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127 excellent video game research topics for 2023.

Are you looking for the best video game research topics for 2023? We are proud to say that you have arrived at the right place. Our experienced ENL writers and professional editors have just finished creating our brand new list of 127 awesome video game topics for high school and college students. You can use any of our ideas for free – no credits required.

Best Way To Write A Video Game Essay

Before we get to the list of topics, we want to make sure you know how to write a great essay. After all, finding a great topic is just part of the writing process of any custom term papers . Here are some pointers that should help you do a better job on your research paper:

• Structure your paper properly and always start with an outline. We recommend you use the 5 paragraph essay structure, as it’s extremely versatile.
• Make sure your grammar and vocabulary are spot-on. Edit your work and polish your writing to make sure you get a top grade.
• Be careful with quotes and citations. Remember to include all your sources in the References chapter.
• Always start your paper with a great thesis statement. Dedicate some time to crafting the best one possible.
• Keep in mind that each body paragraph should start with a clear statement and then support it. Don’t tackle more than one important idea in a paragraph.
• Make sure you research the topic thoroughly and get accurate data from reputable sources. This is, after all, a research paper.
• Last, but not least, write in a clean and concise manner. Express your ideas clearly and avoid unnecessary information that would just confuse or bore your readers.

Now that you know what to do and what to avoid when writing the video game research paper, it’s time to take a look at our list of original video game research topics:

Easy Video Game Topics

We will start our list with a selection of easy video game topics that are perfect for students who don’t want to spend too much time on their papers:

• Talk about your favorite video game
• What do you like about modern video games?
• The process behind the creation of a new game
• Why do you want to become a video game developer?
• What is a MMORPG video game?
• Differences between FPS and RPG games
• Analyze the gaming industry in a country of your choice
• An in-depth look at cyber sports and video game championships
• Can playing video games be considered a sport?
• What makes League of Legends so popular?
• Research gun violence in modern video games
• Are the games you play bad for you?
• Talk about the impact of video games on small children
• Do video games have any positive effects on you?

Video Games Topic For Every Student

Below, you will find a selection of topics for every student from high school to college. Check out our video games topic for every student list:

• The psychology behind modern video games
• Analyze the launch of a popular game
• How are video games priced?
• The history of online gaming
• Games as learning tools
• Controlling video game addiction
• Shooters or strategy games?
• Why you shouldn’t play video games
• Physical benefits of games

Interesting Video Game Topics To Write About

We know; you want a topic that is both interesting and easy to write about. Take a look at these interesting video game topics to write about:

• Do violent video games make teens violent?
• What is the effect of video games on children?
• What changed my view on video games?
• Skills that can be improved by playing games
• Do adults play video games?
• Research the increase in demand for video games
• Compare video games in the US and the UK
• Ethical responsibility in the gaming industry
• How addictive are role playing video games?

Fun Gaming Topics

Yes, writing a research paper can be fun – if you choose a great topic. Pick any of our fun gaming topics and start writing your paper right away:

• The entire history of video games
• Positive effects of video games
• Android games vs iOS games
• The Candy Crush popularity
• Gaming industry careers
• Genres of video games
• The technology behind the Xbox 4
• What causes addiction when it comes to video games?
• How do games improve learning skills?

Latest News On Video Games

If you want to write about something new, we recommend you take a look at the latest news in video games:

• Talk about the use of augmented reality in video games in 2023
• What are incremental console upgrades?
• An in-depth look at inclusivity in video games
• Which games are trending in 2023?
• Most anticipated video games of 2023
• Latest advances in 3D and SFX effects
• Talk about the remastered cinematics of Diablo 2 Resurrected
• Halo Infinite: everything we know so far
• The clan system in Call of Duty: Vanguard

Informative Gaming Topics To Talk About

Do you want to write an informative paper? No problem, we have a long list of informative gaming topics to talk about right here:

• Why do people love video games so much?
• Can video game addiction be treated like substance addiction?
• Case study: The Elder Scrolls of Oblivion
• Discuss government regulation of video games in the US
• Compare and contrast the Xbox and the PlayStation
• A closer look at the Japanese gaming industry
• What does it take to become a video game creator?
• The rise of Android video games
• Do we really need computer games nowadays?

Video Game Research Paper Topics For High School

Our list of video game research paper topics for high school is unique, so you can safely pick any one of our ideas and write your essay on it:

• What do modern video games promote?
• How much time should you spend playing video games?
• Are video games good or bad for our youth?
• Talk about how gaming will look 20 years from now
• Does playing video games make you think more strategic?
• How important are video games for our society?
• The importance of video games in treating depression
• Are games a good way to treat anxiety?
• Why do people spend so much money on video games?

Best Video Game Research Questions

A question is usually enough to spark your creativity. This is why we have an entire list of the best video game research questions right here:

• Are video games good for teens?
• How does video game violence affect children?
• How will games look 50 years from now?
• How do games improve our collaborative skills?
• Why do we love looking at other play video games?
• How damaging is piracy for the video game industry?
• Which are more popular, RPGs or FPSs?

Video Games Debate Topics

Are you preparing for a debate and need a great topic? Don’t worry about it; we’ve got your back. Check out these great video games debate topics:

• Discuss sexism in modern video games
• Talk about social problems related to video games
• Virtual reality in future games
• The important of augmented reality
• Can a game be educational?
• What makes games so fun and addictive?
• Gaming in the classroom in 2023
• Interesting online gaming experiences
• Important of games in special education settings

Good Video Game Writing Prompts

Are you looking for some good video game writing prompts that can help you write an intriguing research paper? Here are some of our best ideas:

• Compare and contrast the top 3 games in the United Kingdom in 2023
• What are some problems with modern video games?
• An in-depth look at advanced SFX effects
• 3D game rendering technologies
• Discuss online piracy related to video games
• Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Modern video games
• How realistic are modern games in 2023?
• Tackle the violence theme in video games
• Sony vs. Microsoft: gaming giants battle
• The link between gaming and violence in teenagers
• Discuss the addictiveness of video games

Video Games Research Paper Topics For College

Of course, we have a list of video games research paper topics for college students. These are a bit more difficult than the others in our list:

• Linking video game addiction to substance abuse
• The use of first person shooter games in military training programs
• Flight simulation games and their real world applications
• Games that improve critical thinking skills
• The minimum age for playing video games
• Games that improve reaction times
• Pros and cons of playing assassin video games
• Debunking the most popular myths about video games
• Should parents prevent their children from playing video games?
• The link between video games and cognitive skill improvements

Engaging Video Games Topics

Want to engage your audience right from the start? If you are looking to impress your professor, you might want to give these engaging video games topics a try:

• The role of a developer in the video game industry
• How is testing being carried out on video games?
• Talk about the latest and most advanced video game effects
• An analysis of the video game industry in 2023
• Compare the 3 most popular games in the United States in 2023
• Are online video games more addictive than single-player ones?
• Discuss about the psychological effects of video games
• Compare and contrast 3 first person shooter games
• Improving reaction time in FPS games
• The effect of video games on education

Video Games Of The Future

Last, but not least, we have a nice compilation of ideas related to video games of the future. Take a look at our innovative ideas and pick the one you like:

• A closer look at Battlefield 2042
• Talk about how rendering graphics works in games
• Advances in graphics planned for games to be released in 2023
• Innovative graphics in Halo Infinite
• Discuss 3D game rendering technologies of the future
• What makes Pragmata a game of the future?
• The use of artificial intelligence in games in 2023
• Research the use of virtual reality in future games
• Discuss real-time rendering in future 3D games
• An in-depth look at Hytale (to be released in 2023)

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110 Video Game Topic Ideas for Essays & Examples

🔝 top 10 video game topics for 2024, 🏆 best video game topic ideas & essay examples, 🎮 good video game research topics, 🕹️ interesting gaming topics to write about, ❓ video game research questions, ✅ simple & easy video game essay topics.

Looking for video game topics for your project? Look no further! Here, we’ve collected excellent essay topics for true gaming enthusiasts. Whether you’re looking for argumentative essay ideas on video games, research topics, or questions for debate, you will find them here.

