Véronique Donard, Eric Simar : video gods. of the adolescent spiritual dimension in video games

RPG and MMORPG-type video games offer adolescents the opportunity to redynamize their belief processes, which have been blocked by archaic conflicts reactivated in puberty. They seem to help soothe the depressive affect proper to the pubertary through an manic investment of the virtual universe ; this enables the adolescent to invent a grandiose self, and to work at reconstructing a self that is grieving for childhood.

Adolescence, 2013, T. 31, n°4, pp. 815-821.