Making sense of the pandemic: Multiple functions of commercial video games during one year and a half of COVID-19 crisis

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 has made apparent the importance of gaming technologies during crises and difficult life moments. However, studies exploring the role of commercial off-the-shelf video games during the pandemic are still limited. Moreover, research often focuses on a specific moment of the crisis. In this article, we investigate how playing commercial video games impacts on how players manage and understand the COVID-19 pandemic considered in its temporal evolution. We conducted a one-year-and-a-half longitudinal qualitative study by interviewing 16 participants who were living in Italy during the first pandemic lockdown, then involving a subgroup of them (N = 10) in a follow-up interview. Study findings show that playing not only supported escapism from a difficult reality, but also helped individuals counteract the sense of detachment from the “pandemic world”, encouraging reflection and supporting sense-making. These functions of video games varied as the pandemic unfolded. Based on these findings, we present a preliminary model of the role of video game technologies during moments of crisis and suggest design considerations on how video games could support people experiencing extremely difficult life moments.