High End Video Game Players Play Experience and Dreams

Power Point Slides from Symposium

International Association for the Study of Dreams, Santa Rosa, CA, July, 2007

Jayne Gackenbach, Grant MacEwan College, Video Game Players Play Experience

Hard core video game players agreed to be interviewed about their experience of game play which will be the focus of this presentation. Although emotions are experienced, thinking occurs, bodies are attended to and self is acknowledged during play, the most noteworthy finding is that of a deep absorption in play.

Bena Kuruvilla, Grant MacEwan College, Hall and Van de Castle Content Analysis of Gamer Dreams

These players dreams showed the largest effect size being higher in dead and imaginary characters, aggression/friendliness percentage and physical aggression than the Hall and Van de Castle norms. But they were lower in bodily misfortunes and dreams with at least one instance of friendliness. Several other variables also showed deviations from the norms.

Alexis Zederayko, University of Alberta, Gamer Dreams Content Relevant to Consciousness in Sleep

All dreams were coded in terms of variables thought to be relevant to the emergence of consciousness in sleep. These dreams showed few palpable sensations, balance or lucidity but did evidence some control with the dream self as showing some third person orientation. Self reflectiveness correlated with lucidity for these dreams.

Jordan Olischefski, Grant MacEwan College, Gamer as Participant-Observer

This gamer will reflect upon his experiences as a gamer, research interviewee and researcher for this study. This first person perspective will further illuminate the data resulting from these interviews.

Discussant: Sanford Rosenberg, PhD, President of Media Research Associates, Dr. Rosenberg has twenty-five years of experience in Media Psychology. He is an educator, lecturer, clinician, and consultant on media projects including movies, games, and the web. He specializes in qualitative knowledge-based research, examining the relationship between language, story, structure, symbol, image, emotion, and experience.