Video Game Escapism During Quarantine (original) (raw)
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MMORPG Games as a Way of Coping During the Pandemic: A Study on World of Warcraft
The 2nd Barcelona Conference on Arts, Media & Culture (BAMC2021), 2021
Negative effects of coronavirus expand from physical to mental health, thus finding methods for coping and wellness has become crucial. The act of play is a way to improve one's wellness and it has been discussed as an intrinsic human activity nested in the culture. During quarantines "play" was in the virtual form more than ever. These games, including MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), offer an achievement-based social experience. Before the pandemic, these games have been discussed in terms of their negative aspects such as being an escape from reality, an unhealthy coping mechanism, and an addiction. Contrarily, some researchers consider this activity as a facilitator of social interaction with existing or new social networks. In this study, World of Warcraft (WoW) is explored as a setting through an ethnographic approach to understand how the covid pandemic affected players and their experience in the virtual world. The paper focuses on the levelling stage of the game and fieldwork data derived through participant observation and casual conversations with players. Collected data suggests playing WoW has become a method for coping against the pandemic. This research examines Man, The Player in World of Warcraft. Understanding a virtual world could unfold ways to build resilience in the "real world". The paper argues that playing WoW could become a tool for better coping with the pandemic through its competition, chance, and simulation elements that create achievementbased, social, and nostalgic motivators in the game.
Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2021
Video game play has been framed as both protective factor and risk to mental health during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. We conducted a statistical analysis of changes to video game play during the pandemic to better understand gaming behavior and in doing so provide an empirical foundation to the fractured discourse surrounding play and mental health. Analyses of millions of players' engagement with the 500 globally most popular games on the Steam platform indicated that the quantity of play had dramatically increased during key points of the pandemic; that those increases were more prominent for multiplayer games, suggesting that gamers were seeking out the social affordances of video game play; and that play had become more equally distributed across days of the week, suggesting increased merging of leisure activities with work and school activities. These results provide a starting point for empirically grounded discussions on video games during the pandemic, their uses, and potential effects.
Playing Video Games During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Effects on Players’ Well-Being
Games and Culture, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in many ways, including how we choose to spend our time and deal with unprecedented circumstances. Anecdotal reports suggest that many have turned to playing video games during the pandemic. To better understand how games are being used during the lockdown, we conducted an online survey (N = 781) that focused on gameplay habits and effects on players’ well-being. We find that time spent playing games has increased for 71% of respondents, while 58% of respondents reported that playing games has impacted their well-being, with the overwhelming majority of responses indicating a positive impact. We identify seven ways that games have affected players, such as providing cognitive stimulation and opportunities to socialise, and a variety of benefits related to mental health, including reduced anxiety and stress. Our findings highlight the sociocultural significance of video games and the potentially positive nature of games’ effects on well-being.
Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2021
Video game play has been framed as both protective factor and risk to mental health during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. We conducted a statistical analysis of changes to video game play during the pandemic to better understand gaming behavior and in doing so provide an empirical foundation to the fractured discourse surrounding play and mental health. Analyses of millions of players' engagement with the 500 globally most popular games on the Steam platform indicated that the quantity of play had dramatically increased during key points of the pandemic; that those increases were more prominent for multiplayer games, suggesting that gamers were seeking out the social affordances of video game play; and that play had become more equally distributed across days of the week, suggesting increased merging of leisure activities with work and school activities. These results provide a starting point for empirically grounded discussions on video games during the pandemic, their uses, and potential effects.
Escapist Motives for Playing On-Line Games: Preliminary Results from an Exploratory Survey
2012
Abstract Social games have become popular along with the tremendous growth of social networking sites, esp. Facebook. There is a gap in literature on what motivates people to play Facebook games. This paper studies social games usage behavior of students. We focus on escapist reasons, based on Warmelink, Harteveld and Mayer's framework (2009) of escapist motives, which identifies four main motives for playing on-line games: mundane breaking, stress relieving, pleasure seeking, and imagination conjuring.
International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
Escapism motivations and related processes (e.g., avoidance, dissociation, relaxation, and emotion dysregulation) have been identified as risk factors for problematic gaming. However, the escapism construct has often been poorly conceptualized and operationalized in assessment instruments. In their systematic review, Melodia et al. (2020) proposed that conceptualizing escapism as an avoidant coping strategy could provide a sound basis for further study of problematic gaming. In this commentary, we critically examine some terminological and conceptual issues in relation to escapism to guide future research.
