Online Video Games Research Articles

Impact on the video game industry during the COVID-19 pandemic

This work presents trends and comparisons that show a change in the consumption and production of video games in times of confinement due to the health emergency. The video game industry has modified its philosophy and adapted its products to the new requirements and trends of consumers who see in this activity a way to appease the psychological and social impact due to quarantine and isolation. There is evidence of a 65% increase in the use of online video games, which has broken a world record. Products that have new aspects and considerations never before proposed by this great industry have been developed and offered, such as thematic games related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Keywords: Video game, pandemic, online games, confinement.
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The Effectiveness of Implicit Brand Placement in Online Videogame Streaming Services: An Eye Tracking Study

Widely studied in traditional advertising contexts, research on brand placement is still scarce on videogame streaming platforms such as Twitch. These environments combining video games and social media, this article investigates the impact of product placement on branding using eye tracking. Similar to Twitch content, a video was made of a professional gamer’s streaming session with Hearthstone. The video was randomly presented with or without product placement to 40 subjects, followed by a questionnaire. The results demonstrate that, it captures the attention of viewers, which positively affects unaided and aided brand recall, and that both positively influence attitude towards the brand.

Effect of the Frustration of Psychological Needs on Addictive Behaviors in Mobile Videogamers-The Mediating Role of Use Expectancies and Time Spent Gaming.

Casual videogames (CVGs), played on smartphones, are becoming increasingly popular, especially among females and adults. Whereas the addictive potential of online (computer) videogames is well-established, there is yet insufficient evidence for Internet gaming disorder (IGD) in mobile gamers and for the mediating role of some mechanisms involved. The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of the frustration of psychological needs on mobile videogamers’ addictive behavior as well as the role of cognitions (game-use expectancies) and behaviors (time spent playing) through a hypothesized serial mediation model, while controlling for important correlates, such as game genre, age, gender and payment during play. A total of 471 mobile game users (211 males) with an average age of 21.73 replied to an online survey containing sociodemographic and game variables, the Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (NSFS), the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form (IGDS9-SF) and a slightly modified version of the Internet Use Expectancies Scale (IUES). The results corroborate the negative effects of need frustration on IGD among mobile gamers and clarify the role of time spent playing and game-use expectancies in the development of IGD, highlighting the important role of cognitions in this relationship. We conclude that both the time spent playing and game-use expectancies should be important targets for clinical interventions, even though they are not included in the diagnostic criteria.

Online Cognitive Training: An Adaptation of the Memory, Attention, and Problem Solving Skills for Persons With Diabetes Intervention.

Research shows the risk for cognitive impairment and the rate of cognitive decline double after type 2 diabetes mellitus is diagnosed and can make self-management more difficult. Cognitive training has been found to be one way to improve self-management and cognitive function, and this article reports the adaptation of one such intervention to an online format. Ten adults with diabetes participated in an 8-week intervention that combined webinar classes with online computer game training. Perceived memory ability, executive function, self-management, and self-efficacy were measured. Evaluation of recruitment, data collection, and implementation demonstrated good feasibility and reduced barriers to engagement. Although the intervention did not result in significant changes in cognitive function, scores on all surveys improved. Adherence to diet, exercise, and foot care recommendations also improved. Most participants stated they preferred the intervention's online format to "traditional" in-person formats. Online technology in this 8-week intervention helped improve recruitment, retention, participant engagement, and use of cognitive strategies in people with type 2 diabetes mellitus. Overall, participants found the intervention helpful and said it reduced the time and travel burden associated with educational interventions. A larger randomized controlled trial is needed to further explore the intervention's potential impact over a longer period.