• History of Video Game Consoles
• Myths of Video Game Violence
• The Global Phenomenon of Esports
• VR Gaming and Its Future Possibilities
• How Video Games Influence Cognitive Skills
• Therapeutic Mental Health Benefits of Video Games
• Diversity and Gender Representation in Video Games
• How Multiplayer Games Impact Social Interaction
• Healthy Gaming Habits Against Video Game Addiction
• Aesthetic and Narrative Qualities of Artistic Video Games
• Product Life Cycle & Marketing of Video Game Industry One of the most important advantages of the concept of life cycle can be seen in the sphere of marketing, where if used as a tool it allows adjusting the strategies, including marketing, based on […]
• Video Game Industry Analysis In 1950, Yamauchi assumed the position of the president in the firm and got on a variety of strategies with the purpose of rationalizing and modernizing the way the firm was controlled.
• Video Game Effects: Good or Bad? Given the fact that there is indeed a logically sound rationale to such a suggestion, throughout the course of conducting my study, I remained thoroughly observant of the article’s classification-related suggestions, in regards to the […]
• The Monopoly Tycoon Video Game Review The game is stylistically similar to the board game Monopoly, and it can be played both online and offline. It is important to note that the game has a multiplayer feature, which can be played […]
• The Video Game Industry Evolution The first mention of the creation of such games dates back to the 1940s, but it was in 1952 that Alexander Shafto “Sandy” Douglas officially presented his dissertation at the University of Cambridge. One of […]
• The NASCAR Video Game Project Management Plan The plan attempts to draw the features and gameplay mechanics by replicating the thought process of a potential player. At this stage, the game should be well-advertised and ready for release.
• The Motivation of the Video Game Player For instance, the project gave its players the dynamic and fast pace of the game, a vast and detailed map, various locations, several different weapons, and character skins, and this is not all the possibilities.
• The “Medal of Honor” Video Game Analysis The game is set to depict the Afghanistan invention in 2002 and the battle between the U.S.military and the Taliban. Due to the close resemblance of the game to the Afghanistan war, the game has […]
• Human Life: Video Game, Simulation, or Reality? Drawing parallels between the real and the virtual world, one can admit the unreality of the existence of the planet and people and compare everything that happens with the simulation in which we are.
• Does Video Game Violence Lead to Aggression in Children? Among the gaming community, children participate vigorously in absorbing the plethora of entertaining content, including age-restricted ones where the scenes of violence are abundant.
• A Role-Playing Video Game Ayiti: The Cost of Life This strategy worked but not to the topmost level simply because the burden of the living cost was gradually weighing down the overall income of my family.
• BioWare Video Game Project Management For example, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the third installment of the company’s flagship series, switched to the Frostbite engine used by most of the EA games and succeeded in delivering the product despite the technical difficulties […]
• Video Game History: Overview From the 1990s to Nowadays In addition to arcade car behavior, the game was also famous for its beautiful graphics at the time, with each game in the series being a launch title showing the capabilities of the console.
• FIFA 10 Football Simulation Video Game A lack of consistency is evident in the various versions of this game as FIFA 10 played on a PC lacks the realism that is exhibited when the game is played on XBOX 360 and […]
• Video Game Delivery Project: Strategic Marketing To initiate strategies in marketing of Video Game, the company will decide to develop a web based application by ABC CORP and this application is customized to meet the requirements of the project. The purpose […]
• A Video Game Store’s Business Plan The projected cash flow of the cash in the balance sheet will appear positive for the next five years and will show that the company’s profitability in will be good enough pay for operating expenses […]
• The U.S. Video Game Industry This was also based on the views of the company’s developers who assumed that the technological advantages of the the16-bit system were extremely less than that of the 8-bit system.
• Video Game Company Against Online Piracy The purpose of the said DRM software is to protect the intellectual rights of the company. The fourth major issue is the encompassing goal of the VGC to end all types of piracy.
• Video Game Addiction and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs As to me, I was interested in video games when I was a child because this industry was at its beginning and almost every pupil was involved in it.
• Sony and Nintendo in the Video Game Industry The firm has manufactured several generations of the home console since the 1980s, beginning with the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System released in the early 1990s, and the Nintendo 64 that was […]
• Twitch.tv and Video Game Streaming Career From this point, in spite of the fact that the Twitch.tv platform can be viewed as belonging to the live-streaming industry, the careers of streamers develop according to the traditional principles of the entertainment business.
• Nintendo in the Video Game Industry Previously, Atari was a major power to reckon with in the industry but was later toppled by Nintendo. Part of Yamauchi’s vision was to introduce new and cheaper video games in the market than the […]
• Game designers have the responsibility to design less video game Secondly, the outcome of the video game is unpredictable as compared to movie in which the audience can predict the point at which the story would end thus making the video games more interesting to […]
• Striving for the Ultimate Knowledge: Eli’s Mission. Video Game Owing to the peculiarities of the movie plot, the game can be shaped in a most intriguing way, with a lot of turns of the plot which lead to the most effective denouement.
• Analysis of the Counter-Strike Video Game Phenomenon in Computer Gaming
• Comparison of Three Companies in Video Game Industry; Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft
• Analysis of Free Will in The Stanley Parable Video Game
• Analysis of the Effects of Playing a Video Game Used in Computer Science
• Analysis of the Characteristics and Player Statistics of Bungie’s Video Game Destiny
• Are Video Games Truly a Game or a Reality?
• Analysis of the Topic of the Releases in the Video-Game Industry and the Issues of the Violence
• Analysis of the Rise of the Video Game Empire in Modern Society
• Two Aspects of Creating a Video Game
• Analysis of the Third-Person, Console-Based Video Game, The Last of Us
• Are Users The Next Entrepreneurs? A Case Study On The Video Game Industry
• Combating Video Game Addiction : A Global Problem
• Does Playing Video Game Consoles Bring About Plenty of Advantages?
• Analysis of the Field Work Project and the Topic of a Video Game Community
• Does Video Game Violence Affect Children?
• Do Video Games Contribute For Video Game Violence?
• Is The Video Game Industry an Oligopoly?
• Is Video Game Violence the Cause of Juvenile Delinquency?
• Psychological Effects of Video Game Violence on Children
• What Is the Defining Business and Economic Characteristics of the Video Game Console Industry?
• Why Play Station 4 and the Xbox One Are the Kings of the Next Generation Video Game Console?
• What Makes A Video Game Addictive?
• Competition Among 3 Main Video Game Companies: Nintendo, Sega, And Sony
• Brief Note On Video Gaming And The Video Game Industry
• Effects of Television and Video Game Violence on Children and Teenagers
• Analysis of the Different Genres of Video Game Systems for Children
• Overview of the Process and Career in Video Game Design
• Development of the Elder Scrolls Video Game Series
• Breaking Gender Stereotypes in Traditionally Masculine Sports: The Inclusion of Women in FIFA 16 Video Game
• Cancer: Video Game and Playing Violent Video
• Fighting the Online Video Game Wars in China
• Government Regulation Of Video Game Violence Is Unconstitutional And Unnecessary
• Japanese video game industry
• History of the Video Game Industry
• Microsoft Xbox Entering the World of Video Game
• The Merchant of Video Games: Adapting the Merchant of Venice into an Adventure Game
• What Are Some Revolutionary Breakthroughs in the Video Game Industry?
• What Does It Take To Make It in the Video Games Industry?
• Why Has the Video Game Industry Exploded Recently?
• What Is Wrong With the Video Game Industry in This Generation?
• Is the Video Game Industry Going Downhill?
• Who Is the Best Voice Actor in the Video Game Industry?
• What Will Be the Next Breakthrough or “Big Thing” in the Video Game Industry?
• Is the Video Game Industry in Trouble Right Now?
• Who Makes More Money: Hollywood or the Video Game Industry?
• How Has the Coronavirus Impacted the Video Game Industry?
• What Is the Biggest Missed Opportunity Yet in the Video Game Industry?
• Does Video Game Violence Induce Negative Affects on Our Youth?
• What Are the Changes the Video Game Industry Needs?
• How Large Is the Video Game Industry?
• Why Is the Video Game Industry in China Dominated by MMOs?
• Is There a Bubble Forming in the Video Game Industry?
• What Do Video Game Players Understand That Most People Don’t?
• How Easy Is It to Make a Video Game?
• What’s the Best Advice You’ve Received From a Video Game?
• What Was the First Video Game?
• What Is the Most Inappropriate Video Game You Know?
• What Are the Elements of a Good Video Game?
• How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Video Game?
• What Can Video Game Consoles Offer You?
• Why Video Game Addiction Is One of the Urgent Problems Today?
• How Does Science Create Video Game?
• How the 1970s Sparked the Video Game Industry?
• Why Do Video Game Movies Always Fail?
• What’s the Most Popular Video Game Genre?
• The Science Behind Brain-Boosting Games
• How Gaming Reflects and Influences Society
• How Video Games Participate in Social Justice
• Pros and Cons of Gamified Fitness and Wellness Apps
• Gamification, Its Benefits, and Learning Outcomes
• Virtual Goods in Video Games and Their Real-World Value
• What Factors Influence Immersion and Player Engagement?
• Cloud Gaming and the Potential of Streaming Technology
• Market Trends and Revenue Models of the Video Game Industry
• Violence, Microtransactions, and Other Ethical Issues in Video Game Development
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• Open access
• Published: 13 March 2018

Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study

• Simone Kühn 1 , 2 ,
• Dimitrij Tycho Kugler 2 ,
• Katharina Schmalen 1 ,
• Markus Weichenberger 1 ,
• Charlotte Witt 1 &
• Jürgen Gallinat 2  

Molecular Psychiatry volume  24 ,  pages 1220–1234 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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• Neuroscience

It is a widespread concern that violent video games promote aggression, reduce pro-social behaviour, increase impulsivity and interfere with cognition as well as mood in its players. Previous experimental studies have focussed on short-term effects of violent video gameplay on aggression, yet there are reasons to believe that these effects are mostly the result of priming. In contrast, the present study is the first to investigate the effects of long-term violent video gameplay using a large battery of tests spanning questionnaires, behavioural measures of aggression, sexist attitudes, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), mental health (depressivity, anxiety) as well as executive control functions, before and after 2 months of gameplay. Our participants played the violent video game Grand Theft Auto V, the non-violent video game The Sims 3 or no game at all for 2 months on a daily basis. No significant changes were observed, neither when comparing the group playing a violent video game to a group playing a non-violent game, nor to a passive control group. Also, no effects were observed between baseline and posttest directly after the intervention, nor between baseline and a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention period had ended. The present results thus provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games in adults and will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective on the effects of violent video gaming.

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The concern that violent video games may promote aggression or reduce empathy in its players is pervasive and given the popularity of these games their psychological impact is an urgent issue for society at large. Contrary to the custom, this topic has also been passionately debated in the scientific literature. One research camp has strongly argued that violent video games increase aggression in its players [ 1 , 2 ], whereas the other camp [ 3 , 4 ] repeatedly concluded that the effects are minimal at best, if not absent. Importantly, it appears that these fundamental inconsistencies cannot be attributed to differences in research methodology since even meta-analyses, with the goal to integrate the results of all prior studies on the topic of aggression caused by video games led to disparate conclusions [ 2 , 3 ]. These meta-analyses had a strong focus on children, and one of them [ 2 ] reported a marginal age effect suggesting that children might be even more susceptible to violent video game effects.

To unravel this topic of research, we designed a randomised controlled trial on adults to draw causal conclusions on the influence of video games on aggression. At present, almost all experimental studies targeting the effects of violent video games on aggression and/or empathy focussed on the effects of short-term video gameplay. In these studies the duration for which participants were instructed to play the games ranged from 4 min to maximally 2 h (mean = 22 min, median = 15 min, when considering all experimental studies reviewed in two of the recent major meta-analyses in the field [ 3 , 5 ]) and most frequently the effects of video gaming have been tested directly after gameplay.

It has been suggested that the effects of studies focussing on consequences of short-term video gameplay (mostly conducted on college student populations) are mainly the result of priming effects, meaning that exposure to violent content increases the accessibility of aggressive thoughts and affect when participants are in the immediate situation [ 6 ]. However, above and beyond this the General Aggression Model (GAM, [ 7 ]) assumes that repeatedly primed thoughts and feelings influence the perception of ongoing events and therewith elicits aggressive behaviour as a long-term effect. We think that priming effects are interesting and worthwhile exploring, but in contrast to the notion of the GAM our reading of the literature is that priming effects are short-lived (suggested to only last for <5 min and may potentially reverse after that time [ 8 ]). Priming effects should therefore only play a role in very close temporal proximity to gameplay. Moreover, there are a multitude of studies on college students that have failed to replicate priming effects [ 9 , 10 , 11 ] and associated predictions of the so-called GAM such as a desensitisation against violent content [ 12 , 13 , 14 ] in adolescents and college students or a decrease of empathy [ 15 ] and pro-social behaviour [ 16 , 17 ] as a result of playing violent video games.

However, in our view the question that society is actually interested in is not: “Are people more aggressive after having played violent video games for a few minutes? And are these people more aggressive minutes after gameplay ended?”, but rather “What are the effects of frequent, habitual violent video game playing? And for how long do these effects persist (not in the range of minutes but rather weeks and months)?” For this reason studies are needed in which participants are trained over longer periods of time, tested after a longer delay after acute playing and tested with broader batteries assessing aggression but also other relevant domains such as empathy as well as mood and cognition. Moreover, long-term follow-up assessments are needed to demonstrate long-term effects of frequent violent video gameplay. To fill this gap, we set out to expose adult participants to two different types of video games for a period of 2 months and investigate changes in measures of various constructs of interest at least one day after the last gaming session and test them once more 2 months after the end of the gameplay intervention. In contrast to the GAM, we hypothesised no increases of aggression or decreases in pro-social behaviour even after long-term exposure to a violent video game due to our reasoning that priming effects of violent video games are short-lived and should therefore not influence measures of aggression if they are not measured directly after acute gaming. In the present study, we assessed potential changes in the following domains: behavioural as well as questionnaire measures of aggression, empathy and interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs (such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness, risk taking, delay discounting), and depressivity and anxiety as well as executive control functions. As the effects on aggression and pro-social behaviour were the core targets of the present study, we implemented multiple tests for these domains. This broad range of domains with its wide coverage and the longitudinal nature of the study design enabled us to draw more general conclusions regarding the causal effects of violent video games.

Materials and methods

Participants.

