A longitudinal analysis of tens of thousands of gaming sessions involving nearly 9,000 players of the video game PowerWash Simulator indicated that players’ moods improve slightly when they start playing. The bulk of this improvement occurs during the first 15 minutes of play. The paper was published in ACM Games.
Millions of people around the world enjoy playing video games. Despite this, early research on the psychological effects of video games primarily focused on negative aspects and consequences of gameplay, such as problematic use of online games and gaming disorders. Other studies have noted that playing video games, particularly those that are cognitively challenging, can benefit training and maintaining cognitive performance.
But what about mood and emotions? Typical video game play appears to be motivated by relatively short-term goals, such as unwinding after a long day, escaping into a pleasant alternate reality, or engaging in uplifting interactions. These short-term dynamics that motivate gameplay and result from it might not necessarily accumulate to form long-term psychological consequences for individuals. Moreover, these dynamics are poorly studied and understood.
Study author Matti Vuorre and his colleagues sought to better understand how playing video games in a natural context might predict players’ moods. They analyzed a large longitudinal dataset containing data on players’ psychological experiences while playing PowerWash Simulator.
PowerWash Simulator is a video game in which players run a small power-washing business, taking on jobs from a variety of clients in different locations presented as levels. The core mechanic involves aiming and using a pressure washer to clean dirt from various objects, ranging from Ferris wheels to skateparks. The game is commercially available on Steam.
The researchers were particularly interested in investigating whether players’ moods change when they start playing, how much these changes occur, whether this happens to all players or just some, and how these mood changes develop over the course of a game session.
The data were collected through a research edition of PowerWash Simulator, designed by the study authors in collaboration with the game’s developers, FuturLab. This version of the game recorded play events, game status, participants’ demographics, and players’ responses to a psychological survey. The research edition was made freely available on Steam for anyone who owned the original version of the game.
Participants in the study included 8,695 players of the research version of the game, who participated in 67,328 play sessions. During this time, they submitted 162,320 in-game mood reports. All participants were adults, with a median age of 27 years. Fifty-two percent were male. The participants came from 39 different countries, with 57% from the United States, 10% from the United Kingdom, and 5% each from Canada and Germany.
Results showed that the median gaming session lasted around 40 minutes, and a typical player submitted data from five gaming sessions. On average, players’ moods improved slightly when they started playing. On a visual analog scale ranging from 0 to 1, the average improvement was 0.034. Seventy-two percent of players experienced some improvement in mood.
When the researchers examined mood changes during a gaming session, they found that the observed increase in mood typically occurred early, usually within the first 15 minutes of gameplay. Afterward, mood tended to remain stable throughout the rest of the session.
“We found strong evidence for a small positive change in mood over the course of a play session. Our findings invite further research into the mechanisms governing who experiences the larger impacts of video game play on mood, which likely includes both psychological factors and in-game behavior.”, study authors concluded.