There are numerous video games that depict mental health conditions, and Hellblade: Senua'sSacrifice (Hellblade) stands out as a remarkable example. This thesis studies the impact thisgame has on players’ own perceived awareness regarding mental health conditions by viewingthe subject through the lens of Transformative Play. Furthermore, the following study can informgame designers and researchers about design choices made to represent mental health conditions.Qualitative data gathered through two sets of semi-structured interviews, was analyzed todetermine whether players’ perceived mental health awareness had changed as a result of playingHellblade, and what transformative experiences arose. The results from this study found theplayers’ perceived awareness of mental health conditions to have changed after playingHellblade. Seen within the context of Transformative Play, this was due to players’ abilities toimmerse themselves into the main protagonist, resulting in the fictional character’s experiencesand perspectives spilling over to the player.

This thesis research explores the patterns of player-character relationships and player-character attachment in Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2020) and Genshin Impact (2020). The purpose of the paper is to fill in the existing gap in the literature concerning the psychological and social mechanisms of attachment that players form with non-customizable game characters. The research explores the nature of player-character attachment in its relation to game mechanics and broader social context, as well as its transformative potential.   The research relies on interdisciplinary mixed-methods methodology, drawing from the fields of psychology and anthropology. The first part of the research employs auto-ethnographic data on the authors' personal relationships with game characters. The second part involves a series of qualitative in-depth interviews with players of Animal Crossing and Genshin Impact. Thematic analysis with the elements of case-study methodology is applied to the interview data. The results of the interview analysis are compared between the two player groups, as well as to the findings of the auto-ethnographic inquiry. The main results of the comparative analysis suggest that players’ perceptions of characters in the studied games can be categorized as character-as-object and character-as-other. Further on, a distinction can be made between two types of attachment that players form with characters-as-others. The first one is player-for-character, focused primarily on a player’s relatedness and empathy towards a character. The second one is character-for-player, where a game character is perceived as a supporting and caring figure that transcends the boundaries of the game. The relationship types are not mutually exclusive, and both of them have been found to have transformative potential.

With the new and rising popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3, an exploratory qualitative research comparing it to its tabletop predecessor: Dungeons and Dragons 5E, is necessary to gather new data about player experience within these different formats.  This research explores the difference in immersion into character between Dungeons and Dragons 5E and Baldur’s Gate 3. This is done through a mixed methods approach, combining interviews and digital ethnography. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 6 interviewees from varying backgrounds who had played both games for a significant amount of time. For the digital ethnography, relevant selected posts from Reddit users in r/DnD and r/BaldursGate3 were filtered and selected using the software Communalytic.  The themes correlated to immersion into character were transformative play, social play, and creative agenda. Through these themes, it was concluded that the main difference between these two games were related to transformative potential, as well as the social aspect 2 of both games, where in-person D&D and co-op BG3 seemed to help players get immersed into their characters more easily than in online D&D and solo mode BG3.

Language is a system that fundamentally influences us as human beings. There are numerous schools of thought critiquing our use of language and celebrating attempts to break free of the control it has over our lives. In that perspective a transformative play with language can be seen as critical play, and a game design approach supporting this kind of play can be defined as critical. The cut-up technique is an aleatory literary technique invented by the Dadaists in the 1920s. It was the fundamental lack of belief in society and language that gave birth to the cut-up method. Mary Flanagan includes it in her book “Critical Play: Radical Game Design” as part of the critical game-design paradigm. The singer-songwriter Dave Kapell invented Magnetic Poetry in the early 90s inspired by the cut-up technique and how artists such as William Burroughs and David Bowie used in their work. I am a co-founder of Ozma Games – a game studio based in Malmö, Sweden. In Ozma we are working on a social word game called Words of Oz. Magnetic Poetry inspired us in the design of Words of Oz, as we wanted to make a casual game that could evoke players’ creativity. The Dadaists clearly wanted to challenge the way we use language. In this essay I will compare the Dadaist cut-up method with its later adaptations Magnetic Poetry and Words of Oz. My question is whether the critical design approach is sustained in Magnetic Poetry and Words of Oz or if the change in technology and framing has limited the subversive potential from which they originated.