Ninety healthy participants (mean age = 28 years, SD = 7.3, range: 18–45, 48 females) were recruited by means of flyers and internet advertisements. The sample consisted of college students as well as of participants from the general community. The advertisement mentioned that we were recruiting for a longitudinal study on video gaming, but did not mention that we would offer an intervention or that we were expecting training effects. Participants were randomly assigned to the three groups ruling out self-selection effects. The sample size was based on estimates from a previous study with a similar design [ 18 ]. After complete description of the study, the participants’ informed written consent was obtained. The local ethics committee of the Charité University Clinic, Germany, approved of the study. We included participants that reported little, preferably no video game usage in the past 6 months (none of the participants ever played the game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA) or Sims 3 in any of its versions before). We excluded participants with psychological or neurological problems. The participants received financial compensation for the testing sessions (200 Euros) and performance-dependent additional payment for two behavioural tasks detailed below, but received no money for the training itself.

Training procedure

The violent video game group (5 participants dropped out between pre- and posttest, resulting in a group of n  = 25, mean age = 26.6 years, SD = 6.0, 14 females) played the game Grand Theft Auto V on a Playstation 3 console over a period of 8 weeks. The active control group played the non-violent video game Sims 3 on the same console (6 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n  = 24, mean age = 25.8 years, SD = 6.8, 12 females). The passive control group (2 participants dropped out, resulting in a group of n  = 28, mean age = 30.9 years, SD = 8.4, 12 females) was not given a gaming console and had no task but underwent the same testing procedure as the two other groups. The passive control group was not aware of the fact that they were part of a control group to prevent self-training attempts. The experimenters testing the participants were blind to group membership, but we were unable to prevent participants from talking about the game during testing, which in some cases lead to an unblinding of experimental condition. Both training groups were instructed to play the game for at least 30 min a day. Participants were only reimbursed for the sessions in which they came to the lab. Our previous research suggests that the perceived fun in gaming was positively associated with training outcome [ 18 ] and we speculated that enforcing training sessions through payment would impair motivation and thus diminish the potential effect of the intervention. Participants underwent a testing session before (baseline) and after the training period of 2 months (posttest 1) as well as a follow-up testing sessions 2 months after the training period (posttest 2).

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA)

GTA is an action-adventure video game situated in a fictional highly violent game world in which players are rewarded for their use of violence as a means to advance in the game. The single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The gameplay focuses on an open world (sandbox game) where the player can choose between different behaviours. The game also allows the player to engage in various side activities, such as action-adventure, driving, third-person shooting, occasional role-playing, stealth and racing elements. The open world design lets players freely roam around the fictional world so that gamers could in principle decide not to commit violent acts.

The Sims 3 (Sims)

Sims is a life simulation game and also classified as a sandbox game because it lacks clearly defined goals. The player creates virtual individuals called “Sims”, and customises their appearance, their personalities and places them in a home, directs their moods, satisfies their desires and accompanies them in their daily activities and by becoming part of a social network. It offers opportunities, which the player may choose to pursue or to refuse, similar as GTA but is generally considered as a pro-social and clearly non-violent game.

Assessment battery

To assess aggression and associated constructs we used the following questionnaires: Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire [ 19 ], State Hostility Scale [ 20 ], Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale [ 21 , 22 ], Moral Disengagement Scale [ 23 , 24 ], the Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Test [ 25 , 26 ] and a so-called World View Measure [ 27 ]. All of these measures have previously been used in research investigating the effects of violent video gameplay, however, the first two most prominently. Additionally, behavioural measures of aggression were used: a Word Completion Task, a Lexical Decision Task [ 28 ] and the Delay frustration task [ 29 ] (an inter-correlation matrix is depicted in Supplementary Figure 1 1). From these behavioural measures, the first two were previously used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay. To assess variables that have been related to the construct of impulsivity, we used the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale [ 30 ] and the Boredom Propensity Scale [ 31 ] as well as tasks assessing risk taking and delay discounting behaviourally, namely the Balloon Analogue Risk Task [ 32 ] and a Delay-Discounting Task [ 33 ]. To quantify pro-social behaviour, we employed: Interpersonal Reactivity Index [ 34 ] (frequently used in research on the effects of violent video gameplay), Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale [ 35 ], Reading the Mind in the Eyes test [ 36 ], Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire [ 37 ] and Richardson Conflict Response Questionnaire [ 38 ]. To assess depressivity and anxiety, which has previously been associated with intense video game playing [ 39 ], we used Beck Depression Inventory [ 40 ] and State Trait Anxiety Inventory [ 41 ]. To characterise executive control function, we used a Stop Signal Task [ 42 ], a Multi-Source Interference Task [ 43 ] and a Task Switching Task [ 44 ] which have all been previously used to assess effects of video gameplay. More details on all instruments used can be found in the Supplementary Material.

Data analysis

On the basis of the research question whether violent video game playing enhances aggression and reduces empathy, the focus of the present analysis was on time by group interactions. We conducted these interaction analyses separately, comparing the violent video game group against the active control group (GTA vs. Sims) and separately against the passive control group (GTA vs. Controls) that did not receive any intervention and separately for the potential changes during the intervention period (baseline vs. posttest 1) and to test for potential long-term changes (baseline vs. posttest 2). We employed classical frequentist statistics running a repeated-measures ANOVA controlling for the covariates sex and age.

Since we collected 52 separate outcome variables and conduced four different tests with each (GTA vs. Sims, GTA vs. Controls, crossed with baseline vs. posttest 1, baseline vs. posttest 2), we had to conduct 52 × 4 = 208 frequentist statistical tests. Setting the alpha value to 0.05 means that by pure chance about 10.4 analyses should become significant. To account for this multiple testing problem and the associated alpha inflation, we conducted a Bonferroni correction. According to Bonferroni, the critical value for the entire set of n tests is set to an alpha value of 0.05 by taking alpha/ n  = 0.00024.

Since the Bonferroni correction has sometimes been criticised as overly conservative, we conducted false discovery rate (FDR) correction [ 45 ]. FDR correction also determines adjusted p -values for each test, however, it controls only for the number of false discoveries in those tests that result in a discovery (namely a significant result).

Moreover, we tested for group differences at the baseline assessment using independent t -tests, since those may hamper the interpretation of significant interactions between group and time that we were primarily interested in.

Since the frequentist framework does not enable to evaluate whether the observed null effect of the hypothesised interaction is indicative of the absence of a relation between violent video gaming and our dependent variables, the amount of evidence in favour of the null hypothesis has been tested using a Bayesian framework. Within the Bayesian framework both the evidence in favour of the null and the alternative hypothesis are directly computed based on the observed data, giving rise to the possibility of comparing the two. We conducted Bayesian repeated-measures ANOVAs comparing the model in favour of the null and the model in favour of the alternative hypothesis resulting in a Bayes factor (BF) using Bayesian Information criteria [ 46 ]. The BF 01 suggests how much more likely the data is to occur under the null hypothesis. All analyses were performed using the JASP software package ( https://jasp-stats.org ).

Sex distribution in the present study did not differ across the groups ( χ 2 p -value > 0.414). However, due to the fact that differences between males and females have been observed in terms of aggression and empathy [ 47 ], we present analyses controlling for sex. Since our random assignment to the three groups did result in significant age differences between groups, with the passive control group being significantly older than the GTA ( t (51) = −2.10, p  = 0.041) and the Sims group ( t (50) = −2.38, p  = 0.021), we also controlled for age.

The participants in the violent video game group played on average 35 h and the non-violent video game group 32 h spread out across the 8 weeks interval (with no significant group difference p  = 0.48).

To test whether participants assigned to the violent GTA game show emotional, cognitive and behavioural changes, we present the results of repeated-measure ANOVA time x group interaction analyses separately for GTA vs. Sims and GTA vs. Controls (Tables  1 – 3 ). Moreover, we split the analyses according to the time domain into effects from baseline assessment to posttest 1 (Table  2 ) and effects from baseline assessment to posttest 2 (Table  3 ) to capture more long-lasting or evolving effects. In addition to the statistical test values, we report partial omega squared ( ω 2 ) as an effect size measure. Next to the classical frequentist statistics, we report the results of a Bayesian statistical approach, namely BF 01 , the likelihood with which the data is to occur under the null hypothesis that there is no significant time × group interaction. In Table  2 , we report the presence of significant group differences at baseline in the right most column.

Since we conducted 208 separate frequentist tests we expected 10.4 significant effects simply by chance when setting the alpha value to 0.05. In fact we found only eight significant time × group interactions (these are marked with an asterisk in Tables  2 and 3 ).

When applying a conservative Bonferroni correction, none of those tests survive the corrected threshold of p  < 0.00024. Neither does any test survive the more lenient FDR correction. The arithmetic mean of the frequentist test statistics likewise shows that on average no significant effect was found (bottom rows in Tables  2 and 3 ).

In line with the findings from a frequentist approach, the harmonic mean of the Bayesian factor BF 01 is consistently above one but not very far from one. This likewise suggests that there is very likely no interaction between group × time and therewith no detrimental effects of the violent video game GTA in the domains tested. The evidence in favour of the null hypothesis based on the Bayes factor is not massive, but clearly above 1. Some of the harmonic means are above 1.6 and constitute substantial evidence [ 48 ]. However, the harmonic mean has been criticised as unstable. Owing to the fact that the sum is dominated by occasional small terms in the likelihood, one may underestimate the actual evidence in favour of the null hypothesis [ 49 ].

To test the sensitivity of the present study to detect relevant effects we computed the effect size that we would have been able to detect. The information we used consisted of alpha error probability = 0.05, power = 0.95, our sample size, number of groups and of measurement occasions and correlation between the repeated measures at posttest 1 and posttest 2 (average r  = 0.68). According to G*Power [ 50 ], we could detect small effect sizes of f  = 0.16 (equals η 2  = 0.025 and r  = 0.16) in each separate test. When accounting for the conservative Bonferroni-corrected p -value of 0.00024, still a medium effect size of f  = 0.23 (equals η 2  = 0.05 and r  = 0.22) would have been detectable. A meta-analysis by Anderson [ 2 ] reported an average effects size of r  = 0.18 for experimental studies testing for aggressive behaviour and another by Greitmeyer [ 5 ] reported average effect sizes of r  = 0.19, 0.25 and 0.17 for effects of violent games on aggressive behaviour, cognition and affect, all of which should have been detectable at least before multiple test correction.

Within the scope of the present study we tested the potential effects of playing the violent video game GTA V for 2 months against an active control group that played the non-violent, rather pro-social life simulation game The Sims 3 and a passive control group. Participants were tested before and after the long-term intervention and at a follow-up appointment 2 months later. Although we used a comprehensive test battery consisting of questionnaires and computerised behavioural tests assessing aggression, impulsivity-related constructs, mood, anxiety, empathy, interpersonal competencies and executive control functions, we did not find relevant negative effects in response to violent video game playing. In fact, only three tests of the 208 statistical tests performed showed a significant interaction pattern that would be in line with this hypothesis. Since at least ten significant effects would be expected purely by chance, we conclude that there were no detrimental effects of violent video gameplay.

