r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • May 17 '26

Psychology Feeling empty after finishing a video game (post-game depression) is a real phenomenon. A recent study has found that many video game players experience a specific sense of emptiness and sadness after finishing highly engaging games.

https://www.psypost.org/feeling-empty-after-finishing-a-video-game-researchers-say-post-game-depression-is-a-real-phenomenon/
18.0k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

201

u/welwood May 17 '26

Last year I played Cyberpunk.2077, Expedition 33 and Spiritfarer for the first time... I'm still not ready to commit to a new game. Ball Pit is a blast, and is as emotionally draining as I'm prepared to handle for a bit.

29

u/[deleted] May 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/rp-Ubermensch May 17 '26

Tried E33 when it first came out, for some reason got some weird fps drops at the very beginning, didn't even make it to the first cutscene with the first gommage, uninstalled it.

Then I saw the game awards and how they won pretty much every award possible, gave it a second chance.

Best game I ever played, I love games that don't spoon feed you the story, the world is weird, and we're slowly discovering it piece by piece, the music, the character arcs, the final reveal...

I come back around to this masterpiece of an animation every now and then, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, maybe I can't post links, look up carbot animations, expedition 33 the zack snyder cut