The first-ever scientific study into the feeling of “post-game depression,” the oddly empty, wistful feeling of sadness you get after finishing a video game, has unsurprisingly deduced that RPGs evoke “stronger post-game depression than other games.” However, participants for the study were recruited via Reddit and Discord, which implies that they were probably already prone to feelings of misery before the testing took place.
The study, published in the Current Psychology journal (via News Medical Life Sciences), was conducted by researchers from SWPS University and the Stefan Batory Academy of Applied Sciences, who set out to measure the “sense of emptiness that arises after completing a deeply immersive game.” Post-Game Depression, or P-DGS as they refer to it, was measured across two separate studies, with a total of 373 participants. As noted in the study’s abstract, the researchers also measured four specific subscales: “Game-related Ruminations, Challenging End of Experience, Necessity of Repeating the Game and Media Anhedonia.”
Turns out, media anhedonia (the diminished enjoyment of all forms of media) was the least “intense” aspect of P-DGS, whereas “game-related ruminations” (dwelling on the thought of the game being over) was the most intense. The study also states that “stronger depressive symptoms” and “disturbances in emotional processing” were most apparent among those who had completed RPGs, which leads me to believe that we should now classify Red Dead Redemption II as a role-playing game.
While this is the first time that research of this kind has been carried out for video games, the findings do line up with a 2012 study on the same topic for fiction books, which concluded that reading the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle or José Saramago would “emotionally transport” participants into becoming more empathetic. Yeah, sure, Saramago’s writing slaps, but it’s got nothing on Sora and Kairi parting ways in Kingdom Hearts III, bro.