This finding stands in contrast to some experimental studies, in which short-term effects of violent video game exposure have been investigated and where increases in aggressive thoughts and affect as well as decreases in helping behaviour have been observed [ 1 ]. However, these effects of violent video gaming on aggressiveness—if present at all (see above)—seem to be rather short-lived, potentially lasting <15 min [ 8 , 51 ]. In addition, these short-term effects of video gaming are far from consistent as multiple studies fail to demonstrate or replicate them [ 16 , 17 ]. This may in part be due to problems, that are very prominent in this field of research, namely that the outcome measures of aggression and pro-social behaviour, are poorly standardised, do not easily generalise to real-life behaviour and may have lead to selective reporting of the results [ 3 ]. We tried to address these concerns by including a large set of outcome measures that were mostly inspired by previous studies demonstrating effects of short-term violent video gameplay on aggressive behaviour and thoughts, that we report exhaustively.

Since effects observed only for a few minutes after short sessions of video gaming are not representative of what society at large is actually interested in, namely how habitual violent video gameplay affects behaviour on a more long-term basis, studies employing longer training intervals are highly relevant. Two previous studies have employed longer training intervals. In an online study, participants with a broad age range (14–68 years) have been trained in a violent video game for 4 weeks [ 52 ]. In comparison to a passive control group no changes were observed, neither in aggression-related beliefs, nor in aggressive social interactions assessed by means of two questions. In a more recent study, participants played a previous version of GTA for 12 h spread across 3 weeks [ 53 ]. Participants were compared to a passive control group using the Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, a questionnaire assessing impulsive or reactive aggression, attitude towards violence, and empathy. The authors only report a limited increase in pro-violent attitude. Unfortunately, this study only assessed posttest measures, which precludes the assessment of actual changes caused by the game intervention.

The present study goes beyond these studies by showing that 2 months of violent video gameplay does neither lead to any significant negative effects in a broad assessment battery administered directly after the intervention nor at a follow-up assessment 2 months after the intervention. The fact that we assessed multiple domains, not finding an effect in any of them, makes the present study the most comprehensive in the field. Our battery included self-report instruments on aggression (Buss–Perry aggression questionnaire, State Hostility scale, Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance scale, Moral Disengagement scale, World View Measure and Rosenzweig Picture Frustration test) as well as computer-based tests measuring aggressive behaviour such as the delay frustration task and measuring the availability of aggressive words using the word completion test and a lexical decision task. Moreover, we assessed impulse-related concepts such as sensation seeking, boredom proneness and associated behavioural measures such as the computerised Balloon analogue risk task, and delay discounting. Four scales assessing empathy and interpersonal competence scales, including the reading the mind in the eyes test revealed no effects of violent video gameplay. Neither did we find any effects on depressivity (Becks depression inventory) nor anxiety measured as a state as well as a trait. This is an important point, since several studies reported higher rates of depressivity and anxiety in populations of habitual video gamers [ 54 , 55 ]. Last but not least, our results revealed also no substantial changes in executive control tasks performance, neither in the Stop signal task, the Multi-source interference task or a Task switching task. Previous studies have shown higher performance of habitual action video gamers in executive tasks such as task switching [ 56 , 57 , 58 ] and another study suggests that training with action video games improves task performance that relates to executive functions [ 59 ], however, these associations were not confirmed by a meta-analysis in the field [ 60 ]. The absence of changes in the stop signal task fits well with previous studies that likewise revealed no difference between in habitual action video gamers and controls in terms of action inhibition [ 61 , 62 ]. Although GTA does not qualify as a classical first-person shooter as most of the previously tested action video games, it is classified as an action-adventure game and shares multiple features with those action video games previously related to increases in executive function, including the need for hand–eye coordination and fast reaction times.

Taken together, the findings of the present study show that an extensive game intervention over the course of 2 months did not reveal any specific changes in aggression, empathy, interpersonal competencies, impulsivity-related constructs, depressivity, anxiety or executive control functions; neither in comparison to an active control group that played a non-violent video game nor to a passive control group. We observed no effects when comparing a baseline and a post-training assessment, nor when focussing on more long-term effects between baseline and a follow-up interval 2 months after the participants stopped training. To our knowledge, the present study employed the most comprehensive test battery spanning a multitude of domains in which changes due to violent video games may have been expected. Therefore the present results provide strong evidence against the frequently debated negative effects of playing violent video games. This debate has mostly been informed by studies showing short-term effects of violent video games when tests were administered immediately after a short playtime of a few minutes; effects that may in large be caused by short-lived priming effects that vanish after minutes. The presented results will therefore help to communicate a more realistic scientific perspective of the real-life effects of violent video gaming. However, future research is needed to demonstrate the absence of effects of violent video gameplay in children.

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Acknowledgements

SK has been funded by a Heisenberg grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG KU 3322/1-1, SFB 936/C7), the European Union (ERC-2016-StG-Self-Control-677804) and a Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation (JRF 2016–2018).

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Kühn, S., Kugler, D., Schmalen, K. et al. Does playing violent video games cause aggression? A longitudinal intervention study. Mol Psychiatry 24 , 1220–1234 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-018-0031-7

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Don’t want to spend too much time writing the essay? No problem, just choose one of our easy video games topics:

• The history and evolution of video games.
• The positive effects of video games on children.
• The impact of video game violence on society.
• The benefits of playing video games for cognitive development.
• The use of video games in education and training.
• The role of video games in promoting physical activity.
• The psychology of video game addiction and its effects.
• The influence of video games on culture and society.
• The future of virtual reality in video games.
• The use of video games as a treatment for mental health issues.
• The ethical considerations of video game development and production.

Interesting Video Game Topics To Write About

Our experts have put together a list of the most interesting video game topics to write about. Check out the list below:

• Gender representation and diversity in video games.
• The impact of esports on the gaming industry.
• The relationship between video games and storytelling.
• Cultural significance of popular video game franchises.
• The role of video games in socialization and relationships.
• The effects of streaming on the gaming culture.
• The potential negative effects of excessive video game playing.
• The use of video games in medical treatment.
• The evolution of game design and mechanics in video games.
• The impact of the video game industry on local economies.

Current Gaming Topics

If you want to talk about topics that are relevant today, you can simply select one of our current gaming topics. You can find them right here:

• The rise of esports and professional gaming leagues
• The ongoing debate around video game addiction
• The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the gaming industry
• Loot boxes and micro transactions: controversies
• The increasing popularity of mobile gaming
• The emergence of cloud gaming platforms
• The debate around video game violence and its effects
• The role of gaming in learning
• The rise of indie game developers and their impact
• Talk about augmented reality in gaming in 2023
• The importance of inclusivity in gaming

Video Game Research Paper Topics

Writing a research paper on a topic related to video games doesn’t have to be difficult. Here are some simple video game research paper topics:

• The impact of video games on problem-solving skills
• Violent video games and aggressive behavior
• Using video games for teaching in the classroom in 2023
• The influence of video game design on player engagement
• The impact of online gaming communities on social interaction
• The role of video games in promoting physical activity
• The potential for video games to enhance mental health
• The effects of video games on attention span
• The use of video games in therapy
• Video game addiction and compulsive behavior

Video Game Research Questions

We have some of the most thought-provoking video game research questions on the Internet right here for you:

• How do different game design elements impact player attitude?
• What is the role of video games in shaping cultural identity?
• How do different types of video games affect spatial reasoning skills?
• What is the relationship between video games and creativity?
• How do video games impact risk-taking behavior?
• What is the impact of video games on academic performance?
• How do video games affect emotional intelligence?
• How can video games be used to promote sustainability?
• What is the impact of video game marketing on consumer behavior?
• How do video games impact racial stereotypes in society?
• What ethical considerations should be taken into account when designing video games?

Video Game Writing Prompts

Don’t know what to write the essay about? Don’t worry about it; we’ve got your back. Check out these video game writing prompts:

• Write a short story based on the world of “The Elder Scrolls. Skyrim.”
• Imagine a new planet for the “Mass Effect” series and describe it.
• Write a fanfiction piece that explores the backstory of “Overwatch” hero, Soldier. 76.
• Create a character in “Fallout 4” and write a journal entry from their perspective.
• Write a screenplay for a movie based on “The Last of Us.”
• Develop a new quest line for “World of Warcraft” and outline the story.
• Write a short story that takes place in the universe of “Halo.”
• Imagine an alternate ending to “BioShock Infinite” and write it out.
• Create a poem inspired by the themes and imagery of “Journey.”
• Write a story set in the post-apocalyptic world of “Horizon Zero Dawn.”
• Develop a backstory for the character of Clementine in “The Walking Dead” game series.

Video Games Debate Topics

Preparing for a heated debate? You need a good topic, of course. Check out these interesting video games debate topics:

• Are video games really a form of art?
• Is the portrayal of violence in video games harmful?
• Are loot boxes and micro transactions in video games ethical?
• Is it fair for video games to include difficulty levels in 2023?
• Are video games responsible for addiction and compulsive behavior?
• Should video games be used as a tool for educational purposes?
• Is it appropriate to censor or ban video games?
• Should video game companies be held accountable for their content?
• Is the portrayal of women in video games sexist?
• Are remastered video games worth the investment?
• Is streaming video games on platforms like Twitch a viable career?

Informative Gaming Topics To Talk About

If you’re looking for some informative gaming topics to talk about, you’re in luck. We have some for you:

• The evolution of gaming technology and graphics
• The rise of esports and competitive gaming
• The history and influence of classic video game franchises
• The future of virtual and augmented reality gaming
• The psychology of video game addiction and how to combat it
• The cultural significance and representation in video games
• The intersection of music and gaming, including video game soundtracks
• The rise of mobile gaming and its influence on the gaming market
• The history and impact of multiplayer gaming and online communities
• The design and development process of creating a video game

Engaging Topic Ideas Related To Video Games

These unique, engaging topic ideas related to video games will surely win you some bonus points from you professor:

• Write a script for a TV show set in the world of “Assassin’s Creed.”
• Create a new playable character for “Street Fighter” and describe their moves and backstory.
• Write a novella that explores the mystery of “Firewatch.”
• Develop a plot for a new “Red Dead Redemption” DLC.
• Write a short story inspired by the characters of “Life is Strange.”
• Imagine a 2023 sequel to “Breath of the Wild” and outline the plot.
• Write a screenplay for a movie based on “Half-Life.”
• Create a new creature for the world of “Monster Hunter” and describe its behavior and habitat.
• Write a story that takes place in the world of “Dark Souls.”
• Develop a new puzzle game concept and describe its gameplay and mechanics.
• Write a fanfiction piece that explores the relationship between Ellie and Dina in “The Last of Us Part II.”

Fun Video Game Topic Ideas

Writing a paper on a fun topic is a sure way to get noticed. Take a look at some of these fun video game topic ideas:

• Rank the best video game soundtracks in games from 2020 to 2023
• Discuss the funniest video game glitches and bugs
• Explore the history of video game consoles and their evolution
• Create the ultimate video game character (talk about their abilities)
• Choose the most iconic video game weapons and discuss their uses
• Debate the best video game crossover events
• Examine the most impressive speedruns in video game history
• Identify the most challenging video game bosses and discuss strategies to beat them
• Rank the most immersive video game worlds and environments
• Celebrate the most memorable moments in video game history.