The dual nature of escapism in video gaming: A meta-analytic approach
Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 2021
Researchers have previously argued that escapism via video games can lead to negative and positive outcomes. The purpose of this study was to investigate which outcomes (negative or positive) outweigh the others. Further, the authors examined how the cultural context (Western and Non-Western) affects the association between escapism and its dual outcomes. To achieve the study aims, the authors conducted two meta-analyses using the PRISMA approach. The authors included 27 studies having a sample size of N ¼ 28,893 in the two meta-analyses. The results show that escapism has a significant relationship with both negative (Q (40) ¼ 2411.001, p < .001) and positive outcomes (Q (67) ¼ 6384.554, p < .001). However, negative outcomes (Z RE ¼ 0.46) outweigh the positive outcomes (Z RE ¼ 0.34). Further, the results highlight that cultural context (Western and Non-Western) significantly moderates the relationship between escapism and its dual outcomes. The authors discuss the theoretical implications and limitations of the study.
Playing video games: Motives, responses, and consequences - by Peter Vorderer & Jennings Bryant
Journal of Communication, 2006
Video games continue to be a highly popular form of entertainment. In 2003, over 239 million computer and video games were sold in the United States, and the video game industry reported sales of over $7 billion (Entertainment Software Association, n.d.). According to an industry poll conducted by ESA (n.d.), 50% of US-Americans play video games, with an average age of 29 and 39% of players are female. An Annenberg Public Policy Center survey (Woodard & Gridina, 2000) estimates that video game consoles are in 68% of US-American homes with at least one 2-to 17-year-old and in 75% of homes with two or more children. These figures are expected to grow as high speed broadband Internet access facilitates networked game play. Clearly, video games have emerged as one of the most popular forms of mass mediated entertainment in the United States among a range of people. Despite this popularity, the study of video games is still in its infancy. To date, most video game studies have focused on traditional effects issues, particularly the effects of violent video games on aggression (see Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Funk, 1992; MediaScope, 1996; Sherry, 2001a). Many of the questions found in Chaffee's (1977) 18-cell explication of media effects have gone largely unaddressed. Prominent among these questions are the reasons why people use video games and the gratifications that they receive from them. In this chapter, we explore the reasons that individuals use video games and how those reasons are Video game uses and gratifications 3 translated into genre preferences and amount of time devoted to game play from a uses and gratifications perspective. The Uses and Gratifications Paradigm Since its inception, the uses and gratifications paradigm has provided a cutting edge approach for gaining insight on the uses and impact of new communication technologies (Rubin, 1994; Ruggiero, 2000). Uses and gratifications research is rooted in the structural-functionalist systems approach (Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rosengren, 1985) to understanding the interface between biological entities and their context (e.g., Bertalanffy, 1968; Buckley, 1967; Merton, 1957; Monge, 1977). Common among these perspectives is the idea that human behavior may best be understood as a system represented as "… interlinked sets of components hierarchically organized into structural wholes which interact through time and space, are self-regulating, yet capable of structural change." (Monge, 1977, p. 20). Systems theory, as applied to human behavior, places individuals, each having unique biological features expressed in both physical and mental attributes, within a multi-system context and attempts to account for the cross system influences on behavior (Bertalanffy, 1968; Blalock & Blalock, 1958). Further, humans are believed to be self regulating; that is, the individual responds to felt needs and contextual factors (Lerner, 1987). In the case of media, an individual's media use and the effects of that media use are largely (though not completely) a function of the individual's purpose for using the media. For example, we would expect greater cognitive change resulting from Video game uses and gratifications 4 reading a magazine article from an individual who perceives a deficit in knowledge on the subject (i.e., is reading for information) than from an individual who is reading to pass time (i.e., to alleviate boredom), all other traits held constant (e.g., age, intelligence, reading comprehension level, initial knowledge). From a systems perspective, people use of media to solve perceived problems in order to maintain equilibrium. Other perspectives on media use share the idea of media use to manage equilibrium such as sensation seeking, novelty, dispositional alignments, and evolutionary explanation (see Bryant & Miron, 2002, Sparks & Sparks, 2000 for summaries of these ideas). Atkin (1985) distinguishes between exposure to media as being driven by the need for immediate, momentary intrinsic satisfaction (e.g., enjoyment seeking) or extrinsic Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Youichi, I. (1996). Why do people watch foreign movies and read foreign books?
The Motivational Pull of Video Games: A Self-Determination Theory Approach
Motivation and Emotion, 2006
Four studies apply self-determination theory (SDT; in investigating motivation for computer game play, and the effects of game play on wellbeing. Studies 1-3 examine individuals playing 1, 2 and 4 games, respectively and show that perceived in-game autonomy and competence are associated with game enjoyment, preferences, and changes in well-being pre-to post-play. Competence and autonomy perceptions are also related to the intuitive nature of game controls, and the sense of presence or immersion in participants' game play experiences. Study 4 surveys an on-line community with experience in multiplayer games. Results show that SDT's theorized needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness independently predict enjoyment and future game play. The SDT model is also compared with Yee's (2005) motivation taxonomy of game play motivations. Results are discussed in terms of the relatively unexplored landscape of human motivation within virtual worlds.