Often accused of making us dependent, irritable, and even sometimes violent, video games are actually a very good way to increase our well-being on a daily basis, reports a recent study made by the Internet Institute of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom and transmitted by the BBC site. By analyzing the gaming habits of a panel of 3,274 players in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Plants versus Zombies At Electronic Arts, the researchers came to astonishing conclusions. Professor Andrew Przybylski, the study leader, explains that “If you play Animal crossing four hours a day, every day, you are likely to say that you are much happier than someone who does not.
Video games are not inherently bad
Specifically, that doesn’t mean that playing video games will make you happy for sure. On the other hand, the study tends to confirm that, contrary to popular belief, still tenacious (and to the various studies carried out over the last 40 years), Video games don’t make you miserable or depressed. A finding that, however, seems corroborated by the social dimension that both Animal crossing that Plants versus Zombies.
Unlike previous studies on the subject, which were based on self-rated estimates for each player, this new experiment was carried out jointly by the University of Oxford, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts. Thus, the Japanese company transmitted exact game data (but anonymized) of each of the participants. For its part, EA went even further, also sharing data on the in-game performance of the players affected by the study, as well as the different emoticons used. For their part, the players were asked individually about their feelings after each game session. Next step for Andrew Przybylski and his team: collect more similar data to define a trend on a larger scale: “We need to study more games and more players, for longer. We could build a theory of bullying or, conversely, learn how people build new friendships ”.
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