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1

Experiencing Resilience via Videogames: A content analysis of the Playstation Blog

Jennifer G. Tichon and Timothy Mavin

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of games, where characters must

overcome adversity, on player’s perceptions of their psychological resilience. Located on the

PlayStation Blog (Blog.us.playstation.com) the online PSN Community group focuses on

video-gamers unique stories and experiences. Using a qualitative, exploratory design Blogs

posted between March 2012 and Jan 2013 were analyzed for content describing experiences

via game-play that members reported made them feel more resilient. Both social and

emotional aspects of resilience were discussed with players reporting game experiences had

helped them feel more confident in their abilities. Many also associated themselves with the

same resilient traits as their characters display in games. A range of popular off-the-shelf

video games were reported as helpful in providing players with the opportunity to feel

confident under pressure and, importantly, some players reported transferring these positive

psychological effects to their real-world lives.

Keywords

Online support group, social media, video games, positive psychology

2

Introduction

Psychological research examining video games is presently undergoing a dramatic shift in

focus. Until very recently, the preponderance of research in video games has been concern-

focused, with studies aimed at identifying the potential negative effects of gaming. This has

included the relations between gaming and increased aggression (Fox & Potocki, 2015;

Knowles, 2014) and overuse and association with poor performance at school (Gentile,

Lynch, Linder & Walsh, 2003; Fleming & Rickwood, 2001). More recently, a number of

researchers have become intervention-focused, hoping to harness the magnetic motivational

appeal of video games to help relieve pain and stress or customizing games for educational or

health-related interventions (Baranowski, Buday, Thompson & Baranowski, 2008).

Increasingly, intervention-focused researchers are demonstrating that games can positively

influence both psychological and physical well-being (Przybylski, Rigby & Ryan, 2010).

According to Przybylski, Rigby and Ryan’s (2010) motivational model, based on self-

determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), ‘video games have the potential to enhance

intrinsic motivation and short-term well-being insofar as they provide players with

experiences that satisfy universal psychological needs (p157).’ This perspective emphasizes

motivational processes inherent to the structure of gaming contexts. Namely, games are

generally more or less appealing, and have a greater or lesser influence on player well-being,

as a function of the extent to which the in-game experiences fulfil fundamental psychological

needs.

A significant concern with video game play is that highly violent content may be a significant

motivator of play or source of enjoyment. Research indicates, however, for most players,

3

violent content is unrelated to game appeal. Rather, it is game experiences that support

psychological needs such as autonomy and competence, mastery and resilience that people

find more enjoyable. These games also enhance player self-esteem and affect (Prybylski,

Rigby & Ryan, 2010).

Experiencing resilience via game play

Researchers and society alike are concerned with how people bounce back or recover from

stress and adapt to stressful circumstances (Smith, Dalen & Wiggins, 2008). Psychological

resilience can ameliorate the effects of stress and promote recovery. While resilience research

has primarily focussed on the personal characteristics associated with effective coping, a few

recent studies have investigated the effectiveness of targeted resilience training (Burton,

Pakenham & Brown, 2009). Games where a player’s character must overcome adversity

through picking themselves up and trying again, could exert an influence on their real-life

behaviour via changes in the individual’s automatic self-concept.

Computer games often involve overcoming obstacles to get to the next level and learning to

‘power up’ by hitting or jumping on something that will give you the strength to keep going.

Very similar to life where individuals need to learn to cope with a variety of stresses, keep on

going, and learn along the way how to ‘bounce back up’. In fact game developers promote

the resilience that can be learned:

‘Have you ever failed at anything? Ever been dumped or fired or beat up? ..Once you

pick yourself up, dust yourself off and overcome the things that beat you up, that’s

when you really win…In Infamous 2 you help Cole get there. You guide

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him..searching for new, stronger powers. Soon it’ll be time to overcome the things that

have beaten you in the past. Are you up for it?’ (Fox, 2011)

Role-playing games (RPG) are interactive video games where players deliberately assume the

role of a fictional character and determine their actions based on the character they play.

