Today we saw massive publicity given to a paper "Video game play is positively correlated with well-being" by Johannes, N., Vuorre, M., & Przybylski, A. K. (2020, November 13) of the Oxford Internet Institute.
The analysis below will show that this paper did not provide any support for the idea that video games are good for what you and I might consider to be well-being. Instead "well-being" was redefined as the extent to which video games are absorbing and fun and it was found that people who play video games found them to be absorbing and fun.
The paper did demonstrate that "extrinsic motivation" was greatly decreased in game players. Extrinsic motivation is about engagement with the real world, examples of extrinsic motivation are being motivated to obtain: "health gains, performance gains, social recognition, or financial rewards". In other words all real world items from school work to social standing.
The media always claim they are not involved in "fake news" but this widespread coverage of video games being good for well-being is simply fake news.
Analysis
The study used a questionnaire developed for the purpose of creating more absorbing games as their principle measure of well-being (The Player Experience and Need Satisfaction Scale ). Take a look at the link - this questionnaire is a tool used by the game industry to increase sales, not a bona fide measure of well-being.
The finding in the actual paper was that "only autonomy, relatedness, and extrinsic motivations were significant predictors [of well-being] in both games." They discovered that autonomy and relatedness were increased by playing video games and extrinsic motivation was decreased. It was the increase in autonomy and relatedness that provided the very slight "well-being" effect.
The grey shading is 90% confidence intervals. Any effect was very small and influenced by the players who played most. It seems to suggest that playing video games for 40-60 hours a week is good for you. But as we can see above from the "extrinsic motivation" data this is an artefact of the definition of "well-being" being influenced heavily by "autonomy" and "relatedness".
But what did autonomy and relatedness mean in this study?
"Autonomy" has little to do with what you or I might regard as autonomy. According to the Player Experience and Need Satisfaction Scale autonomy is a technical aspect of gameplay: "One of the key elements to consider when optimizing autonomy need satisfaction in moment‐to‐moment gameplay is maximizing the player’s opportunities for action. Opportunities for action can be defined as the options that the player perceives as available to them at any given time during gameplay."
Similarly "relatedness" is another technical aspect of gameplay and occurs "wherever there is a multiplayer component to games that allows players to build real relationships with those with whom they play, either as team mates, guildmates, or social friends – having the opportunity to connect intrinsically satisfies and energizes." The use of the term "real relationships" for online contact with a variable group of online game players might be questionable.
What the paper showed very clearly is that too much game playing is bad for your real life and this was the exact opposite of the news coverage.
16/11/2020
Johannes, N., Vuorre, M., & Przybylski, A. K. (2020, November 13). Video game play is positively correlated with well-being. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qrjza
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