New research reveals positive mood swings while playing video games

Playing video games can be good for your mood, according to a new international study by researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute, part of the University of Oxford.

The study analyzed data from players in 39 countries, including the US, UK, Canada and Germany, and found that PWS players’ moods increased rapidly while playing. Players consistently reported better moods after the first 15 minutes of play compared to the start of each session.

The research team at the Oxford Internet Institute conducted the study to better understand the short-term effects of playing video games. The results are published in the news Games: research and practice.

Lead author Assistant Professor Matti Vuorre, Tilburg University and Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, said: “Currently, short-term changes in the moods of video game players are poorly understood.

“Gameplay research often relies on artificial stimuli, with games created or modified by academic researchers, typically played in a laboratory setting rather than in a natural context. Instead, we wanted to know how real play in natural contexts affects mood of players on short time scales.”

The researchers worked with PWS’s developer, FuturLab, to develop a research edition of the game that captured gameplay events, game state records, participant demographics, and responses to psychological survey items. This latest analysis is based on a data set from the team previously published in the news Scientific data last year.

Commenting on the findings, second author Nick Ballou, postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, said: “By examining player experiences during natural play of a popular and commercially available game, we found strong evidence for a small positive change in mood while playing a popular and commercially available game during a gaming session.

“Our current research confirms what qualitative research and reports from video game players around the world have long suggested: people feel good playing video games.”

The researchers found that the average player’s mood increased by about 0.034 units (on a scale of 0-1), from the start of the session through play, with most of the improvement occurring in the average player after 15 minutes of play. This change is similar to changes in other leisure activities such as reading, shopping or listening to music.

They also looked at differences in mood improvement between the population of comparable PWS players. The Oxford team statistically modeled between-person differences in mood swings in the population of PWS players. They found that almost three-quarters of players (72.1%) were likely to experience an improvement in their mood while playing with PWS.

Unlike other studies in this area, the Oxford study is the first of its kind to examine mood changes during minute-by-minute gaming sessions. The Research Edition was virtually identical to the main game, with the addition of in-game pop-ups asking players to report their mood, provided by a newly created character called “The Researchers”, making them part of the game’s lore and requiring minimal disruption to the player experience.

Senior author Professor Andrew Przybylski from the Oxford Internet Institute said: “We believe our findings are most consistent with the idea that gaming – for most people – is a recovery activity that helps manage daily stress and mood swings, without necessarily causing significant long-term effects.

“The fact that we studied only one game – and one that is unlikely to be representative of today’s most-played games – suggests that we should be cautious in generalizing 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, a better understanding of the game’s multiverse, including temporal patterns, social experiences, in-game behaviors and events, players’ personalities, their antecedents and consequences, warrants continued research efforts coordinated within and beyond academia. “