The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-Playing
Open accessAbstract
Fun is often seen a necessary gratification for recreational games. This paper studies two freeform role-playing games aiming to create extremely intense experiences of tragedy, horror, disgust, powerlessness and self-loathing, in order to gratify the self-selected group of experienced role-players. Almost all of the 15 interviewed players appreciated their experiences, despite crying, experiencing physiological stress reactions and feeling generally ―bad‖ during the play.
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Some forms of role-playing aim for what has been called bleed.
“Some forms of role-playing aim for what has been called bleed (Montola, 2010, p. 2).”
From Real-time hermeneutics: meaning-making in ludonarrative digital games (2018) · cites this paper as Montola, 2010, p. 2
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References 15 · Cited by 100
Research works printed but not linked: 12
- Apter, M. The Dangerous Edge. The Free Press, 1992.
- Aronson, E., Wilson, T. & Akert, R. Social Psychology. Sixth edition. Pearson, 2005.
- Festinger L. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press, 1985. First version 1957.
- Fine, G. A. Shared Fantasy. Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. University of Chicago Press, 1983.
- Huizinga, J. Homo Ludens. A Study of Play Element in Culture. 1938, ref. Beacon Press translation, 1955.
- Juul, J. Half-Real. MIT Press, 2005.
- Korhonen, H., Montola, M. & Arrasvuori, J. Understanding Playful User Experience Through Digital Games. Proceedings of DPPI 2009 Conference.
- McGonigal, J. A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play. Proceedings of DiGRA 2003.
- Montola, M. The Invisible Rules of Role-Playing. In International Journal of Role-Playing. Vol. 1, 2008.
- Montola M, Stenros J, Waern A (eds) Pervasive Games: Theory and Design. Morgan Kaufmann, 2009.
- Poremba C. Critical Potential on the Brink of the Magic Circle. In Proceedings of DiGRA 2007 Conference.
- Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, 2004.
- Authors
- Montola, M.
- Affiliations
- Tampere University (FI)
- Corresponding author
- Montola, Markus
- Venue
- DiGRA Digital Library
- Published
- 2010-01-01
- Volume
- 9
- ISSN
- 2342-9666
- OpenAlex
- W258188643
- Cited by
- 100
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 8 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 13.09
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Funders
- Suomen Kulttuurirahasto
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management
- Keywords
- tragedy, horror, disgust, powerlessness, self-hatred, crying, recreational games
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