Best Video Games Topic Ideas

Want to write your paper on an original topic idea? Below you can find what we consider to be some of the best video games topic ideas:

• The use of video games in advertising and marketing in 2023
• The history and impact of gaming consoles on the industry
• The role of video games in fostering creativity and imagination
• The history and impact of speedrunning on the gaming community and industry
• The ethics of video game content and censorship
• The history and impact of arcade games on gaming culture
• The impact of video games on spatial reasoning and navigation skills
• The psychology of character development and player identification in video games
• The role of video games in exploring and experiencing new cultures and worlds
• The impact of video games on decision-making abilities
• The history and impact of gaming conventions on the industry and community

No matter what topic you’ve chosen, our professional writers ready to write a research paper for you. Just hire a professional writer and  buy a research paper to easly get a good grade. 

Get Affordable Video Game Research Paper Help

Our team of experts is ready to jump in and give you the most affordable video game research paper help online. No more googling “ write my research paper ” anymore! Get a high quality custom essay or research paper for any class in as little as 3 hours. High school, college and university students can count on us to impress their teachers with outstanding papers on a wide variety of subjects and topics. Get reliable writing help using our secure platform and improve your GPA in no time. Our writers have extensive experience writing compelling academic content that any professor will appreciate. If you are a student who wants to get more free time every week, leave the essay writing to us. So, if you need some more original video games research paper topics or if you want to get a good essay written for you today, contact our team.

What are some gaming topics? Some more interesting gaming topics could be ideas like: psychological affect of games on young children (can also work for psychology term paper writing), developments in gaming software and design, the impact early video games have had on the gaming world today, or a look over important personalities in gaming. Can I get help writing my video games paper? Yes! It is always advisable to ask for help if you are struggling. Even a seemingly fun and interesting topic like video gaming can become overwhelming and a challenge to write about. So you can definitely get online paper writing help while you yourself enjoy playing games instead of writing about them! What is the biggest problem in the gaming industry? There are a few major problems in the gaming industry, however the most current and important one at the moment is labor conditions and economic compensation for gaming industry workers. Gaming is a difficult industry where professionals are constantly working over average hours.

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105 Interesting Video Game Research Topics and Ideas

Table of Contents

Are you searching for the latest video game research topics and ideas? If yes, then take a look at this blog post. On different themes, here, we have presented a list of 100+ outstanding video game essay topics and research paper ideas for school and college students. Explore the entire blog and pick any topic that suits you the most.

Basically, the video game is one of the hot and trending topics among youngsters. Even out of their love for video games, some students even pursue a course in game development and develop a career in it. Also, certain students and gaming enthusiasts who have strong hardware knowledge and coding skills work on innovative game development projects for their computer science assignments. Suppose, you are a school student, then for your communication assignments, you can choose to debate or write an essay on video games and their impacts.

No matter, what the purpose is, for your assignments, you can pick any video game research or essay topic based on your preference.

Know How to Write a Video Game Research Paper

Before we move to the list of video game research paper topics, first, let us understand the best way to write a video game essay or a research paper.

In the academic paper writing process, topic selection is the initial step. So, search and find out an ideal topic on video games. Next after choosing a topic, go ahead and compose a customized research paper. The following are the key points that you need to remember when writing an essay or a research paper on video games.

• Before you begin writing your research paper, always sketch an outline by including essential components such as the introduction, body, and conclusion as per the 5-paragraph structure.
• Make sure you conduct an in-depth study on the subject and collect reliable facts.
• In the introductory part include a powerful thesis statement relevant to your topic along with brief background information.
• Start each body paragraph with a distinct statement and then provide evidence for it. Avoid addressing more than one significant concept in a paragraph.
• Don’t forget to cite all of your sources in the References section.
• Remember, your video game research paper should be concise and meaningful. So, when writing the paper, put your points in a clear and logical manner. Never add unnecessary details in your paper because it may confuse your readers.
• Make sure your vocabulary and grammar are flawless. To ensure you receive a high grade, proofread and edit your work.

Also Recommended: Excellent Journalism Research Topics and Ideas

List of Latest Video Game Research Topics

For your convenience, in this section, we have listed 100+ excellent video game research paper topics and ideas. Go through them all and select any topic that matches your requirements.

Simple and Easy Video Game Research Topics

The following are some simple video game research paper topics that you can consider for your assignments.

• Write about the history of video games.
• Discuss the myths of video game violence.
• Explain how multiplayer games affect social interaction.
• Analyze the global phenomenon of e-sports.
• Write about the diversity and gender representation in video games.
• Explain how video games influence cognitive skills.
• Discuss the history of video game consoles.
• Analyze healthy gaming habits against video game addiction.
• Investigate video game advertisements.
• Analyze the video game industry.
• Discuss the process of video game design.
• Analyze the different genres of video game systems for children.
• Write about the Japanese Video Game Industry.
• Discuss the arrival of Microsoft Xbox in the video game industry.
• Compare the competition among the popular video game companies such as Sony, Nintendo, and Sega.

Best Video Game Research Questions

The list of video game research ideas suggested below will be useful to you.

• Discuss the revolutionary breakthroughs in the video game field.
• Explain how corona virus has affected the video game industry.
• Write about the biggest missed opportunity in the video game industry.
• Discuss the changes the video game industry wants.
• Explain the key elements of a good video game.
• Analyze the science behind brain-boosting video games.
• Discuss the pros and cons of gamified fitness and wellness apps.
• Write about cloud gaming and streaming technology.
• What is an MMORPG video game?
• Analyze the psychology behind modern video games.
• Write about cyber sports and video game championships.
• Compare FPS and RPG games.
• Analyze the gaming industry in a country of your choice.
• Research gun violence in modern video games.
• Analyze the launch of a popular game.

Interesting Video Game Essay Prompts

Listed below are some captivating essay prompts related to video games that will help you fetch an A+ grade.

• Discuss the history and evolution of video games.
• Analyze the impact of video game violence on society.
• Discuss the positive effects of video games on children.
• Explain the role of video games in promoting physical activity.
• Analyze the influence of video games on culture and society.
• Discuss the use of video games in education and training.
• Analyze the future of virtual reality in video games.
• Explain the impact of e-sports on the gaming industry.
• Discuss the use of video games in medical treatment.
• Analyze the effects of streaming on the gaming culture.

Also Recommended: Best Forensic Science Research Topics for Students

Top Video Game Research Topics

To craft a high-quality research paper, you can use any of the video game research ideas suggested below.

• Write about the history of online gaming.
• Research the increase in demand for video games.
• Compare Android games vs. iOS games.
• List the most anticipated video games of 2023.
• Discuss the ethical responsibility in the gaming industry.
• Compare and contrast the Xbox and the PlayStation.
• Write about the popularity of Candy Crush.
• Discuss the technology behind the Xbox 4.
• What are incremental console upgrades?
• Explain the importance of video games in treating depression
• Research and write about the inclusivity in video games.
• Discuss government regulation of video games in the US.
• What do modern video games promote?
• How important are video games for our society?
• What makes video games so fun and addictive?

Excellent Video Game Essay Topics

The following are some awesome topics on video games that you can consider for composing a detailed essay.

• Discuss the importance of video games in special education settings.
• Write about the advanced SFX effects used in video games.
• Discuss online piracy related to video games.
• Write about 3D game rendering technologies.
• Discuss the pros and cons of playing assassin video games.
• Explain the role of a developer in the video game industry.
• Discuss the latest and most advanced video game effects.
• Compare the 3 most popular games in the United States in 2023.
• Analyze the Counter-Strike Video Game Phenomenon.
• Discuss the Aspects of Video Game Development.
• Explain how science has contributed to the creation of video games.
• Choose a gaming technology and explain its working.
• Compare augmented reality with virtual reality in gaming
• Explain why video game censoring is important
• Explain how video games kill creativity

Outstanding Video Game Research Ideas

To compose your academic paper, you can pick any of the research topics on video games recommended here.

• Explain the impact of the video game industry on local economies.
• Analyze the evolution of game design and mechanics in video games.
• Write about the history and influence of classic video game franchises.
• Explain the impact of video games on problem-solving skills.
• Discuss how different types of video games affect spatial reasoning skills.
• Analyze the Field Work Project and the Topic of a Video Game Community.
• Explain how different game design elements impact player attitudes.
• How do video games impact risk-taking behavior?
• Explain how video games be used to promote sustainability.
• Analyze how video games impact racial stereotypes in society.
• Write about the intersection of music and gaming, including video game soundtracks.
• Discuss the business plan of an online video game store.
• Analyze the strategies of marketing video games.
• Write about the fighting online video game wars in China.
• Compare the different versions of FIFA football simulation video games.
• Write about bio war video game project management.
• Analyze the Medal of Honor video game.
• Discuss the development of the Elder Scrolls Video Game Series.
• Analyze Free Will in The Stanley Parable Video Game.
• Explain why the video game industry has exploded.

Also Recommended: Best Sustainability Research Topics for Students

Trending Video Game Research Paper Topics

The following are some brand-new video game research topics that will be helpful for you in crafting a well-structured academic paper.

• Discuss the use of video games in advertising and marketing in 2023.
• Explain the history and impact of gaming conventions on the industry and community.
• Analyze the impact of video games on decision-making abilities.
• Discuss the history and impact of arcade games on gaming culture.
• Analyze the impact of gaming consoles in the video game industry.
• Explain the impact of speed running on the gaming community and industry.
• Discuss the biggest social problems related to video gaming.
• Discuss the trend of gamers as designers.
• What makes Pragmata a game of the future?
• Discuss the innovative graphics in Halo Infinite.
• Explain how to improve reaction time in FPS games.
• Discuss how to Tackle the violence theme in video games
• Describe the features that make a game educational vs. entertainment.
• Compare educational games today vs. 10 or 20 years ago.
• Explain how testing is being carried out on video games.

Wrapping Up

Out of the 100+ video game research and essay topics suggested above, feel free to choose any topic and compose a detailed academic paper. In case, you need any other innovative research topics on video games or if you need an expert to offer you help with writing your assignments on video games, contact us right away. As per your needs, the skilled assignment helpers on our team will provide you with cheap and the best assignment help on any topic related to video games. Moreover, by getting assistance from our subject professionals, you can also complete your academic work ahead of the deadline and achieve the highest possible grades.

So, why are you still waiting? Simply utilize our video game research paper help service online and enjoy the numerous benefits it offers. Remember, getting essay help from our scholars will also help you submit error-free and plagiarism-free papers.

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• April 11, 2024 | Improved Attention and Memory: Scientists Uncover New Cognitive Benefits of Video Games
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Improved Attention and Memory: Scientists Uncover New Cognitive Benefits of Video Games

By Lero April 11, 2024

A study shows regular gamers have enhanced cognitive abilities, like faster reaction times and better memory, compared to non-gamers. Despite criticisms of gaming, these findings indicate potential benefits in professional fields requiring high cognitive performance, without increased cognitive fatigue. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

New research reveals that frequent video game players exhibited improved performance in cognitive tasks related to attention and memory.

A new study, published in the British Psychological Society’s British Journal of Psychology , reveals that regular gamers exhibit enhanced performance in tasks assessing cognitive functions, including attention and memory.

The study, which took place at the Lero Esports Science Research Lab at the University of Limerick, involved 88 young adults, half of whom regularly played more than seven hours of action-based video games each week.