The interplay of individual differences, norms, and group identification in predicting prejudiced behavior in online video game interactions

AbstractDespite the increasing popularity of video games and the diversity of people who play, prejudice remains common in online gaming. In the current study, we use structural equation modeling to test the role of social norms, individual differences, and gamer identification as predictors of how likely someone is to report engaging in prejudiced behavior while playing online video games. We also test the relative importance of these predictors to assess how likely people are to confront prejudice when it occurs in online video games. Participants (N = 384) completed a series of questionnaires to assess their attitudes and perceptions of online gaming norms, as well as to report their own prejudiced and confrontation behavior in video games. We found that both social norms and individual differences are significant predictors of behavior in online gaming. The more normative people report prejudice to be, the more they report making prejudiced comments. Similarly, the more normative confrontation of prejudice is reported to be, the more likely people are to report confronting prejudice. The more people endorsed generally prejudiced attitudes, the more likely they were to report making prejudiced remakes in online gaming and the less likely they were to report confronting prejudiced remarks. These results provide a foundation to inform interventions to reduce prejudice in gaming and indicate that both individual differences and norms are important to consider when designing interventions.

REThink Online Video Game for Children and Adolescents: Effects on State Anxiety and Frontal Alpha Asymmetry

Emotional disorders affect numerous children and adolescents worldwide; thus, developing accessible prevention tools to reduce associated burden in youths is of crucial importance. We conducted a randomized controlled study to examine the effects of the newly developed REThink therapeutic game on reducing the subjective emotional reactivity to a stressor in children and adolescents and in modulating their frontal EEG asymmetry. A number of 165 children and adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: REThink game, a Rational Emotive Behavior Education (REBE) intervention, or a Waitlist. Participants were asked to complete an impromptu speech twice, before and after the interventions, while their anxiety and brain activity were recorded. Results suggest that relative to the Waitlist and REBE interventions, the REThink game was effective in reducing biological reactivity manifested by children and adolescents in response to speech, but not for modulating subjective anxiety. Present results provide further evidence for the potential benefits of therapeutic games in promoting mental health in children and adolescents.

Facets of competitiveness as predictors of problem video gaming among players of massively multiplayer online first-person shooter games

Massively Multiplayer Online First-Person Shooter (MMOFPS) games are among the most high-risk games related to the development problem video gaming. These games are often designed to promote direct competition between players, and research has identified competition as a key motivator for participation in online games. However, it is not clear whether competitiveness measured as a personality trait is associated with problematic video gaming engagement. The primary aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between three facets of trait competitiveness and problem online video gaming among players of MMOFPS games who reported playing these video games at least 1–4 times a week. A multiple regression analysis revealed that dominant competitiveness was the only facet of trait competitiveness to predict problem gaming score. The results of the current study expand upon previous indications that competitiveness motivates online gaming, suggesting that inherent dominant competitive tendencies may increase the risk of problematic participation in competition-centered online video games.

Play With One’s Feelings: A Study on Emotion Awareness for Player Experience

Affective interaction between players of video games can elicit rich and varying patterns of emotions. In multiplayer activities that take place in a common space (such as sports and board games), players are generally aware of the emotions of their teammates or opponents as they can directly observe their behavioral patterns, facial expressions, head pose, body stance, and so on. Players of online video games, however, are not generally aware of the other players’ emotions given the limited channels of direct interaction among them (e.g., via emojis or chat boxes). It also turns out that the impact of real-time emotion-awareness on play is still unexplored in the space of online digital games. Motivated by this lack of empirical knowledge on the role of the affect of others to one’s gameplay performance, in this article, we investigate the degrees to which the expression of manifested emotions of an opponent can affect the emotions of the player and consequently his gameplay behavior. In this initial study, we test our hypothesis on a two-player adversarial car racing game. We perform a comprehensive user study to evaluate the emotions, behaviors, and attitudes of players in emotion aware versus emotion agnostic game versions. Our findings suggest that expressing the emotional state of the opponent through an emoji in real-time affects the emotional state and behavior of players that can consequently affect their playing experience.

