Recent research published in current psychology found that many video game players experience a certain feeling of emptiness and sadness after finishing a highly engaging game. This study introduces a new psychological scale to measure this phenomenon and shows that post-game depression is associated with general depressive symptoms and difficulties processing emotions. These findings provide new insights into how immersive media affects a person’s emotional well-being.
Video games are the third most popular leisure activity in the world. Modern video games aren’t just designed to provide simple entertainment and fun. Many of these titles feature complex stories that evoke deep emotion, existential reflection, and a deep sense of accomplishment.
When players spend hours in these immersive worlds, they often develop strong attachments to the characters and storylines. When an experience ends abruptly, gamers often report a lingering sense of loss and emptiness.
Kamil Janowicz, a psychologist at SWPS University’s Personality Development Research Center in Poznań, and Piotr Klimczyk, a UX researcher and narrative designer at Orion Belt Games, conducted this study to develop the first quantitative tool to measure post-gaming depression. They wanted to understand the prevalence of this condition and identify which types of games cause it. They also aimed to see if this experience was linked to broader mental health issues.
“The idea came from experiences shared by video game players on social media, Discord, and Reddit,” Janowitz said. “Many of them described feelings of emptiness and various emotions after finishing an engaging video game. First, my colleague Dr. Pyotr Klimchik investigated it in a qualitative study. Then, based on his findings, we developed a quantitative measure of post-gaming depression and conducted a study.”
To explore these questions, researchers conducted two separate studies. The first study aimed to create and test an initial version of the Post-Game Depression Scale. The authors recruited participants through social media announcements, gaming forums like Reddit, and chat platforms like Discord.
The first sample included adults who actively played video games and had recently finished a game they considered personally important. After excluding incomplete responses and those who failed the attention check, the final sample consisted of 210 participants. The average age of this group was approximately 28 years, and most participants reported playing games every day or almost every day.
In this first stage, participants completed a new 20-item draft questionnaire. They also completed several established psychological surveys to measure baseline mental health, including a nine-item survey to assess symptoms of clinical depression.
In addition, the scientists used questionnaires to measure rumination and introspection. Rumination is a psychological term that refers to the habit of thinking repeatedly about negative experiences and emotions, while self-reflection refers to thinking about your life in a healthier, more positive way. Participants also indicated the specific genre of games they had recently completed.
Based on the responses, the researchers narrowed down the new scale to 17 questions grouped into four different categories. The first category, game-related rumination, measures how often players experience intrusive thoughts about the game. The second category captures the difficult end of the experience and expresses feelings of sadness and emptiness due to the end of the story.
The third category measures the need to repeat a game, or the urge to immediately replay a title. The final category is media anhedonia. Anhedonia is a psychological term for the inability to feel pleasure, and here it refers to the inability to enjoy other games or media after a recent gaming experience.
“We found empirical support for a variety of experiences after exiting a video game, as reported by video game players in recent years,” Janovich explained. “So post-game depression is real, and we were able to reliably measure it in our survey. We found that players who spent more time playing RPGs tended to experience more intense symptoms of post-game depression, as well as players who were more prone to rumination and had more problems processing their emotions.”
Role-playing games (RPGs) often require players to make important narrative choices and develop deep relationships with virtual characters. Although RPGs stood out in the data, Klimczyk expects other genres to show similar effects in future studies.
“The fact that RPGs could be one of the major genres didn’t surprise me, but I would put them in the same column as the old point-and-click style of narrative and adventure games. But that’s just my personal bias,” Klimczyk said. “I hope that in the future, another team or we can conduct such a study with a larger number of participants. We believe these genres are comparable to RPGs. To quote Mrs. Dana Scully is an educated guess, but a guess.”
The scientists conducted a second study to confirm the structure of the new scale and further test its relationship with emotional regulation. They recruited a fresh sample of 163 adult gamers using similar online channels. The average age of this second group was nearly 30 years.
Similar to the first group, these participants completed a final 17-item scale, along with a survey to measure general depressive symptoms and rumination tendencies. Additionally, the second study included an emotional processing scale to see how participants coped with difficult emotions in their daily lives.
The authors specifically focused on emotional retention, which is the tendency to hold onto unpleasant emotions and become overwhelmed by them. They also measured emotional avoidance, which is how often a person tries to run away from or suppress negative emotions.
A second study confirmed that a 17-item scale is a consistent and valid way to measure this phenomenon. The most commonly reported experience was game-related rumination, and the mildest symptom was media anhedonia. A second study also confirmed that role-playing game fans were the most likely to feel this sense of lingering loss.
“I would like to add that our research shows how video games can be a source of highly complex emotional experiences,” Klimczyk said. “We believe our research fits into the overarching theme of eudaimonic experiences in video games. We believe this area of research will receive even greater attention in the future, and our study is just a small stepping stone towards that.” Eudaimonic experiences refer to media that provide a sense of meaning, personal insight, or emotional growth rather than simple enjoyment.
Although this study provides a detailed look at this modern phenomenon, the authors caution against exaggerating the clinical severity of this condition. “In some cases, people have implied that the term ‘postgame blues’ refers to a clinical case of a depressive episode,” Klimczyk explained. “No, but as Dr. Janovich writes, the association with poorer mental health does exist.”
“The term was coined by gamers. Before our research gained traction, we Googled ‘post-gaming depression’ and found tons of Reddit posts using such terms to describe that particular emotion. We decided to leave it at that.”
Because the study relied on a cross-sectional survey, the scientists were only able to get one snapshot in time. A cross-sectional design means that researchers study participants all at once, making it impossible to prove cause and effect.
“Because our study was cross-sectional, it was not possible to determine causal relationships between the observed variables,” Janowitz said. “For example, athletes with poor mental health may be more likely to experience post-match depression after a match, but post-match depression may also lead to poor mental health.”
To solve this mystery, researchers plan to conduct longitudinal studies that follow the same individuals over time. “Long-term studies would be a major step toward overcoming the limitations of our study,” Janowitz said. “This will allow us to identify causal relationships and assess the antecedents and consequences of post-match depression. Furthermore, it will be very interesting to compare athletes from different countries.”
Despite these limitations, the newly developed scale is already having a major impact. “Our findings have generated a lot of interest and attention around the world,” said Janovich, noting the positive response from the gaming community. “Many people have contacted us to discuss our findings. We are very happy that this work has inspired so many people and is of interest to video game players who feel it is legitimate and depicts real emotions.”
The authors hope that other scientists will build on their basic research to better understand how interactive media affects human psychology. “If there are scholars who would like to use our scale or adapt it to their own language, we welcome them to contact us,” Janowitz added. “We are happy to support and develop research into post-match depression around the world.”
The study, “Post-Game Depression Scale – A new measure to capture players’ experiences after finishing a video game,” was authored by Kamil Janowicz and Piotr Klimczyk.
