Video game play is positively correlated with well-being

Abstract

People have never played more video games, and many stakeholders are worried that this activity might be bad for players. So far, research has not had adequate data to test whether these worries are justified and if policymakers should act to regulate video game play time. We attempt to provide much-needed evidence with adequate data. Whereas previous research had to rely on self-reported play behaviour, we collaborated with two games companies, Electronic Arts and Nintendo of America, to obtain players' actual play behaviour. We surveyed players of Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville and Animal Crossing: New Horizons for their well-being, motivations and need satisfaction during play, and merged their responses with telemetry data (i.e. logged game play). Contrary to many fears that excessive play time will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a small positive relation between game play and affective well-being. Need satisfaction and motivations during play did not interact with play time but were instead independently related to well-being. Our results advance the field in two important ways. First, we show that collaborations with industry partners can be done to high academic standards in an ethical and transparent fashion. Second, we deliver much-needed evidence to policymakers on the link between play and mental health.

No effect of different types of media on well-being

“…Only TV and music use vs. nonuse on the within-level showed a small positive effect on affect. The results stand in contrast to public opinion, where reading a book is valued highly, but playing video games considered a pointless pastime (Johannes, Vuorre, & Przybylski, 2021;Orben, 2020).…”

“…The self-reported estimates of time spent with a medium we relied on will be almost certainly a noisy measure of true media engagement (Johannes, Vuorre, & Przybylski, 2021;Parry et al, 2020). By contrast, we believe self-reports of use versus nonuse in a one-week period have lower measurement error, simply because there are fewer biases in retrieving exact estimates of the behavior compared to a dichotomous yes/no retrieval.…”

“…Similarly, although they displayed decent psychometric properties, the well-being measures in the data set were not validated. Last, it is likely that motivations for using a medium or the enjoyment from using it are better predictors of well-being than mere use (Dora, van Hooff, Geurts, Kompier, & Bijleveld, 2020;Johannes, Vuorre, & Przybylski, 2021).…”

“…Third, respondents were not good estimators of media use. Their daily total media use, on average, took up almost half of each day -mostly likely an overestimate (Johannes, Vuorre, & Przybylski, 2021;Parry et al, 2020;Scharkow, 2016). A substantial number of respondents reported daily media use of more than 20 hours.…”

Animal Crossing: New Horizons Meets ‘Maslow’s Pyramid’

“…Zhu (2020) states that the game, as a social interaction platform, helps players to reduce their levels of anxiety and depression, by bringing spiritual comfort, calmness, and peace. Johannes et al (2021) support this notion by analyzing self-reported and telemetry data about playing time, to confirm that there is a significant positive relation between ACNH game time and players' well-being.…”