Video games offer immense potential for identity formation and social participation for players with disabilities; nevertheless, fragmented accessibility settings and assistive tools often impose cycles of uncompensated accessibility labor. We explore the Game AI Assistant (GAIA) concept, designed as a framework for personalized support that should adapt to both game context and inferred needs, while preserving autonomy and fair play. We conducted ethics-approved, semi-structured interviews with seven hardcore players with disabilities. Participants were shown a prototype in the context of a high-concentration fighting game to elicit their perceptions and needs. Thematic analysis revealed a core conflict around the psychological state of flow: the prototype was valued for reducing accessibility labor during low-focus preparatory phases but was rejected as a disruptive intrusion during high-concentration moments. While participants appreciated guidance on accessibility resources, they criticized the prototype’s limited customization and verbose responses. Based on these findings, we propose two design principles. The first, Dual Context Adaptation, mandates that an assistant must dynamically adapt its behavior to protect the player’s state of flow. The second, an Ethical Framework for Agency and Accomplishment, is grounded in Self-Determination Theory, so the assistant protects the player’s fundamental needs for autonomy and competence.

Understanding the experiences of players with disabilities is a key research issue in game accessibility. However, less is known about the values that young players experience from games, particularly in relation to their situational context as adolescents and young adults with disabilities. We explore how the values of accessible gaming are created in players’ lives by analyzing interviews with five players with cerebral palsy (CP) (age range 13–25 years) and their parents through the lens of developmental tasks theory. Using thematic analysis, we discovered three themes that illustrated how video games’ roles changed according to their life stages: “Establishing Healthy Self in Family”, “Navigating Peer Culture”, and “Preparing Adult Life”. Our results indicated that young players with CP made active decisions in their life and developed supportive relationships from playing accessible games. The changes in their desired developmental task and social contexts influenced the values they found in games. We discuss video games as a sociocultural resource that assists young players with CP to attain the developmental tasks they desire and achieve social inclusion. We conclude with design insights for creating more inclusive gameplay experiences for young players with CP.

This study explores whether a life metaphoric game can effectively facilitate communication between senior participants and young adult partners during a life review activity. Life review provides older adults with opportunities to organize their past experiences, rediscover the meaning of life, and prepare for their future life and eventual death. We held workshops in which 33 senior participants (ages 51-85) co-played a commercial game, titled "Long Journey of Life," paired with young adult partners (ages 19-23). The young partners asked senior participants about their associated memories during the life review activity. Through inductive thematic analysis, we found seven communication themes during the life review activity: reminiscence, future and death preparation, life advice, appreciation and evaluation, small talks involving self-disclosure, interpretation of metaphors, and explanation of game control methods. We investigated the relationships between communication themes and game design elements that promote conversation. In addition, we identified how participants' responses to the game differ depending on the player's characteristics and generation. Game design suggestions for an effective intergenerational life review using digital games were offered.

Internet Addiction (IA) constitutes an excessive Internet use behavior with a significant impact on the user’s well-being. Online flow describes the users’ level of being absorbed by their online activity. The present study investigated age-related, gender, and flow effects on IA in adolescence. The sample comprised 648 adolescents who were assessed twice at age 16 and 18 years. IA was assessed using the Internet Addiction Test and online flow was assessed using the Online Flow Questionnaire. A three-level hierarchical model estimated age-related, gender, and online flow effects on IA symptoms and controlled for clustered random effects. IA symptoms decreased over time (for both genders) with a slower rate in males. Online flow was associated with IA symptoms and this remained consistent over time. Findings expand upon the available literature suggesting that IA symptoms could function as a development-related manifestation at the age of 16 years, while IA-related gender differences gradually increase between 16 and 18 years. Finally, the association between online flow and IA symptoms remained stable independent of age-related effects. The study highlights individual differences and provides directions for more targeted prevention and intervention initiatives for IA.

This study suggests an approach for the computational modeling of players' emotional response patterns to story events in video games. We propose what is termed the dynamic narrative emotion model for analyzing the emotional response patterns of video game players by combining and reconstructing the OCC cognitive emotion model and D. Price's emotional intensity equation. Based on this model, we compared with two emotional response patterns of players to story events in both commercially successful and unsuccessful video games. The analysis was conducted with 360 emotional response values extracted from the playing experiences of 10 player's. The results showed that responses from commercially successful games are 3.3 times higher in terms of the frequency of emotion transitions, 1.3 times in terms of the number of emotion types, and twice as high in terms of the distance of an emotion transition compared to those of unsuccessful games. The results of this study can be applied by game designers with two implications for creating story-driven video games; first, to differentiate the emotional responses patterns of players in successful games from unsuccessful games, and second, to develop emotional transition strategies when designing story events in accordance with feedback from the players' emotional response patterns while playing the games.