Players typically follow a set storyline in which they must be successful overcoming obstacles

and completing quests during which their character becomes ever stronger (Bostan & Ogut,

2009). Research into the impact of video games has revealed identification with these

characters leads to automatic associations with the self. That is, players associate themselves

with the same traits as their character in the game. This occurs because game playing

increases the automatic accessibility of traits associated with the self during the game, in the

player’s memory (Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004).

Videogames are designed to gradually increase challenges in line with a player’s progress in

the game. This gradual exposure effect is used to motivate players to stay in the game

however it is also the same approach used in computer-based resilience training designed to

gradually expose trainees to increasing levels of stress (Driskell & Johnston, 1998). The goal

is to provide the opportunity for trainees to gain confidence in their abilities under pressure. It

is possible that video games are incidentally training players to feel confident under pressure

and through trait association players are transferring these positive psychological effects to

their real-world lives?

Computer-based resilience training for professionals

5

Computer-based training via both large simulators and PC-based game applications have been

used as tools for training professionals to be resilient during high stress operations across the

military, aviation, rail and mining for many years (Tichon & Wallis, 2010). It has always been

a goal of simulation training to gradually expose trainees to increasing levels of stress until

trainees are more confident and able to tolerate a significantly higher stressful state before

they start to withdraw (Driskell & Johnson, 1998). This is very similar to the inherent nature

of videogames which are designed to gradually increase challenges in pace with player’s

ability.

Within professional training, content which deliberately influences emotion is an area

receiving increasing attention. In simulator training for first responders to terrorist attacks, it

was ascertained that higher levels of emotional intensity in training was linked to more

effective learning (Tichon, Hall & Hilgers, 2003; Hall, Wilfred & Hilgers, 2004). This

indicates that emotion is a key variable in understanding the success of computer-based

training and serious games to build resilience. Professional trainees, learn how to ignore their

fear when fear isn't useful and how to make quick, complicated decisions in the most fraught

situations (Lehrer, 2009). Similar to games in which a player’s character must overcome and

become stronger, training and games provide the opportunity to practice resilience under

stress.

Resilience has been defined in a variety of ways, including the ability to bounce back or

recover from stress, to adapt to stressful circumstances and to function above the norm in

spite of stress or adversity (Smith, Dalen & Wiggins, 2008). In current military training

resilience appears as a set of cognitive skills that anyone can develop with correct training.

Founded in cognitive behavioural therapy, ‘resilience centres innovativeness, enterprise,

6

responsibility and flexibility’ (Ahern, Kiehl, Sole & Byers, 2006; O’Malley, 2010). This shift

from viewing resilience as made up of elements of human attributes to reconfiguring

resilience as set of skills that can be learned is embodied in the programs of resilience training

adopted by the US, Canadian and Australian military (O’Malley, 2010). Outside the military

most studies of resilience have focused on young people or individuals experiencing specific

adverse circumstances (Burton, Pakenham & Brown, 2009). It is surprising the lack of

investigation outside of military contexts into whether resilience can be enhanced and how

this might best be achieved. In the area of preventative health, the potential of psychosocial

resilience training to promote well-being has only recently been investigated (Burton,

Pakenham & Brown, 2009). However, outdoor education philosophers have argued for some

time that controlled exposure to challenge can also be used to train psychological resilience

(Neill & Dias, 2012).