Participants were tested with three tasks measuring different aspects of their cognitive performance – a simple reaction time test, a task that involved switching between responding to combinations of numbers and letters to evaluate executive function and working memory, and a maze-based activity to assess visuospatial memory.

The researchers found that regular gamers were able to complete the number-letter task and the maze task 12.7 and 17.4 % quicker respectively than the group of non-gamers.

Cognitive Benefits and Implications

“The regular playing of video games is often criticized and seen as unhealthy, but our research shows that gamers may enjoy some cognitive benefits over the wider population, particularly relating to attentiveness and memory,” according to Dr Adam Toth of University of Limerick and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, and one of the authors of the research.

A new study by a team at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, published in the British Journal of Psychology, found that regular gamers performed better on tasks measuring cognitive functions such as attention and memory. Pictured is main author Professor Mark Campbell, Director of the Lero Esports Science Resarch Lab at University of Limerick (UL) and corresponding author Dr Adam Toth, Lero, UL. Credit: Alan Place (www.alanplacephotography.com)

Dr Mark Campbell, added: “In line with previous work out of our lab, this research may have implications in sectors where cognitive performance is paramount, such as surgery, and air traffic control, where video game play could be encouraged to help develop the elite cognitive performance required.”

The research also investigated a further angle – whether gamers are less prone to suffering from cognitive fatigue than the wider population.

Some participants were assigned an additional task, designed to require concentration for a long period of time and bring about cognitive fatigue (decline in performance), before being reevaluated on the initial cognitive tests.

The researchers found that gamers and non-gamers saw their performance decline at the same rate, with no significant difference found in the level of cognitive fatigue experienced.

Reference: “Comparing the cognitive performance of action video game players and age-matched controls following a cognitively fatiguing task: A stage 2 registered report” by Mark J. Campbell, Sarah C. Cregan, John M. Joyce, Magdalena Kowal and Adam J. Toth, 23 December 2023, British Journal of Psychology . DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12692

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News Release

Monday, October 24, 2022

Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

Additional research necessary to parse potential benefits and harms of video games on the developing brain.

On Monday, April 10, 2023, a Notice of Retraction and Replacement published for the article featured below . The key findings remain the same. The press release has been updated, in line with the retracted and replacement article, to clarify that attention problems, depression symptoms, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) scores were significantly higher among children who played three hours per day or more compared to children who had never played video games.

A study of nearly 2,000 children found that those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more performed better on cognitive skills tests involving impulse control and working memory compared to children who had never played video games. Published today in JAMA Network Open , this study analyzed data from the ongoing  Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study , which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and other entities of the National Institutes of Health.

“This study adds to our growing understanding of the associations between playing video games and brain development,” said NIDA Director Nora Volkow, M.D. “Numerous studies have linked video gaming to behavior and mental health problems. This study suggests that there may also be cognitive benefits associated with this popular pastime, which are worthy of further investigation.”

Although a number of studies have investigated the relationship between video gaming and cognitive behavior, the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the associations are not well understood. Only a handful of neuroimaging studies have addressed this topic, and the sample sizes for those studies have been small, with fewer than 80 participants.

To address this research gap, scientists at the University of Vermont, Burlington, analyzed data obtained when children entered the ABCD Study at ages 9 and 10 years old. The research team examined survey, cognitive, and brain imaging data from nearly 2,000 participants from within the bigger study cohort. They separated these children into two groups, those who reported playing no video games at all and those who reported playing video games for three hours per day or more. This threshold was selected as it exceeds the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines , which recommend that videogaming time be limited to one to two hours per day for older children. For each group, the investigators evaluated the children’s performance on two tasks that reflected their ability to control impulsive behavior and to memorize information, as well as the children’s brain activity while performing the tasks.

The researchers found that the children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day were faster and more accurate on both cognitive tasks than those who never played. They also observed that the differences in cognitive function observed between the two groups was accompanied by differences in brain activity. Functional MRI brain imaging analyses found that children who played video games for three or more hours per day showed higher brain activity in regions of the brain associated with attention and memory than did those who never played. At the same time, those children who played at least three hours of videogames per day showed more brain activity in frontal brain regions that are associated with more cognitively demanding tasks and less brain activity in brain regions related to vision.  

The researchers think these patterns may stem from practicing tasks related to impulse control and memory while playing videogames, which can be cognitively demanding, and that these changes may lead to improved performance on related tasks. Furthermore, the comparatively low activity in visual areas among children who reported playing video games may reflect that this area of the brain may become more efficient at visual processing as a result of repeated practice through video games.

While prior studies have reported associations between video gaming and increases in violence and aggressive behavior, this study did not find that to be the case. Though children who reported playing video games for three or more hours per day scored higher on measures of attention problems, depression symptoms, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) compared to children who played no video games, the researchers found that these mental health and behavioral scores did not reach clinical significance in either group, meaning, they did not meet the thresholds for risk of problem behaviors or clinical symptoms. The authors note that these will be important measures to continue to track and understand as the children mature.

Further, the researchers stress that this cross-sectional study does not allow for cause-and-effect analyses, and that it could be that children who are good at these types of cognitive tasks may choose to play video games. The authors also emphasize that their findings do not mean that children should spend unlimited time on their computers, mobile phones, or TVs, and that the outcomes likely depend largely on the specific activities children engage in. For instance, they hypothesize that the specific genre of video games, such as action-adventure, puzzle solving, sports, or shooting games, may have different effects for neurocognitive development, and this level of specificity on the type of video game played was not assessed by the study.

“While we cannot say whether playing video games regularly caused superior neurocognitive performance, it is an encouraging finding, and one that we must continue to investigate in these children as they transition into adolescence and young adulthood,” said Bader Chaarani, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and the lead author on the study. “Many parents today are concerned about the effects of video games on their children’s health and development, and as these games continue to proliferate among young people, it is crucial that we better understand both the positive and negative impact that such games may have.”

Through the ABCD Study, researchers will be able to conduct similar analyses for the same children over time into early adulthood, to see if changes in video gaming behavior are linked to changes in cognitive skills, brain activity, behavior, and mental health. The longitudinal study design and comprehensive data set will also enable them to better account for various other factors in the children’s families and environment that may influence their cognitive and behavioral development, such as exercise, sleep quality, and other influences.

The ABCD Study, the largest of its kind in the United States, is tracking nearly 12,000 youth as they grow into young adults. Investigators regularly measure participants’ brain structure and activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and collect psychological, environmental, and cognitive information, as well as biological samples. The goal of the study is to understand the factors that influence brain, cognitive, and social-emotional development, to inform the development of interventions to enhance a young person’s life trajectory.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study and ABCD Study are registered service marks and trademarks, respectively, of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

About the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA): NIDA is a component of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIDA supports most of the world’s research on the health aspects of drug use and addiction. The Institute carries out a large variety of programs to inform policy, improve practice, and advance addiction science. For more information about NIDA and its programs, visit www.nida.nih.gov .

About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .

NIH…Turning Discovery Into Health ®

  B Chaarani, et al.  Association of video gaming with cognitive performance among children .  JAMA Open Network.  DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.35721 (2022).

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By Nathaniel Scharping

While we might imagine a scientist as a chemist concocting substances in a lab, or a biologist diving with sea creatures, the reality is often far more mundane. Much of science involves collecting and analyzing data, and that process isn’t always very exciting. Think counting bacteria in a petri dish, or noting if two stars look alike in an image of the Milky Way.

But a number of research projects have found a way to buck that trend and turn the grinding work of data collection and analysis into something fun, even rewarding. By creating games that bake the process of data collection into their mechanics, players can contribute data and even uncover new insights just by playing along. Gamification, along with the growing movement known as citizen science, which invites volunteers to take part in real science research, is, in its own way, reshaping what it means to do science.

Gamifying Science

Games that pair citizen science with rewarding play are probing treatments for cancer, helping to cure Alzheimer’s, probing the foundations of language and more. Not only are the games made to be fun, but they address a prevailing issue among crowdsourcing projects: the dropoff rate. Citizen science games tackle the problem with game mechanics that allow players to uncover valuable data through the simple act of playing, keeping them engaged. The results can be striking: Volunteers with the citizen science game Stall Catchers were able to process 50 times as much data as scientists working alone. And research in The Lancet on citizen science volunteers playing the game Cell Slider found that the players were more than 90 percent accurate in classifying images of tumors, nearing the accuracy of trained pathologists.

“The concept is for the player, without actually knowing the background of the problem, without knowing the science of the problem, to be able to do something that helps solve the problem,” says Jay Halderman, the vice president of  BALANCED Media |Technology , a video game company that’s created multiple citizen science video games.

The studio’s most recent game is a pattern-matching challenge called Rocks & Runes . Players place cartoon bombs on a board filled with brightly-colored runes, with the goal of destroying rocks and matching runes together. The game might feel familiar to anyone who’s ever played Candy Crush, and it takes all of five minutes to get the hang of.

But beneath the bursts of color and flurries of point multipliers, players’ decisions are actually sorting through data from FDA-approved drug compounds to identify those that might be useful against multiple-drug-resistant chemotherapy. By eliminating rocks with bombs, players are virtually eliminating the ineffective properties of existing drugs and pointing machine learning algorithms toward more useful compounds, helping to sift out promising candidates from thousands of drugs.

Still, a player doesn’t even need to know the potential scientific benefits to enjoy the game. Adding enough reward to the gameplay to keep players interested in the game itself is a fundamental goal when designing citizen science games, says Nathan Bowden, a senior game designer at BALANCED Media|Technology.

“Everything we do, we’re trying to look at it through the lens of ‘is this fun?’” he says.

The designers often draw from existing video game archetypes — pattern matching, first-person shooters and more — when looking for inspiration. Sometimes the real challenge is simply finding the right paradigm for a particular dataset or scientific problem, Bowden says. When designing Wiley Wizard , a game that works with the same dataset as Rocks & Runes, the designers played around with half a dozen different game ideas before settling on one, a spooky cartoon world where a wizard fights ghosts.

“There’s just so many different ways you can encapsulate one piece of research into a single mechanic,” Bowden says.

Games With an Open Canvas

Another citizen science game, Glyph , takes a different approach. Instead of creating rigid rules or a defined path of gameplay, the project, which studies and compares alphabets from around the world, instead offers players a nearly blank slate.

The simple game asks players to come up with a set of rules to differentiate letters from alphabets around the world. The goal, says Olivier Morin , one of the game’s creators and a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany, is to develop a kind of grammar of letter shapes that the researchers can use to study how letters have evolved and how the shapes of letters affect our cognition. The researchers could have paid participants to do the work, like other lab experiments often do, Morin says. But by gamifying the process of data collection, he hopes they’ll be able to reach people who are much more creatively involved in the process, and more likely to come up with unique solutions.

“We need creative players who want to push the boundaries of the game and create unique kinds of data we could never gather in an experiment,” Morin says.

Players get points for coming up with rules for classifying the shapes of letters (think: these are all round, these all have a vertical line), with extra points if they’re the first-ever person to propose a particular rule. The response so far has been encouraging, Morin says, with a few thousand players from around the world. That’s ideal for a small game like theirs, he says, where the real goal is to reach people who might be highly interested in the challenge. Their top player right now has more than 60,000 points, which represents weeks of gameplay.

