Meaningful video games: Drama-based video games as transformational experience

The development of more meaningful video games is becoming increasingly possible by recent advances in video game technologies, neurosciences, and biofeedback. In the near future, meaningful video games will be designed to facilitate personal-psychological transformation. Unlike "serious games" that focus on education and "conditioning" the mind, meaningful games will cultivate emotional intelligence, somatic awareness, and archetypal integration in order to "un-condition" the mind and thereby facilitate psychologically meaningful personal transformations. Meaningful game research will access the dynamics of psychological transformation in order to enhance archetypal awareness, intuition, and insight on the part of players. Within the genre of meaningful video games, Drama-Based Games (DBG) add an unprecedented dimension for psychological engagement and decision-making. Because they extend psychological player immersion to the dimension of "physical" interactivity, (DBG) incorporate the full range of psychological functions defined by Carl Jung. Because psychological experiences are correlated with physiological processes, DBG may be used as research instruments for quantifying diverse biometric-psychological interactions that occur during game play. Advances in electronics now enable the real-time and non-intrusive capturing of physiological data such as brain waves (e.g., electroencephalography), heart-rate variability, skin response, and facial expression. This data can provide an objective basis for measuring dimensions of the cognitive unconscious in test subjects as they respond to game experiences. The ultimate goal of research is to provide veridical data relative to the psychological parameters of an increasingly mediated global environment-a Psychecology-and to study the ensuing world-view.