Existential, Transformative Game Design

This paper explores an approach towards creating existential, transformative games—games that contribute to a meaningful life. It takes its departure from existential psychotherapy and proposes to draw on its main themes and goals to inform the conception of game ideas and gameplay experiences. Making an argument for the function of myth to communicate existential ideas in a way that speaks to the unconscious and affects intrinsically motivated, personal change—change that is based on psychological resonance rather than imposition or force—it investigates strategies for game designers to create new mythologies.