreciation are 'being touched,' 'being moved,' 'tender,' and 'poignant' (Oliver et al, 2018). Appreciation can be induced by movies (Wirth, Hofer, & Schramm, 2012), textual narratives (Lewis, Tamborini, & Weber, 2014), social media (Dale et al, 2020;Ji et al, 2019;Rieger & Klimmt, 2019), and by playing video games (Daneels et al, 2021). Episodes of appreciation are associated with reduced prejudice (Bartsch, Oliver, Nitsch, & Scherr, 2016;Oliver et al, 2015) and with motivation for personal growth (Bartsch, Kalch, & Oliver, 2014;Oliver & Bartsch, 2011).…”

“…More recent research explains these phenomena via eudaimonic motivation: Striving for "greater insight, self-reflection, or contemplations of poignancy or meaningfulness (e.g., what makes life valuable)" (Oliver, 2008, p. 42). Recent research reveals that eudaimonic themes are prevalent not only in movies and Facebook posts (Dale et al, 2020;Dale, Raney, Janicke, Sanders, & Oliver, 2017) as well as digital games (Daneels, Bowman, Possler, & Mekler, 2021), but also in extremist propaganda (Frischlich, 2020;Frischlich, Rieger, Morten, & Bente, 2018). Accordingly, responses to these eudaimonic themes are relevant for the motivation to enhance others' well-being (Freeman, Aquino, & McFerran, 2009) but also for attraction to extremist groups (Frischlich et al, 2018).…”

Embedded AR Storytelling Supports Active Indexing at Historical Places

“…Prior work showed that active indexing can foster understanding and meaningful relationships [16,41,91]. Particularly in educational history [34,72] and video game research [19,37,74], findings report on greater learning effects and understanding when the content addressed participants' emotions, for which moral dilemmas are already used. However, considering the process of fostering meaningful user-place relationships, HCI research is still limited regarding strategies in general [3,80], including the role of active indexing and the influence of user's emotion in this context.…”

“…A widely used strategy to create a strong emotional effect for video game players is moral dilemmas. According to prior work, they increase player engagement and evoke meaningful playing experiences [19,37,74]. In Iten et al [44], authors explored decisionmaking characteristics to create meaningful player experiences.…”

“…And lastly, as we saw in the iPANAS, the moral dilemma can arouse negative emotions in a user and could thus promote disengagement in the long term. While video games already apply it to increase the player engagement [19,37,74], it is still out for discussion whether we can ethically accept to purposefully design for negative, potentially stressful emotions to communicate real-world historical significance. Therefore, both the increase of learning has to be weighed against the potential stress caused by using a moral dilemma.…”