Speaker

Name: Games for Health Europe Conference
Start: 2026-03-30T09:00
End: 2025-03-31T18:00

Speaker Info

Biography: Ilektra Seferiadi is a Mental Health Counselor and a Master of Science graduate of the American College of Greece. Her academic interests and future research aspirations center on emotional regulation and the ways psychologically demanding environments can cultivate effective, adaptive coping skills beyond traditional clinical settings. Her curiosity about emotional regulation in unlikely spaces emerged early through long-term immersion in online gaming communities, particularly Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). This experiential background now informs her qualitative research, which seeks not only to foreground the lived perspectives of individuals in online spaces, but also to challenge prevailing deficit-based narratives surrounding both online gaming environments and the players themselves. By examining these spaces through a psychological and phenomenological lens, her work aims to move beyond reductive portrayals of gamers as disengaged or maladaptive, and instead highlight the complexity, discipline, and emotional skill involved in sustained high-level play.

Title: Emotional Regulation Through The Lens of MMORPG Raiding: How The Player's Experiences Matter

Summary: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are among the most popular and socially complex forms of online gaming worldwide. This presentation explores high-end raiding as a psychologically demanding, cooperative activity in which players develop adaptive emotional regulation skills under sustained performance pressure. Drawing on qualitative interviews with experienced raiders, the presentation examines how individuals navigate stress, failure, performance anxiety, and interpersonal tension while maintaining group cohesion and accountability. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, five core thematic domains are discussed, including mastery-oriented motivation, the role of performance metrics, emotional management during high-pressure encounters, raiding as a virtual microsociety, and the development of trust and enduring social bonds. The findings challenge prevailing narratives that frame online gaming primarily as problematic or addictive, instead highlighting the emotional discipline, attentional control, and cognitive reappraisal involved in high-level collaborative play. The presentation concludes by discussing implications for psychological research and clinical practice, positioning online gaming environments as under-recognized spaces for cultivating transferable emotional regulation skills and for re-examining assumptions about both gaming spaces and the individuals who inhabit them.