Have you ever come home from a stressful day, felt absolutely miserable and decided to just lose yourself in a game? Did you notice your mood improve as you were playing? Well according to a study from the University of Oxford, you should have and gaming can be quite good for your mental state and cheer you up.
The study was conducted in partnership with FuturLab Games and took 8,695 gamers from 39 countries playing FuturLab’s smash hit PowerWash Simulator to analyze players moods before and after they played. During the study the players logged 67,328 gaming sessions and 162,325 in-game mood checks. The study found that the average players mood increased in a positive way when compared to the beginning of the session. Oxford researchers predict approximately 72% of players experienced a better mood after playing.
As part of the study Oxford collaborated with FuturLab to create a research edition of PowerWash Simulator that recorded gameplay events, game status records, participant demographics and responses to psychological survey items. The research build was essentially the same as the retail version with just some built in pop-ins for players to report their mood in real time delivered by a newly created character called "˜The Researchers' making them part of the game lore, ensuring minimal disruption to the player experience. This latest analysis is based on a dataset the team previously published in the journal Scientific Data last year.
At present short-term changes in video game players' moods are poorly understood. Gameplay research frequently relies on artificial stimuli, with games created or modified by academic researchers, typically played in a lab environment rather than a natural context. Instead, we wanted to know how real play in natural contexts might predict player mood on short timescales." said Lead author Assistant Professor Matti Vuorre, Tilburg University and Research Associate, Oxford Internet Institute.
While this might not sound all that surprising to you if you do play games there aren’t that many studies about video games and mental health. Even today there is a bit of a stigma that video games are bad for people, especially for kids. Government officials have frequently blamed violent crimes on video games in the past, citing the violence in the games can have an effect on kids. However at least according to this study, gaming can indeed make players feel better.
"By investigating player experiences during natural play of a popular and commercially available game, we found strong evidence for a small positive change in mood over the course of a play session. Our current study corroborates what qualitative research and reports from video game players around the world have long suggested: People feel good playing video games" says second author Nick Ballou, Postdoctoral Researcher, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.
While this is the first study of it’s kind to measure moods in gamers and shows a positive outlook, Senior author Professor Andrew Przybylski, Oxford Internet Institute says people should be cautious about generalizing the findings based off one game and one study. "We believe our findings are most consistent with the notion that gaming - for most people - is a recovery activity that helps to manage day-to-day stresses and mood fluctuations, without necessarily having substantial long-term impacts.
"The fact that we studied only one game - and one that is not likely representative of today's most commonly played games - suggests caution in generalizing from our findings to other games. Future work should consider the use of randomized controlled trials to evaluate the effect of playing PowerWash Simulator or other games compared to other leisure activities or therapeutic interventions.
Ultimately better understanding the multiverse of play, including temporal patterns, social experiences, in-game behaviors and events, players' personalities, its antecedents and consequences warrants continued research efforts coordinated across and beyond academia."
The next time you boot up that game you were excited to play, take a moment to ask yourself how much it has improved your mood by enjoying a game. Ultimately gaming is a hobby and is supposed to be fun and make us happy according to Oxford and we at Gamer Social Club would agree!