The complexity of defining and measuring the construct of resilience has been widely

recognised (Windle, Bennett & Noyes, 2011). To ensure dimensions of resilience examined in

the current study aligned with current research the qualitative themes were drawn from valid

resilience scales reported in the literature as having had their psychometric properties

evaluated using published assessment criteria. The majority of published scales reflect the

availability of assets and resources that facilitate resilience. The Brief Resilience Scale items

correspond with the ability to recover and cope with difficulties, on personal or individual

level (Smith, Dalen & Wiggins, 2008). While personal agency is important for negotiating

adversity, the availability of resources from the level of family and community are also

important. For this project we developed five main themes under which to code the qualitative

data contained in the blogs. These were drawn from the Youth Resiliency: Assessing

Developmental Strengths (YR-ADS) (Donnon & Hammond, 2007) and the Adolescent

7

Resilience Scale (Oshie et al., 2003) in order to be able to assess both the range of protective

mechanisms within multiple domains (within family, among friends and at work) and the

presence of resilience as a dynamic process of personal adaptation (emotion regulation).

Emotion regulation is described in the coding themes as encompassing the development of

positive emotions and coping with negative emotions.

The primary aim of this project was to investigate if players report an increase in

psychological resilience via the experience of bouncing back and recovering from set-

backs/losses in videogames and whether they are using these experiences to cope in their real

world lives.

Methods

This study is an exploratory one using qualitative content analysis of online messages sent to

Blog.us.playstation.com. ‘PSN Community Spotlight’ is a discussion board located on the

main Playstation site. The messages sent to this section of the site were chosen for analysis as

it was specifically placed on the website to provide PlayStation users with a forum in which to

‘share their unique stories, experiences and thoughts’. These messages were therefore

personal and informal as opposed to other areas of the website provide information of a more

general nature such as when new games will be released and hardware upgrades. Players

submit to PSN Community Spotlight section via PlayStation Community Forums each week.

The only specific writing requirement in terms of topics to be covered being ‘must be related

to PlayStation’ and ‘PlayStation is a big part of our daily lives. Break it down why it’s

awesome for you.’ (Blog.us.playstation). Any Playstation game could be discussed. As a

result posts encompassed a very long list of video games ranging from adventure games to

8

first-person shooter games including Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Final Fantasy VII,

Smuggler’s Run, Drake’s Fortune, Counter-Strike and Call of Duty among others.

Messages posted to the weekly PSN Community Spotlight comprise the data used for the

study. Specifically blogs posted between March 2012 and Jan 2013 (n=38) were analysed for

content reporting on the experience of resilience through game play. The blogs were posted

by 38 separate individuals and varied in length from 400 to 1000 words in length. These blogs

represent all messages published on the PSN Community Spotlight by the website manager

during those dates. The dates were selected because they represent the entire time that forum

was live on the website. The messages contained within the individual blogs were compared

using content analysis in which each line was treated as a separate text unit and coded. Using

lines as text units preserved the flow of the text while allowing for fine coding.

During this qualitative analysis, the objective of the coding scheme was to describe the topics

addressed in blogs posted to the site and identify themes in blogs which reported on topics

related to resilience as shared by individual participants. Those topics identified as related to

resilience were also coded as describing incidences occurring either in the game or in the real

world. The coding scheme allowed each blog to be coded as including more than one topic

related to resilience. Five main themes were identified for the resilience topics describing

incidences in the real world. These were 1) Experiencing Resilience with Family, 2)

Experiencing Resilience with Friends, 3) Experiencing Resilience at Work, 4) Resilience and

Developing Positive Emotion, and 5) Resilience and Coping with Negative Emotion. These

categories covered areas research has highlighted as influencing resiliency, ie. Family, peers

and work, and the psychological characteristic of resilience known as emotion regulation

9

which looks at coping with positive and negative emotion (Donnon & Hammond, 2007;

Oshio, Kaneko, Nagamine & Nakaya, 2003)

To assess inter-rater reliability for the coding scheme, a second coder independently coded a

subset of original data (4 full blogs which represented just over 10% of the data). The subset

was generated from a random number list of the PlayStation blogs. The second coder was

given explicit criteria for rating. The percentage agreement across coding ranged from 98%

for topics through to 86.7% for resilience topics.