“That person really spent weeks trying to devise the most elegant, intelligible but innovative classification she could think of to make sense of letter shapes,” Morin says. “There’s no way a paid participant would do that in a few hours.”

At Balanced Media, the designers have been exploring other ways to entice players to participate, including creating games that can be played inside live Twitch streams, which allow gamers to broadcast matches and interact. They created a new game styled like the classic “Asteroids” arcade game that can be played between matches right on Twitch. Players must separate matter from antimatter by drawing a straight line across the screen, a simple task that helps sort the same drug compound data as Rocks & Runes and Wiley Wizard.

Other citizen science games offer even more ways to get involved. The popular Stall Catchers game asks players to find “stalls,” or blocked blood vessels, in images of mouse brains to advance Alzheimer’s research. And in the iPad game NeMO- Net , players classify corals to help train an algorithm that’s watching over the health of coral reefs around the world.

There may be even more ways for gamers to do citizen science soon. Or, to put it another way, we may soon have even more fun citizen science games. The technology and infrastructure supporting the video game industry continues to grow, unlocking new capabilities and audiences as it does so.

“It’s giving us more and more opportunities for ways to present these things to a player,” Bowden says. “That’s incredibly exciting, the potential there.”

Want to try some for yourself? Find dozens of citizen science games on SciStarter .

About the Author

Nate is a science writer and editor who has reported everywhere from particle colliders to archaeological digs. He’s also a cofounder of Lunaris Creative, an agency focused on scientific storytelling for brands and nonprofits. You can find clips of his work at nathanielscharping.com.

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Shannon L. Farrell is Natural Resources Librarian in the Natural Resources Library at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities; e-mail: [email protected] . Amy E. Neeser is Assistant Librarian, Library Research—Science and Engineering in the University Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; e-mail: [email protected] . Carolyn Bishoff is Physics, Astronomy, and Earth Sciences Librarian in the Walter Library at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities; e-mail: [email protected] ).

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Academic Uses of Video Games: A Qualitative Assessment of Research and Teaching Needs at a Large Research University

Shannon L. Farrell, Amy E. Neeser, and Carolyn Bishoff *

Academic libraries develop collections and services for scholars who use video games in teaching and research. However, there are no assessments of related information and technology needs. The authors conducted 30 semistructured interviews to gather data about these needs and understand how the University of Minnesota Libraries can facilitate access to games and technology. A total of 28 interviewees used games in research, and 23 used games in teaching. We identified a variety of information and technology needs; many showed strong disciplinary trends. The findings can inform needs-based multidisciplinary strategies to develop video game services and collections relevant to unique academic communities.

Introduction

Recent studies show that video games are ingrained in American culture and, increasingly, higher education. A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that 49 percent of American adults and 67 percent of adults ages 18–29 play video games. 1 The New Media Consortium reported that games and gamification have several applications in higher education, as educational technology and components of blended learning. 2 A search for “video games” in major article indices finds game technology used in diverse research areas.

College and research libraries share a vision of exceptional services to motivate and facilitate cutting-edge research and student learning 3 and have proactively supported scholars using and experimenting with video games. Librarians frequently collaborate with faculty and students to create game collections and interactive spaces for research, teaching, game development, and play. Despite this, there are currently no multidisciplinary assessments that provide an overview of the information and technology needs required by scholars working with video games. Some disciplinary-specific needs are understood, such as the needs of game design programs and curricula, but most information on needs is based on anecdotal evidence.

The University of Minnesota (UMN) is a large, doctoral-granting research university. The Twin Cities campus includes more than 4,000 faculty and 52,000 students, 16 colleges, and more than 300 research, education, and outreach centers and institutes. There is no video game design program or department, but there are a number of research faculty, teaching faculty, and students who use video games for academic purposes. To understand the diverse uses of video games across disciplines, we conducted semistructured narrative interviews of faculty, staff, and graduate students who use games or gaming technology in their work. This paper explores the information and technology needs of scholars who use video games on the UMN campus, similarities and differences by discipline, and how college and research libraries can incorporate disciplinary needs into a strategic approach to video game services and collections.

Literature Review

Many academic libraries recognize that scholars using video games for research and instruction have unique information and technology needs. In 2008, Smith 4 called for a better understanding of game scholars’ information needs, research methods, and types of materials they require, but there are three challenges to understanding those needs on a large scale: lack of information on conducting a comprehensive needs assessment of academic video game users, scarce information about research and teaching needs related to video games, and little information about how unique disciplinary or institutional needs affect a game-related collection or service.

Most library literature on games focuses on recommended genres and equipment 5 or the specifics of acquiring, cataloging, and circulating games. 6 Descriptions of video game collections and services often include a process to gather input; but none of these articles go into detail about the methods or findings, nor do they share a specific plan for how faculty and students would be consulted as technology, research, and classroom needs change.

Laskowski and Ward provide the most thorough overview of classroom and research needs and areas the library can support. 7 They note three primary needs for game-related classes at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC): access to labs with high-powered PCs, availability of course reserves, and access to discontinued games. They propose a variety of needs for game design classes and surmise that those classes would benefit from close liaison partnerships. The research needs they identify all relate to analyses of gameplay, and they propose archiving gameplay videos with player commentary. Since then, game technology has evolved and these recommendations are worth updating.

Many academic libraries have new game collections since the publication of these foundational articles, and descriptions of these collections provide the most up-to-date understanding of the evolving academic uses of video games. It is well recognized that researchers and instructors who use games come from many different disciplines, including education, economics, and the humanities. 8 Some libraries developed partnerships with one department or discipline, such as education 9 or the arts. 10 Librarians managing the game collection at the University of Chicago (UChicago) intend to serve a wide population, from music to media studies to computer science. 11 UChicago also has strong faculty advocates who identified many potential users on campus. 12 Game collections at the University of Michigan 13 and Carleton University 14 likewise support a range of courses and research interests from the sciences to the humanities.

Despite the variety of potential users, there is less documentation about how a library game collection reflects the disciplinary or departmental information and technology needs at a particular institution. The information available shows a surprising amount of consistency across academic game collections: most libraries collect commercially successful games to play on consoles, such as the Playstation 3 or XBox 360. UIUC, 15 the University of Michigan, 16 and the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) 17 have vintage games and game systems available. Though personal computer (PC) games are recognized as an important genre to collect, 18 it was difficult to determine if any academic libraries collected PC games or provided hardware to play them. Carleton University is one of the few that does. 19

There are similarities among the themes of many game collections. Collections at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), 20 UChicago, 21 and the University of Michigan 22 all represent the history of video game development and the evolution of games through time. Many academic game collections also focus on acquiring current releases. 23

Some libraries have unique aspects to their collections. For example, VCU collects games specifically for users in the arts. The arts librarian looks for “games that have certain aesthetics … have significant artistic direction, unique narrative or cerebral gameplay.” 24 Some libraries plan to expand beyond console games, including UChicago; a faculty member from English hopes that “computer and mobile games” are eventually added to the collection. 25 At least two libraries make game development software available: the University of Calgary game resources include “six high performance (liquid cooled) gaming PCs” with software packages including Unity and several Autodesk products; 26 and Carleton University had requests for software including Poser Pro. 27

As affordable game technology evolves, libraries take steps to stay up-to-date with new research and teaching applications. Commonly, academic libraries rely on subject librarians to stay aware of research and instruction trends, and that is no different when video games are involved. 28 Another strategy involves direct faculty and student input, which often happens during the initial development of video game collections. 29 However, some collections are built from donations and gifts like at the University of Calgary; 30 a for those, the relationship between the collection and local research and teaching needs is less clear. Some collections accept donations for a particular purpose: the University of Michigan Computer and Video Game Archive (CVGA) accepts donations and purchases games to create the most comprehensive collection possible, while also collecting in targeted ways to support faculty and student activities. 31

No literature to date provides a comprehensive overview of the information and technology needs of academic video game users. Many universities rely on a handful of faculty advisors to understand needs on campus; UIUC consulted a faculty member and hosted a game night for students to gather input; 32 Carleton University similarly “crowd-sourced” input for their game collection from faculty, students, and library staff, though they did not describe their methods. 33 At UChicago, faculty advocates assisted directly with the development of the collection. 34 The University of Michigan LibGuide for the CVGA provides the most comprehensive list of courses, research, and faculty who have used the CVGA on their campus, but the list is intended to inform students and potential users, not provide an overview of trends about research and teaching needs or inform collection and service development. 35

This paper explores the information and technology needs of games scholars at UMN Twin Cities and how libraries can accommodate disciplinary needs and help overcome barriers to academic work related to video games.

We formulated the following research questions:

• Which disciplines are represented among UMN scholars who use video games?
• Do UMN scholars who use video games collaborate outside their disciplines?
• What are the information and technology needs for game-related research and teaching at UMN?
• Are there similarities in the information and technology needs of researchers and instructors using video games, despite disciplinary differences?
• If obstacles are identified, how can libraries help researchers and instructors overcome them and enhance their work?

To answer these questions, we identified scholars at UMN who work with video games or video game technology. This was defined broadly and ranged from using games as an object of study to using the technology to study a separate problem. We excluded researchers studying “game theory” (a mathematical concept) or studying analog games such as board games or logic puzzles because our interest was in needs related to video game technology.

We used a number of methods to identify a population of faculty, staff, and students. SciVal Experts, a research profile system used at UMN, identified 62 people who had published on video games. The SciVal Experts system does not include all UMN scholars, and the database best represents disciplines that use journal articles as their primary means of scholarly communication, so we also conducted searches of the UMN website to find mentions of video games in biographies, research statements, or classes. Word-of-mouth also played an important role: we asked librarians at the UMN for recommendations and used snowball sampling to find additional names from those we interviewed. Through these combined methods, we obtained 92 total names, which we considered an exhaustive list.

A qualitative approach was most appropriate, as opposed to a survey, since it allowed participants to drive the conversation and focus on topics important to them. Since we did not have personal connections to those doing video game–related work at UMN, interviews had the additional advantage of building new relationships. We sent invitations to conduct hour-long, semistructured interviews to our sample of faculty, staff, and graduate students. Those who responded were interviewed at a location of their choice. Those who did not respond were sent a follow-up invitation two weeks later. Of the 92 names in the original population, 30 people agreed to be interviewed, 20 declined, and 42 did not respond.

Each interview was attended by two members of the research team and was audio recorded with the interviewee’s permission. We asked guiding questions, but the interviewee led the conversation. Instead of transcribing each interview, we used a Google form to code data from the audio (see appendix for codes and definitions). We used a controlled vocabulary to code most topics and captured quotes and observations with free-text responses. To make sure that different coders maintained a level of consistency, we reviewed the audio from the first 15 interviews in tandem and resolved disputes with the codes and analysis methodology. We then assigned a single reviewer to the final 15 subjects.

We took measures to ensure participants’ anonymity by assigning each participant a random number, coding participants by discipline instead of department, and using generic titles (such as untenured faculty) in place of official positions. These methods were approved by the UMN Institutional Review Board on October 17, 2014.

We identified 92 people from four broad disciplinary groups: arts and humanities, social sciences, science/technology/engineering/math (STEM), and health sciences (see table 1). We interviewed 30 people from this population, an overall response rate of 33 percent. The interview sample overrepresented the STEM population, which had a 52 percent response rate, and underrepresented health sciences, which had a 19 percent response rate (see figure 1). It also overrepresented graduate students, who had a 46 percent response rate overall. Participants were split almost evenly between graduate students (13) and faculty/staff (17). It was also noteworthy that the largest number of interviewed graduate students (in both frequency and percentage of total) occurred in arts and humanities (5).

