The Journey

Devil's Plaything: On the Boundary Between Playful and Serious

Jørgensen's essay "Devil's Plaything" challenges the common assumption that seriousness and play are opposites.

The Positive Negative Experience in Extreme Role-Playing

Markus Montola's study examines two Nordic freeform role-playing games, Gang Rape and The Journey, which are deliberately engineered to provoke horror, disgust, powerlessness, and discomfort.

• The study by Markus Montola examines two Nordic freeform role-playing games, Gang Rape and The Journey, engineered to provoke horror, disgust, powerlessness, and discomfort, and argues they produce a "positive negative" experience in which players find sessions gratifying and powerful rather than enjoyable.
• Based on interviews with fifteen experienced players, the work finds a consistent pattern of distress alongside appreciation: many reported crying, physiological stress, and lingering discomfort, yet none regretted playing Gang Rape and most reported positive takeaways.
• The "bleed" designs, which blur the boundary between player and character, make it difficult for participants to disengage from the fiction once a session begins, and they foster intense bonding and reliance on mutual support among players.