Once data was gathered all names and identifying features within the blogs were changed to

ensure the privacy of the gamers. While bloggers may have already been using pseudonyms

this could not be determined and it may make them feel exposed to see even pseudonyms in

print. Alphabetic letter identifiers were assigned to all individual bloggers to protect their

identities. Excluding this name substitution, all of the statements quoted in this paper are

exactly as they appear currently on Blog.us.Playstation.com. No individuals provided any

biographical information on the site however from the content of the messages which

discussed family life it appeared to be a site accessed prominently by younger adults rather

than children. As the site is publically available information, university guidelines did not

require ethics approval for this study.

Results

The data showed that participants in the blog community often discussed topics related to

resilience and that they related these to their real-world lives. Even though the topic of

resilience was not targeted specifically for discussion through the forum, it appeared

10

unprompted in 66% (n=25) of the posts. The experience of learning to be more resilient was

always discussed as a highly positive outcome of game playing.

Table 1 lists the total number of messages in which these topics were discussed and the

percentage this represents of the total number of messages coded as discussing topics related

to resilience.

Table 1. Resilience topics discussed in the group.

Main Resilience Topic Number of messages % of Resilience messages

Experiencing Resilience

with Family

9 36%

Experiencing Resilience

with Friends

4 16%

Experiencing Resilience at

Work

5 20%

Resilience and Developing

Positive Emotion

3 12%

Resilience and Coping

with Negative Emotion

4 16%

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Examples of these resilience topics related to the real-world are provided in the next section

and discussed under the five main thematic headings. Under each topic area examples are

provided. These are direct quotes from group members from those posts where they recounted

instances where they had used experiences in the game to help cope with real world problems.

Experiencing Resilience with Family

Literature with a focus on protective factors notes that resiliency is influenced by experiences

with family (Donnon & Hammond, 2007). Under Experiencing Resilience with Family, one

gamer discussed the stress the family experienced when his brother was diagnosed with a

serious medical condition and as a consequence underwent multiple surgeries over a period of

ten years. In order to support the brother and help the family members provide support, the

family played video games in the hospital room when visiting. In this example the blogger

stated, that he, other family members and his sick brother used their video game experiences

‘..to take our lives back and dominate (Blogger C).’ The video games were used as a tool to

help them not only cope with the brother’s illness but also assist the players to feel stronger

emotionally. Family cohesion is highlighted as an important underlying factor in resilience

research (Hjemdal, Friborg, Stiles, Martinussen & Rosenvinge, 2006).

Using video game play to cope when difficulties arise in the families circumstances were also

discussed. Blogger N gave a number of examples in the one post of the times game play

helped. These included coping with parental divorce and his father’s job loss when he was

young. Later the use of game play helped him find the resilience needed to work two jobs

when his girlfriend lost her job. He states, ‘we seemed to not see each other at all’ and

describes ‘the only thing that kept me going at this point’ as being the second Ratchet and

Clank game.

12

Experiencing Resilience with Friends

External support systems such as peers are another key factor supporting resilience (Donnon

& Hammond, 2007). Discussing a friend diagnosed with a cancer that eventually took his life,

one gamer describes him as ‘the bravest person I know, he wasn’t afraid of anything, and was

always up for the challenge (Blogger E).’ Videogames are reported as assisting both friends,

through game play, to ‘find joy during difficult times’. This blogger discusses using

videogames during moments of adversity to help his friend stay strong and refers to video

games as a ‘light in a dark time’. Another gamer introduces their story with, ‘this is a story

gamers should be familiar with….fighting back against overwhelming darkness (Blogger K).’

Gamers acknowledge and are often proud of the fact that many games use the theme of

overcoming adversity as a major motivational factor to stay engaged with and stay determined

to win the game.

Experiencing Resilience at Work

Work is viewed as an external support system in resiliency literature and commitment to work

as a protective factor underlying psychological resilience (Donnon & Hammond, 2007).

