TSpace

Abstract (summary): An autopathographical game is an autobiographical narrative of illness and disability applied to the creative process of computer game authorship. Autopathographical game design (AGD) during an Autopathographical Game Jam (AGJ) is a healing process for game designers—a therapoetic platform for self-care, self-understanding, and therapy. This data-driven theorization examines how thirteen game designers with mental illness, emotional trauma, and disability author autopathographical games during an Autopathographical Game Jam—specifically how they render their autopathographical narratives through the distinct formal properties of computer game design, and how this process feels therapeutic. The first-person experiences informing their design processes include bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), attention/deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), colour-blindness, grief, shyness, childhood memories of being bullied, and insomnia. This study’s findings demonstrate that autopathographical game design engenders four dimensions of poiesis (creative making) that co-constitute AGD-AGJ as a therapeutic process, and when integrated amplify the therapeutic effects on the game designer: sociopoiesis (collective making during the AGJ), autopoiesis (self-making through a self-reflexive and introspective praxis), fabulopoiesis (re-imagining the self through metaphor and analogy), and logopoiesis (reevaluating the self through the articulated ‘calculated making’ of implementation and programming). The integrated therapeutic effects of these four dimensions seem to arise when subjects inhabit three epistemological perspectives during the AGD-AGJ process: the first-person subjective perspective (autopoiesis), the second-person relational perspective (sociopoiesis), and the third-person objective perspective (fabulopoiesis and logopoiesis), which together cater to well-being. This study’s qualitative methodology is situated in a framework of grounded theory, case studies, discourse analysis, and research-creation. Data collection methods are semi-structured interviews with subjects, video recordings of the two-day Autopathographical Game Jam, and collection of subjects’ processual artifacts, e.g., sketches and doodles. Discourse analysis of interview testimony and processual artifacts is used to theorize on the phenomenological ontology that defines the AGD-AGJ experience for subjects.