The book Boundaries of Self and Reality Online: Implications of Digitally Constructed Realities edited by Jayne Gackenbach & Johnathan Bown, includes a chapter by me and Mark D. Griffiths. “Beyond the Boundaries of the Game: The Interplay Between In-Game Phenomena, Structural Characteristics of Video Games, and Game Transfer Phenomena”.
This chapter is a first attempt to map in-game phenomena and structural characteristics of video games, with transfers of game experiences manifesting in a number of modalities: altered perceptions, automatic mental processes, and behaviours with the purpose of stimulating future empirical work for hypothesis testing. This chapter also examines which phenomena, inherent to the video game world and elements in the gameplay, appear to contribute to the transfer of game experiences.
We have identified four core factors relevant for GTP to occur: (1) sensory perceptual stimulation, (2) high cognitive load, (3) dissociative states, and (4) high emotional engagement.
I want to thank my dear colleague Jayne Gackenbach for the invitation to collaborate in this book. It is a particular pleasure for me to appear in a book together with John Suler, one of my favourite scholars when I started investigating the psychosocial effects of Internet and addiction in 1998 for my undergraduate thesis for becoming a psychologist.
John Suler’s initiative with his website on the psychology of the Cyberspace together with Sherry Turkle and her book “The life on the screen”, Kimberly Young with her centre Net Addiction and her book “Caught in the Net”, and Mark D. Griffiths’ research were crucial for me choosing Cyberpsychology as my main area of research.
I remember my times in “the Palace” (a visual, spatial and auditory chat environment that was quite advance for 1995) where Suler conducted his social research on the psychology of the cyberspace.
Wow! This really brings back memories about the ambience in there. I can almost remember the sounds!