Have you ever heard of “post-game depression”? Even if you haven’t, there’s a good chance you’ve suffered from it or at the very least experienced some of the symptoms.
Post-game depression, or PGD, is a feeling you get after finishing a video game you particularly enjoyed and the sadness that accompanies the fact that it’s now over. I’m currently going through it after finishing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, and it’s happened to me many times in life.
It happened to me with the original Death Stranding, it happened to me with several of the most memorable games in my life like BioShock Infinite and Metal Gear Solid 4, it happened to me earlier this year after I finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and it will inevitably happen again. It most often occurs with singleplayer games that have a start and end point, and once the end point is reached, you’re left feeling sad or hollow that the journey has ended. The feeling can sometimes be exacerbated depending on the subject matter of said game, as well.
PGD is a very real thing. It’s similar to “post-concert depression” which many concert-goers and music fans describe in the days following an event where they saw a favorite band of theirs perform live. Going from the highest of highs at a concert and then returning back to “normal life” feels comparatively like a low, and the depression sinks in. It’s especially true when you look forward to it for so long and then it’s gone.
With PGD, the same feeling occurs in the days or weeks as you play through a lengthy singleplayer experience that you keep going back to at the end of each day as an escape, or just as an exciting story or to live through, or a gameplay loop that scratches a certain itch in your head.
That feeling of looking forward to playing the game as you make your way through everyday life is unmatched. Having a game, movie, book, TV show, or any sort of medium to look forward to helps make life special, and once it’s gone, it feels like there’s a hole in your soul.
This feeling is perfectly normal, I think. Living as a human being is difficult in 2025, no matter where you are in life. Having the joy of a video game to fall back on and then having it come to an end is enough to make anyone feel sad, and you’re absolutely valid to feel this way.
And so I ask you now, dear reader, have you ever experienced post-game depression? Which game made you feel this way? How did you find a way to cope with it? Let us know in the poll and answer in the comments down below. I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone has to say.
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