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Exploring the Idea of Transferring Gender Dysphoria with "Blue."

Author
Hardner, Johanna
Published
[University Park, Pennsylvania] : Pennsylvania State University, 2018.
Physical Description
1 electronic document + 1 video file
Additional Creators
Lum, Heather and Schreyer Honors College
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Open Access.
Summary
Gender dysphoria is a common experience for transgender people. Gender dysphoria references the emotional turmoil and feeling of wrongness that is experienced in conjunction with gender incongruence. The paper explores the idea of transferring the feelings that are typical of gender dysphoria to a player of a video game. The theory for transference and a players slow adjustment to it is based on perception adaptation to inverted vision. The game created for the thesis in turn tests this premise on inverted and relatedly jumbled controls. The game was developed specifically for this concept over the course of a year. It attempts to include a transgender narrative to marry the story with the mechanics of the game. A psychology study was then conducted using the game to test how well transference works within the gamer population, which found that symptoms akin to gender dysphoria could be transferred to a player, but that the mechanics chosen as a vehicle for this had less of an effect on more hardcore gamers. It is important to recognize that games can evoke powerful emotions not just through their narratives, but also through their mechanics. This helps demonstrate the potential of games to have meaningful social commentary and be a force for the deeper understanding of issues, not just to be a recreational medium.
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Dissertation Note
B.S. Pennsylvania State University, 2018.
Digital File Characteristics
video file mp4 video file
Technical Details
The full text of the dissertation is available as an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file ; Adobe Acrobat Reader required to view the file.
View MARC record | catkey: 23431145