A Deadly Game User Experience: The Case of #BlueWhaleChallenge

Ozturkcan, S. & Ozdinc, M. (2020), 'A Deadly Game User Experience: The Case of #BlueWhaleChallenge,' chapter in Game User Experience and Player-Centered Design, edited by Barbaros Bostan, Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland

Posted: 24 Oct 2019

See all articles by Selcen Ozturkcan

Selcen Ozturkcan

School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University; Sabanci Business School, Sabanci University

Mesut Ozdinc

Mimar Sinan FA University; Åbo Akademi University

Date Written: January 16, 2020

Abstract

Lately, the Blue Whale Challenge, which is also known as the Blue Whale Game, received public attention via the countless news about teenagers all around the world harming themselves as they engage with the so-called game (Balhara, Bhargava, Pakhre, & Bhati, 2018; Sousa, Filho, Cavalcanti, Santos, & Neto, 2017). Though referred to as a game, it involves a series of self-harming tasks (Narayan, Das, Das, & Bhandari, 2019), which spread via social media for completion in 50 days (Yılmaz & Candan, 2018). The final task reported as to commit suicide (Khattar, Dabas, Gupta, Chopra, & Kumaraguru, 2018; Volkova, Kadyrova, Rastorgueva, & Algavi, 2017). The victims of the challenge, being mostly teenagers and young adults, the significant concern rising from the families calls for the topic to treated as that of a severe public health issue (Kumar et al., 2017). To this date, the blue whale challenge is perhaps the only game that demands its user to end his/her life for completing the game (Mukhra, Baryah, Krishan, & Kanchan, 2019). This chapter aims to explore the collection of news that involved the often-deadly game user experiences. Contributions are in several folds starting from the game user experience field to the gamer psychology as well as public health policy development and text analysis of broad-casted news surrounding a critical public concern.

Keywords: BlueWhaleChallenge, MoMo, game user experience, deadly game, teenage gamers, suicide, virtual slavery

JEL Classification: M1

Suggested Citation

Ozturkcan, Selcen and Ozdinc, Mesut and Ozdinc, Mesut, A Deadly Game User Experience: The Case of #BlueWhaleChallenge (January 16, 2020). Ozturkcan, S. & Ozdinc, M. (2020), 'A Deadly Game User Experience: The Case of #BlueWhaleChallenge,' chapter in Game User Experience and Player-Centered Design, edited by Barbaros Bostan, Springer International Publishing: Cham, Switzerland, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3470173

Selcen Ozturkcan (Contact Author)

School of Business and Economics, Linnaeus University ( email )

Växjö, 352 52
Sweden
+46 470-70 82 87 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://lnu.se/en/staff/selcen.ozturkcan/

Sabanci Business School, Sabanci University ( email )

Istanbul
Turkey

Mesut Ozdinc

Mimar Sinan FA University

Istanbul
Turkey

Åbo Akademi University ( email )

Piispankatu 16
Abo, Turku FIN-20500
Finland

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