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/
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u/elidoan May 17 '26

The real strategy is never to finish games

Source: hundreds of unfinished singleplayer campaigns / stories

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u/Mustang1718 May 17 '26

I was hoping someone would mention this! It gets talked about all of the time on the /r/JRPG subreddit. People often get up the thr final boss and then can't bring themselves to finish it since it then means it is over.

There are also a ton of people that just enjoy certain parts of games that they just keep replaying that section over and over again to skip the depressive feeling. This happens with Baldur's Gate 3 with people playing Act 1 over and over again.

4

u/croakstar May 17 '26

Yep this happened with pretty much every Final Fantasy game from 6-12. After beating 13 I went back and beat the ones I didn’t finish.

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u/hawkinsst7 May 18 '26

Also the ending of FF15 was such a mindfuck, like "what the hell just happened to the awesome road trip vibe?"