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Perezhivanie and the study of role-playing games

Culture & Psychology

Published online on

Abstract

We propose the use of the concept of perezhivanie, from Cultural Historical Activity Theory, in the analysis of analog role-playing games. In the first section, we present perezhivanie as phenomena and as a concept in Vygotsky’s theory, then we relate the concept of perezhivanie to the theory of the higher mental functions development, and end up articulating perezhivanie to the concept of performance. In the second section, we identify the phenomena of perezhivanie in Role-playing games and its relation to the phenomena of immersion and bleed, proposing the use of the concepts from the first section to better understand role-playing games.