Performance Analysis of a Novel TCP Protocol Algorithm Adapted to Wireless Networks

As telecommunication systems evolve towards new-generation architectures, likewise, new protocols are created in order to improve efficiency. One of these protocols is Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which controls the transmission bit rate in function of network congestion. Nevertheless, in wireless communications, there appear problems such as noise and interference, for which TCP was not designed. Based on these problems, there exist some methods trying to mitigate congestion, such as explicit loss notifications and the use of end-to-end codification. The aim of this work was to propose a wireless TCP protocol improvement, considering a negative acknowledgment (NACK), which allows to differentiate between losses due to congestion and losses due to wireless channel issues. NACK employs a small protocol packet and produces improvement in the quality of service metrics. The experiments were carried out in in-door and out-door environments, over an online video game scenario, and over a long-distance wireless link between two islands. The average results show a 25-percent delay improvement and a 5-percent jitter improvement when compared to the original TCP Reno protocol, while for throughput a 90-percent improvement was achieved for distances between 100 and 414 m.

The meaning of the experience of being an online video game player

Online video games contain a variety of features that facilitate or encourage social interaction among game players. We explored the meaning of the experience of online game playing, seeking to uncover the personal meanings that game players ascribe to their online gaming experiences. Guided, semi-scripted personal interviews were conducted with 16 participants aged 17 to 34. A psychological-phenomenological analysis of participant narratives was conducted following procedures set out by Giorgi (2009). Four descriptive themes were identified: social rewards, experiential enhancement, growth and identity, and tension reduction. Participants described online gaming as an overwhelmingly positive, rewarding experience shaped by their social interactions with others in the game. We propose that as games offer more and more options for positive social interaction, concerns about detrimental effects of online video games may be attenuated.

Psychosocial and Mental Health Characteristics of RePresent Game Users.

The RePresent games are online video games that are publicly available and designed to educate people about legal self-representation in civil court. This study was part of a project to examine use of the RePresent games in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire from January 2018 to May 2018. Data on game use across the four states were analyzed, and an online survey was conducted to examine characteristics of RePresent game users and nonusers seeking civil legal aid (n = 277). The RePresent games were accessed more than 7,000 times in five months. The most common legal problems reported were related to debt, family, and housing. Compared with nonusers, RePresent game users were significantly more likely to be nonwhite, to have an incarceration history, to have more legal problems, and to screen positive for alcohol use problems. In the total sample, 83 percent screened positive for depression, 81 percent for generalized anxiety disorder, and 45 percent for drug problems. Only 34 percent reported use of mental health services, and 17 percent reported substance abuse treatment in the past year. These findings demonstrate that products like the RePresent games can be widely accessible to adults from disadvantaged backgrounds. In addition, civil legal settings may be a new area for mental health screening and intervention.

Sexually explicit video games and online pornography – The promotion of sexual violence: A critical commentary

Online video games are played by billions of people all over the world. A new science, ludology has recently emerged in response to the ever-increasing popularity of online video games. Similarly, the amount of online pornography is amassing rapidly. Not only is it easily accessible, but often available for free with new sites being created daily. This article provides a brief overview of current understandings of reported harms to inform researchers, professionals and interested community members about the need for awareness, education and early intervention, particularly for adolescents and young adults.Whether focus of attention is on online pornography or sexually explicit video games, the influence on consumers’ desires, attitudes, values and behaviors cannot be neglected. An increased understanding of potentially harmful effects of playing sexually explicit video games and consuming online pornography as indicated by recent research may result in sexual violence prevention that includes online pornography and sexually explicit video games.

COVID-19-Related School Closings and Risk of Weight Gain Among Children.

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing substantial morbidity and mortality, straining health care systems, shutting down economies, and closing school districts. While it is a priority to mitigate its immediate impact, we want to call attention to the pandemic's longer-term effect on children's health: COVID-19, via these school closures, may exacerbate the epidemic of childhood obesity and increase disparities in obesity risk. In many areas of the U.S., the COVID-19 pandemic has closed schools and some of these school systems are not expected to re-open this school year. The experiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore suggest that social distancing orders, if lifted after short periods, will have to be periodically re-instated to control COVID-19 flare ups. In short, we anticipate that the COVID-19 pandemic will likely double out-of-school time this year for many children in the U.S. and will exacerbate the risk factors for weight gain associated with summer recess.

