Meaning-making processes in successful commercial games: A Dark Souls and Disco Elysium case study

Abstract

Games have developed the last decade into a strong and versatile medium with a strong potential and opportunities for societal change. Serious games have attempted to varying success to use the medium to create educational gain in their players, however, these games tend to create superficial experiences that don’t seem to retain the attention of the player. Commercial video games on the other hand focus on these deeper emotional experiences, but to what extent these experiences lead to meaningful implications towards the player’s real life, which are sought in serious games, is unexplored in literature. This research set out to explore these potential meaningful implications in the successful commercial games Dark Souls and Disco Elysium, using meaning making theory. Various meaningful themes have been found in both games, varying from empowerment and perseverance to diving into and understanding one’s own thoughts. These themes revolved around immersion and resonance with the real world, which led to a strong emotional involvement and thereby the lessons learned in the game were more easily translated towards the player’s real life. This research is a starting point of exploring how meaningful experiences can be created within games to eventually be able to implement specific meanings the developer wishes to get across. The immersion and resonance with the real world seemed crucial for the meaningful experiences here, but this is still largely unexplored in literature and needs to be further investigated in different games and genres. Still, the strong meaning making processes that were seen highlight the relevance of the deeper emotional experiences in game development, when these meaningful applications are sought.