“Obi-Wan dies, Dumbledore dies, Gandalf dies, 1,500 passengers on the Titanic die, thousands of Pandorans die.” The protagonist may be happy at the end, “but his smile,” [Doran] said, “is laced with the loss that’s come before.”

On several levels, this may be applied to games, but does it hold weight? If a game is a game because it encourages the player to achieve something, then it is possible that games innately fall under the frame of positive psychology. She explains further:

What this suggested to [Doran] is that “the accomplishment the audience values most is not when the heroine saves the day or the hero defeats his opponent.” Instead, she said, “the accomplishment the audience values most is resilience.“

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‘I can already tell you one thing: Audiences don’t care about accomplishments.’ ” She was thunderstruck. Wasn’t the Hollywood ending about accomplishment?

No, he said, adding: “Audiences don’t care about an accomplishment unless it’s shared with someone else. What makes an audience happy is not the moment of victory but the moment afterwards when the winners shares that victory with someone they love.”