Variations in psychological factors and experience-dependent changes in team-based video game performance

Success in many types of activities relies upon the performance of skilled individuals. Across formal and more informal environments, the amount of experience an individual has accumulated has been observed to predict skilled performance. Psychological traits have also been found to relate to the development of skilled performance. Questions remain regarding what factors influence the development of skilled performance within team-based activities. Factors including variations in psychological traits and how teammates are selected, in addition to the amount of accumulated experience, may differ in how strongly they influence changes in the skilled performance of individuals. In the present study, the degree to which psychological factors interacted with accumulated experience with regard to skilled performance was examined within a team-based activity. Personality, social, and cognitive measures were collected from players of a team-based online video game. Subsequently, their experience and performance playing video game matches where their teammates were selected by the players versus randomly assigned were assessed across a three-month period. Longitudinal models revealed that performance improved with the number of matches played, with the rate of improvement affected by how teammates were selected and individual differences in specific psychological measures, number processing ability, fluid intelligence, theory of mind ability, and neuroticism. These psychological factors and the method by which teammates were selected moderated the degree to which individuals improved their performance with experience. In line with previous research, these findings indicated that psychological factors, in addition to experience, contributed to the development of skilled performance within a team-based activity.

Understanding English Speaking Practice in Public Schools in Kazakhstan: A Case Study in Almaty

Teaching and learning of English as a spoken language in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) still remains a major concern in Asian context as evident from recent studies. The situation is similar in Central Asian classrooms where it received little attention. Specifically, this study investigates a classroom in a local public school in Kazakhstan through the lens of a teacher and the students during speaking activities. A case study qualitative approach was employed using interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis as data collection methods. In total, 21 individual interviews and 30 hours of classroom observations were conducted and recorded. Analyses and interpretations of data show that firstly the speaking activities lack in negotiation of meaning as they are predominantly aimed at predetermined monological performance-based speech. Secondly, out-of-school learning was prevalent among the majority of students at private learning centres. Also, self-learning at home was practiced by male students via interacting with foreign players in online video games and by female students via watching English movies. Thirdly, classroom interactions were accountable in facilitating and inhibiting the practice of speaking. Finally, there was a mismatch between the perceptions of the teacher and the students on the challenges of the speaking practice. The teacher indicated insufficient teaching hours and students’ limited background knowledge, while the students emphasised the teacher’s unwillingness to use English as a language of instruction and to practice impromptu speech in class. In summary, the findings highlight some of the apprehensions faced by the teacher and the students which reveals the current English speaking practice in Kazakhstani classroom. Keywords: Speaking; spoken language; speaking activities; speaking practice; classroom learning

The role of wishful identification, emotional engagement, and parasocial relationships in repeated viewing of live-streaming games: A social cognitive theory perspective

Grounded in Bandura’s (2001) social cognitive theory of mass communication and Giles' (2002) model of parasocial relationship (PSR) development, the current research examines how a viewer's wishful identification with an online video game streaming personality and emotional engagement with other viewers lead to behavioral loyalty through PSR with their favorite live-streamer. To test the proposed mediation model, the researchers conducted a survey using a representative sample drawn from a national panel of a professional survey firm in South Korea. Results of a mediation analysis employing structural equation modeling reveal that both wishful identification and emotional engagement have indirect effects on behavioral loyalty through PSR. Put another way, a viewer's likeliness to continue viewing a live-streaming game increase as the viewer develops stronger PSR. The current research also demonstrates that wishful identification and engagement with others/streamers develop into PSR, as suggested by Giles' PSR development model.