Under Experiencing Resilience at Work one blog reports on the role video games play in

assisting soldiers in the defence forces to stay in touch and ‘stay strong’. For those stationed

overseas, players back home would stay up late to play with them during their lunch hours. In

a different blog, referring to a virtual battlefield, another gamer encapsulates the resilient

attitude many gamers talk about when he/she encourage other players, ‘..see you on the

battlefield and as always, game on and stay thirsty my friends (Blogger L).’

Resilience and Developing Positive Emotion

13

While several bloggers did relate the resilience they experienced during game-play to specific

events occurring within the family, work or among friendships many more spoke more

generally about how playing games evoked positive emotions which they were then able to

carry with them out of the game context and into real life. Resilience is regarded as being

comprised of both social and emotional aspects. Under Resilience and Developing Positive

Emotion, positive emotions coded as associated with feeling resilient included ‘feeling

determined’, feeling like a god among men’ and ‘basking in triumph.’ One gamer describing

their real life states, ‘I owe it all to Sony, for giving me the strength and determination to do

whatever I set my mind to (Blogger G).’

Group members believed that lessons in overcoming difficulty within the game context were

going to influence life in the real world. For example one father said of his son’s game

playing, ‘Even though I told him that it will be quite difficult, he seems pretty determined.

I’m thinking there’s a life lesson in there somewhere (Blogger B).’ Another player states,

‘Nothing in the world could compare to beating the game, that changed my life in many ways.

It took me 8 long years of trial and error to finally feel like I accomplished a giant life

goal…Thankyou PS for taking me to worlds of beauty and grandeur, where anything is

possible and dreams become a reality (Blogger I).’

Resilience and Coping with Negative Emotion

Blogs discussed experiencing negative emotions in the real world and using game experiences

to overcome them. These negative emotions included depression and fear. For example, one

blog discussed how game-play helped them remember ‘things won’t always stay bad’

(Blogger D) and how video games helped this player to overcome their depression. Another

blog discussed lessons learned playing games over many years since childhood when the

14

player was ‘a small boy who would hide behind his father’s recliner’. Video games allowed

him to ‘battle dark creatures’ until he was no longer afraid. For this player these are

‘experiences that I take with me everywhere I go’ and they emphasize the role of games in

providing the opportunity to experiences resilience to build confidence, ‘Thankyou for letting

me perform…letting me explore…letting me battle (Blogger H).’

Sometimes a specific game would be cited as having directly assisted in coping with real life

events. One blogger described a home invasion and physical assault by the robbers who then

stole their every possession. The player reports being devastated and falling into a deep

depression, ‘..the robbers had taken my sense of security and at least some of my sanity that

night (Blogger K). This gamer specifically refers to the Final Fantasy VII game and the lead

character Tifa whose game adventures helped the player ‘realize that I could pick myself up

and fight back against the darkness, even when it all seems hopeless (Blogger K).’

Discussion

In messages where players described their experiences in building resilience through game

play and the subsequent use of those experiences to cope in the real world, they covered both

the social (in families, with friends and at work) and emotional aspects of resilience.

Resilience is the process of negotiating, managing and adapting to sources of stress and it is

the resources within the individual’s life that enables and facilitates this capacity for

‘bouncing back’ in the face of adversity (Windle, Bennett & Noyes, 2011). In this project,

video games were repeatedly described as the most important and key resource that were used

to help individual’s ‘bounce back’. Aspects considered critical for resilient functioning

include positive emotions, cognitive flexibility, social support, life meaning and active coping

15

(Burton, Pakenham & Brown, 2009). Certainly the content analysis of the PlayStation Blog

revealed all these aspects of resilience present in the participant’s posts to the PSN

community website.

Players discussed the professional training equivalent of repeated practice provided during

game play. They talked of the game giving them experience by ‘letting me battle on’ and the

confidence of being able to repeat failures until the desired outcome of winning and ‘beating

the game’ had been achieved and how in these achievements it felt like life goals had been

successfully accomplished. With these successes and accompanying sense of achievement,

they had learned ‘anything is possible and dreams become a reality’. These outcomes relate

directly to training designs in serious games where the aim is to support the professional’s

confidence in his/her ability to cope under pressure by allowing them the opportunity to

practice until they have had the opportunity to experience mastery or to ‘win’. Gamers

described this confidence in their ability as ‘basking in the triumphs’.

