Building on game studies, existential phenomenology, and philosophy of technology, this dissertation postulates a first person perspective from which to describe solitary computer game play and the emotions it involves in terms of their experienced signi cance. From this premise follows that to understand an emotion it is necessary to understand the reasons the subject has for relating to the object of the emotion in the particular way. Emotions are taken as intentional, as always about something. Focusing single player computer games and situating within the emerging fi eld of computer game studies, this dissertation starts from the assumption that emotions are always already intertwined with the experience of play and proceeds to describe, not any idiosyncratic emotional experience, but the means by which games can ensure their contents to be involved in players' emotions. Our ability to enjoy computer game play that involves genuine intense emotions which in other contexts would be easily deemed as "negative" suggests that there is something in the ways in which we make sense of computer games that separates gameplay from other activities we engage in. Computer games contribute to their players' emotions in diverse ways, ranging from sheer exhilaration to anger and disillusion.
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