For Entertainment or Escaping From Reality: The Study of University Student Online Video Game Consumption in Malang, East Java Indonesia

This article aims to explain the cause and effect of excessive online video game consumption among university students in Malang City, East Java Indonesia. The informant of this study are university students who fond of playing online video games at late night and early morning in the internet cafe. The research discovers that: 1) living far away from parents, peers, and relatives often make university students feel lonely, this makes them use online video games to drive out their lonesome and boredom. By playing online video games, they can fulfill their social need by interacting with other players, and finally, also get fun. 2) The negative side of online video games happens when the students play it excessively due to desire of escaping from real life problems. From this research, it can be revealed that there are similarity patterns among students experiencing online video games excessive consumption. These students are commonly suffering learning difficulties and they are isolated from friends because of taking study majors that are unmatched with their passion and interests. 3) No matter how harmful, the games may endanger the student’s future, all of them feel not too worry. Life in young age and student status they still have made them no need to rush of thinking about their future. These facts are based on their opinion that becoming an adult and finding a job are still too far away to go

'Level Up': Leveraging Skill and Engagement to Maximize Player Retention in Online Video Games

As firms recast their view of customer interaction from a transactional to a relationship-based mindset, their focus has moved towards building and leveraging “customer engagement”; however, customer engagement as a construct has proven hard to define and measure. We therefore propose a modeling approach that treats customer engagement as a latent variable while including its antecedents and consequences (business outcomes). Specifically, we propose a novel two-stage data analytic modeling approach, combining statistical methodologies with optimization techniques to model customer engagement as a function of game-play motivation to maximize customer retention via matching in the large and growing video game industry. In the first stage, we build a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to capture the evolution of gamers’ latent engagement state and the state-dependent participation behavior. We then calibrate the HMM using a longitudinal dataset obtained from a major international video gaming company, which contains detailed information on 1,309 randomly sampled gamers’ playing history over a period of 29 months playing more than 700,000 unique game rounds. We find high-, medium- and low-engagement-state gamers respond differentially to motivations such as achievement and challenge. In the second stage, we use the results from the first stage to develop a matching algorithm that learns the gamer’s current engagement state and exploits that learning to match the gamer to a round to maximize retention. Our (real-time) algorithm increases gamer retention by 4-8%, leading to economically significant revenue gains for the company.

Data Mining User Generated Content: Transforming Play and Leisure in Online Social Gaming into Business Analytics

In this paper, we investigate the gathering and utilization of user-generated data from online video games, and the process of innovating data mining technologies to digitally sort individuals and groups within the social games industry. How and why do information and data entrepreneurs in the online games industry instrumentalize user behaviour in online games for the purpose of data mining? Primary data gathered for this investigation includes in-depth interviews with multinational industry stakeholders about their business practices, revenue sourcing, and emergent data mining algorithms in order to explore the politics that lie behind data and its acquisition, management, sale, and distribution.

E-sports: de la pueril recreación con videojuegos a la gamificación del deporte

The purpose of this manuscript includes the materialization of a theoretical, critical and dialectical construct that addresses gaming and the rise of e-sports in the socio-cultural reality of the modern era. With a sophisticated approach; realizes the different dimensions that make up the category addressed; auscultating the necessary elements, which eventually raised the practice with video games to the challenges of e-sports; where it's not just about recreation; competition, profit and sports dynamics are also found. The article is of the documentary type, with bibliographic design, in which the bibliographic method and the documentary research technique were applied, in the analysis and interpretation of the files selected for this purpose. After an in-depth discussion, results of interest to the sciences were achieved: social, sports and even information; because the physical, neurological and strategic effort exerted by the gamers is reasonably described as team members formally recognized by the communities allied to that industry. Finally, it could be concluded that given its characteristics and potentialities; it can be qualified as a sport discipline to practice with online video games (e-sports); where multiple video players compete for success in virtual reality, which would give rise to the projection of their professional athletic profile, financial enrichment and worldwide fame.