Single-Player Games and the Self: (Game)Play and Transformations

This dissertation is situated in the intersection between games studies and transformative learning theory, drawing from and offering contributions to both traditions. The primary research question of this thesis is concerned with how identity and the self may be constructed, maintained, and/or developed in play with single-player digital games, and how such processes could be defined from a perspective of transformative learning theory. The project relies on 12 participants playing commercial single-player digital games with role-playing elements in a multi-method study inspired by microethnography. A central contribution of the thesis is the methodological framework, which offers insights into the challenges and potential solutions to researching sensitive and fragile habitual activities of solitary gameplay. With the aim of understanding how learning and transformation transpires in solitary gameplay, the research is centred on processes of learning, transformation, and play, rather than results and valuation. The combined method is presented in the thesis as the DisPlay method, which allows an exploratory examination into experienced habitual practises of solitary play with single-player digital games. The DisPlay method is comprised of a four-stage research design where participants deliver gameplay video from their habitual play activities which is analysed and used in a video-elicited interview. The collected data is then subject to a differentiation analysis, which triangulates the research materials and solidifies the data in terms of the individual participant’s original experiences and processes. A central argument of the analysis and theorisation of the thesis is that the player forms a metaphysical playful self, which is an experiential intersection between the personal lifeworld of the player, and the player as situated in the gameworld. The playful self is this state of both being and becoming at the same time, as this intersection is that of continuous self-perception through gameplay. This self-perception emerges as the player activates their personal biography and identity in their relation to the gameworld along with their biography within this gameworld (game biography), and a playful identity that emerges in their relation to the game. As such, the playful self is the intersection of the player's lifeworld self and an experience of self through the embodied gameplay. Transformative processes in gameplay both constitute and are dependent on this playful self. Within the player, evaluative learning processes lead to changes in functionality and sensitivity in relation to the game. These internal evaluations lead to interactions of enacted sociality which transform the playful self and thereby the player within the playful engagement. The relationship of worlds, identities, and self, and the internal evaluations that lead to transformation are presented in the thesis as a model of transformational processes in solitary gameplay.