Daily Deals from a Nerd Mom

Photo by Alena Darmel

When I first finished Red Dead Redemption 2, I sat there staring at the title screen for a long time, not ready to close the game. Not ready to accept that it was actually over.

If you know, you know. Arthur Morgan’s story is one of the most emotionally complete narratives in gaming – a slow burn across dozens of hours that ends with you grieving a fictional outlaw like he was someone you actually knew. By the time those credits rolled I had put real time, real choices, and real emotional investment into that world. And when it was gone, it left a specific kind of hollow behind that I wasn’t quite prepared for.

I’ve had that same feeling after finishing a book series I loved. After the last episode of a show I’d been watching for years. It’s that particular brand of grief that’s hard to explain to people who don’t experience it – especially because the thing you’re mourning was never technically real.

But here’s the thing: your brain didn’t get that memo.

Your Brain Doesn’t Know the Difference

According to Dr. Charles Sweet, a Johns Hopkins-trained psychiatrist and medical advisor for Linear Health, our brains sometimes perceive real and imagined social relationships in the same way. The limbic system (the part of us that handles emotions) can light up in similar ways whether we’re watching a close friend suffer or watching a beloved character get cut from a show.

That’s not a metaphor. That’s actual neurological overlap.

Research published in PMC found that parasocial relationships (the bonds we form with fictional characters) share real similarities with our real-world relationships, can feel psychologically genuine, and are perceived as personally meaningful. The term “parasocial relationship” has been around since the 1950s, coined by researchers Horton and Wohl to describe that one-sided sense of intimacy we feel with people (or characters) who don’t know we exist. For decades it was mostly discussed in terms of celebrities, but researchers have since confirmed it absolutely extends to fictional characters in games, books, and TV.

And the bond isn’t shallow. These relationships develop over time as characters essentially “share” experiences with you, building a sense of genuine intimacy. Think about how long you spent with your favorite characters. Hundreds of hours in some cases. Your brain processed all of that like a real relationship – which means when it ends, it can feel like a real loss.

You Got Transported – Literally

There’s a concept in psychology called narrative transportation theory, developed by researchers Green and Brock in 2000, and it describes exactly what happens when a story really gets you.

Narrative transportation is the experience in which all of your mental processes (your attention, your emotions, your mental imagery) become concentrated on the events happening in the story. Transported individuals respond emotionally to narrative events and form vivid mental images of settings and characters. And crucially, it can happen across all media: books, TV, games, anything.

When you’re in that transported state, you tend to remember the story content more deeply, you adopt beliefs and attitudes that align with the narrative, and you engage less critically with what’s happening. In other words, your defenses are down. You’re fully in it. The story isn’t something you’re watching from the outside – you’ve mentally moved in.

Neuroscience backs this up. When you’re transported into a story, your brain’s visual and sensory cortex activate as if you’re actually seeing the events unfold. You don’t just observe the character – you begin to experience what’s happening as if it’s happening to you.

So is it any wonder that when it stops, your brain experiences something like withdrawal?

The Dopamine Loop Nobody Warned You About

Part of what makes a gripping story feel so good is what it does to your brain chemistry. Suspense, the narrative tension of not knowing what comes next, releases dopamine, the pleasurable brain chemical that helps with attention, learning, and emotions. It also releases cortisol, which commands your brain to pay attention. Story by story, chapter by chapter, episode by episode, your brain is getting rewarded for staying engaged.

Then the story ends. The loop closes. The dopamine spigot shuts off. And you’re left in that strange, quiet aftermath trying to figure out why the real world feels slightly less colorful than it did a week ago.

Photo by VAZHNIK

Games Hit Different (and Here’s Why)

While post-game depression can happen with any media, there’s an argument that games hit uniquely hard – and the research agrees.

A narrative inquiry study published in Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace found that players didn’t just watch characters – they made choices to protect them, worried about them like real friends, and felt genuine emotional attachment. Some participants described it as the first time they had ever cared so deeply about the fate of fictional characters.

That’s the agency piece. In a book or a TV show, you witness the story. In a game, you make it. Every decision Arthur makes in RDR2 carries weight because you made it. You chose how he treated people. You shaped who he was in his final stretch. When the story ends, you’re not just mourning a character – you’re mourning the world you built with him and the version of yourself that existed inside it.

Completing a long game is uniquely emotional precisely because of the time involved. The lengthier the experience, the more time you have to develop that attachment. And when the credits roll, you might feel the urge to jump back in, but part of you knows it won’t be the same.

It Has a Name Now And It’s Been Studied

The gaming community has called this “post-game depression“ for years. But until recently it was mostly Reddit threads and Discord servers trading knowing nods. That changed earlier this year.

A study published in Current Psychology by psychologists Kamil Janowicz and Piotr Klimczyk introduced the Post-Game Depression Scale, the first quantitative tool designed to measure the intensity of emotional distress players experience after finishing a video game.

The researchers frame post-game depression not as a clinical condition but as a form of grief, a response comparable to the loss of a significant relationship or the closing of an important chapter in life. And when it comes to TV shows, a Post-Series Depression Scale was actually established back in 2019 by researchers Kottasz, Bennett, and Randell.

So if you’ve ever felt like you were grieving something that “wasn’t even real”, you were right to call it grief. That’s literally what it is.

It’s Not a Character Flaw. It’s a Human One

I think there’s still a little voice in a lot of us, maybe louder depending on how you were raised, that says you shouldn’t feel this way. It’s just a game. It’s just a show. It’s not real.

But your brain is wired to form connections. It’s wired to follow stories, invest in characters, and grieve when those things end. As Dr. Sweet puts it, your brain is only doing what it’s built to do: seek connection, practice empathy, and make meaning through stories.

The fact that RDR2 left me staring at a title screen doesn’t mean I’m too emotionally fragile to handle fiction. It means the game did its job. It means I showed up fully. And honestly? I’d rather be the kind of person who sits with that feeling than the kind who never got moved by anything at all.

If you’re in the post-media fog right now, coming down from a game, a series, a book that cracked something open in you, sit with it for a minute.

Let yourself feel weird about it.

It’s real, it’s valid, and there’s actual science on your side.