Research into the impact of video games has also revealed exposure may lead to automatic

associations with the self. This occurs because game playing increases the automatic

accessibility of traits associated with the self during the game, in the player’s memory

(Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004). A number of players discussed their identification and

associations with the characters and their traits in the games they played. Some did this in a

more general discussion of how they took all their game experiences personally. Others made

direct associations with specific characters. The blogger who described her efforts to be

resilient following robbery and assault, said she was successful because ‘it’s what Tifa would

do’. Tifa is a very strong and resilient female character from the game Final Fantasy VII.

Another blog directly named the confident and capable treasure hunter from the game Drake’s

16

Fortune as influencing their real life association with the traits of ‘manliness and superhuman

will.’ Yet another described their own emotional reactions to events impacting on their

character in the game, ‘as the shell exploded into my character’s body, I felt a sense of

annoyance’ and how when this happened time and time again it motivated the gamer to not

only bounce back and win the game but to also ‘stay thirsty’ to overcome.

Prior research in psychology on the impact of games indicates it is highly probable that

experiencing and practicing resilience in a game will have a carry-over effect into real life.

Certainly the blogs analysed in this study talked about gaining ‘life lessons’ and a number of

them discussed how lessons learned from experiences in games are taken wherever the person

goes. Videogame experiences had a big impact on the individual because ‘we took it

personally.’

Resilience is a measure of stress coping ability and as such could be an important target of

treatment in anxiety, depression and stress reactions (Connor & Davidson, 2003). The current

content analysis indicates that video games do impact player’s perceptions of their resilience.

This may be an untapped potential application of video games the limitations of the current

study need to be addressed to ascertain any real benefit. The themes we used to code the

blogs were drawn from validated resilience scales and the data appeared to match these

criteria very closely. The amount of discussion around resilience themes unsolicited by the

aims of the group was surprising. However, without a follow-up survey directly with bloggers

it can’t be ascertained to what extent they themselves understood their comments to be

reflecting dimensions of resilience. Only through more direct survey or interview could it be

explored if gamers interpret the positive emotions experienced when conquering a game foe,

for example, as impacting them personally and to what extent in their real world lives.

17

Research on games and player motivation derived from the social sciences has lagged behind

the fast pace of technical innovations within the game industry itself. Future research using a

mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches to empirically explore and expand our

understanding of both the positives in addition to the negatives of immersion in games need to

be undertaken. Based on the findings of this exploratory study further research designed to

explore the correlation between game play and increased psychological resilience is needed.

To gain direct access to players opinions and feedback and to also increase the number of

participants, future research could explore accessing bloggers via other methods such as

online forums or face-to-face during game conventions.

This study is an important step toward expanding research into the potential positive aspects

of playing popular, off-the-shelf videogames as opposed to videogames which have been

constructed to specifically target education or teach health-related lessons which have largely

been the focus of positive outcome research to date. With the video game phenomena having

ever increasing impact across all societies, expanding research of this kind will assist current

efforts being undertaken to harness the widespread appeal of videogames to leverage positive

outcomes in society. Currently more is known about what to avoid when choosing games but

not what games to choose for positive outcomes. Identifying strengths of games will help

those vulnerable to aggressive or addictive behaviours, and advance the basic science of what

is going on when humans play.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of

this article.

18

Author Information

Jennifer G. Tichon is Senior Research Fellow at the Griffith Institute for Educational research

at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and may be contacted at j.tichon@griffith.edu.au

Timothy Mavin is Associate Professor at the Griffith Institute for Educational research at

Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and may be contacted at t.mavin@griffith.edu.au

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