Interdepartmental collaboration was defined as a relationship, formal or informal, between an interview participant and a member of another department. Both formal and informal collaboration were considered: formal collaboration was defined as a relationship based on an externally recognized partnership, such as a project, grant, coauthorship on a manuscript, or serving as an academic advisor or dissertation committee member; informal collaboration was defined as unofficial or casual partnerships based on consultations, conversations, and friendships that contribute to academic work. These data were used to determine whether an interviewee’s work was confined to a single department or discipline or whether he or she had potential connections outside the interviewee’s home department. We found high levels of interdepartmental collaboration in all disciplines (see figure 2). One third of interview participants (10) reported three or more interdepartmental relationships, including an untenured instructor in arts and humanities who collaborated with faculty and students across five different departments in arts and humanities, STEM, and social sciences. A total of 20 percent of participants (6) reported no collaboration or no collaboration outside their departments, including an untenured instructor in STEM who only collaborated with graduate teaching assistants in his department. Interviewees from arts and humanities were the only group where all interviewees reported collaborative partnerships.

The majority (21/30) of interview participants used video games in both research and teaching (see figure 3). Most participants conducted research with video games (28/30). About a quarter of interviewees (7), most from STEM and health sciences, used games solely in research, including a graduate student in STEM who received funding for research and did not teach. Five categories of game-related research emerged from the interviews (see figure 4). Interviewees who conducted research on the development of games or technology typically produced software or algorithms that could be used in games or developed games based on existing technology. Researchers who used games as instrumentation modified game technology to collect quantitative data or used video games as a cheaper alternative to another analogous instrument they could have purchased. When games were used as an object of study, researchers often applied critical analysis or theory to a video game as they would another text or primary source. When games were used to study influences on people or society, the researcher typically used qualitative methods to examine some societal impact of games. Finally, games were studied by some for their educational applications and impact on student outcomes. Some interviewees used games in more than one way, such as a graduate student in arts and humanities who studied video games as both a cultural object and a cultural influence. Similarly, an untenured faculty in STEM researched video games as an educational technology while also examining their social influence. Each discipline was represented in 3–4 research application categories. At the same time, strong disciplinary research trends were present and each category was dominated by a single discipline, with the exception of educational technology. Educational technology applications primarily included testing games and game-based learning principles in the classroom.

Fewer people used video games in teaching (23/30) than in research, but interviewees who taught with games most often used them in research as well. For example, a tenured faculty researched the effectiveness of a mobile game to create and grade assignments and used the same game in several of his courses. Only two individuals used video games solely in a teaching capacity, including an instructor in STEM who had no research responsibilities. Four categories of teaching applications emerged from the interviews (see figure 5). Some instructors designed games from scratch for students to use in the classroom. Other instructors taught game design principles sometimes using commercial games and sometimes requiring students to create their own games. Games were also used as course material, analogous to texts or other primary sources: instructors assigned games in the syllabus or had students watch videos of others playing through a game. Finally, instructors discussed games, game mechanics, or their own research on games in the classroom but may not have assigned games to students to play in the course. Similar to research applications, some interviewees used games in the classroom multiple ways, like an untenured faculty in STEM who taught game design and also used video games as course material. Every disciplinary group used video games as course material and as a discussion piece in class. Some teaching applications were more common in particular disciplines; 4 of 8 STEM interviewees designed a game for their classes and 5 of 6 from the social sciences used games as course material. Overall, disciplinary trends were far less distinct. Table 2 summarizes the data from figures 3–5.

Among the interviewees, 18 types of information were used (see table 3). Arts and humanities participants used the most information sources (13), while STEM participants used the least (6). Video games were used as primary sources by interviewees in arts and humanities and social sciences, including a tenured faculty in the social sciences who studies game symbology. Interviewees from all disciplines used colleagues, web sources, journals and Google Scholar. Dominant information sources emerged from each discipline: arts and humanities, journals and web sources (see figure 6); social sciences, journals (see figure 7); STEM, colleagues, journals, and Google Scholar (see figure 8); and health sciences, colleagues (see figure 9).

Participants identified 17 unique technology needs (see table 4). The following technology categories emerged: equipment, games, programming languages, servers, software, and web applications. Equipment included any type of hardware, from game consoles like Xbox or PlayStations, to mobile phones or personal computers (PCs). PCs were the most common piece of equipment identified as required by the whole sample, but peripherals (accessories such as game controllers) were the predominant type of equipment mentioned by participants in the health sciences. For example, a Wii balance board was used to study involuntary bodily movements. Only five interviewees used console system equipment (see figure 10).

Games referred to all types of playable software, and four categories of video games emerged: PC games, played on a computer and often accessed through a platform like Steam, were the most common, followed by console games (played on a console) and web games (played through an Internet browser); mobile games (played on a phone) were the least common. Arts and humanities and social sciences participants had the strongest need for games, and they use the widest variety of platforms. For example, a graduate student in arts and humanities uses PC, console, and mobile games to study music, and a graduate student in the social sciences uses web, PC, and console games to study representations of bodies. Social sciences have the largest use of web-based games, used by 3 of 4 interviewees. Only 1 of 11 STEM participants used video games in his or her academic activities (see figure 11), a graduate student studying a prominent massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

Software as a category excluded video games but included almost any other type of digital application that a researcher or instructor identified as necessary to his or her work. The subcategories were chosen with collection development needs in mind; proprietary software would likely come at a cost and include access restrictions, while open source software would be more accessible for any library or user to install. Other categories of interest included custom software, which was usually designed by the researcher or instructor and might not be widely shared or available, and game design software. Game design software might overlap with one of the other categories: some interviewees used Unity, an open source game design software; some used the Unreal engine, which at the time of the interviews cost money to download and was not open source; and some built custom game design software of their own. STEM participants had the most software needs overall; and, as a group, both STEM and health sciences interviewees reported using some type of software from every category (see figure 12). However, the needs were diverse among individuals: a graduate student in STEM used proprietary robotics software and a tenured faculty member in STEM used open source software to teach programming. Arts and humanities interviewees overall did not report many software needs; only 1 of 7 interviewees described any software needs at all. However, members of every disciplinary grouping did report a need for proprietary software.

Some technology used by the interviewees in this study was free or provided by the university, like a personal computer, but many technology needs required some financial resources to fulfill. To determine how interviewees currently met their technology needs, we asked about the specific methods they used to acquire technology. We split the results on technology acquisition into two categories: graduate students and faculty/staff (see figures 13 and 14). Tenured and untenured faculty and staff were combined because the methods of technology acquisition were very similar for both groups. Graduate students used many strategies to acquire technology, including borrowing from others or using their own personal property. For example, one graduate student in the social sciences used free technology, borrowed games from others, made purchases, and still did not have all the technology he needed. On the other hand, faculty and staff primarily purchase technology. One faculty member in health sciences said, “I usually have a couple thousand bucks in my ICR [indirect cost recovery] account… that’s more than enough to pay for the kinds of things we’ve been talking about [plasma screen, Xbox 360, games].” This trend holds true regardless of tenure status. Faculty and staff in STEM are using more freely available technology when compared to the other disciplinary groups. If the faculty, staff, or students had not yet acquired the technology they planned to use, those responses appear as “other.” Faculty planned to either create the technology themselves or hire someone to create it, while graduate students were still considering their options.

Funding sources differed significantly by status, and untenured faculty and staff are shown separately from tenured faculty and graduate students (see figures 15–17). In general, graduate students and untenured faculty and staff relied on a variety of methods for funding compared to tenured faculty. In arts and humanities and social sciences, many graduate students paid out-of-pocket, such as a graduate student in arts and humanities who was unable to get funding for game skins (armor, clothing, and the like), which were required for his dissertation research. In STEM, graduate students received some funding from grants, but that was not the case for graduate students from other disciplines (see figure 15). Tenured faculty mostly got their funding from grants (10 out of 11 in our sample), with some additional support from ICR funds, departmental funds (funding providing by a researcher’s or instructor’s department), and new technology funds (funds provided by the department, college, or university to acquire technology) (see figure 16). Unlike graduate students, tenured faculty did not pay out-of-pocket costs. Health sciences’ tenured faculty illustrated a depth of funding sources. Although there were only three participants in our sample, they had six sources of funding. One example is a tenured faculty member who had both an external grant and used department funding. Untenured faculty and staff appear to be seeking multiple sources of funding (see figure 17). For example, in arts and humanities, an untenured instructor was funding his work with a grant, departmental funds, and his own money. Figures 18–21 summarize the data from figures 13–17 and organize it by discipline.

Research Limitations

This research had several limitations. If an eligible participant did not mention his or her work with video games on a staff profile page or in publications, or if the participant was not located through recommendations or snowball sampling, he or she was not included among the population of 92 UMN game scholars. The interview data was more limited in scope because some eligible participants were away on sabbatical, did not respond to invitations, or declined an interview.

The exploratory nature of this study limits the generalizability of the findings. However, despite being limited to this one research context, the size of the institution and broad range of disciplines and activities covered in this study provide a rich starting point for future research and the development of library services aimed at these types of researchers. Librarians serving game design or game development programs may observe different needs from those identified in this study because UMN does not have a dedicated game design program.

The open-ended, semistructured nature of the interviews resulted in rich and diverse data that posed some problems when categorizing findings and ensuring anonymity. We used broad codes and categories to capture as much data as possible while also maintaining anonymity, resulting in some loss in the granularity of the data. Additionally, determining how to assign disciplines to interviewees to maintain anonymity was challenging. For example, depending on the context, History can be considered a social science or part of the humanities as it is “multifaceted and diffuse.” 36 We chose to place it in arts and humanities because the researchers interviewed were primarily studying video games as cultural objects instead of the impact on society or human behavior.

Finally, some of the subjects discussed were sensitive (for example, institutional barriers to completing work or acquisition of funding) and some participants felt apprehensive about sharing information. Therefore, the data only represents what interviewees shared “on the record.” Occasionally, the interview location could have inhibited participants (for example, one interview occurred in a public location and two interviews occurred where interviewees’ colleagues were present). However, we have no reason to believe that interviewees concealed information or provided untruthful answers; in the cases where subjects spoke “off the record,” they were candid and honest about challenges with their work.

Demographics and Collaboration

Four disciplines were represented in both the larger population of game scholars and our sample of 30 interviewees. All but one interviewee identified strongly with a single area of study, usually the person’s department or area of research. No single department or discipline dominated; video games were used institutionwide.

Most interviewees had strong disciplinary ties and also had strong patterns of collaboration outside their departments. Collaboration was common for those we interviewed regardless of discipline. We anticipated a higher frequency of collaboration in STEM and health sciences because previous studies showed high levels of formal collaboration in these disciplines, 37 but this did not bear out in the interview sample. Collaborative partnerships took the form of coauthorships, collaborative conference presentations, and participation on doctoral committees, as well as many informal collaborations. Informal collaborations were also commonly described by interviewees and included professional friendships, relationships with advisors and committee members, pilot projects, and interest groups.

These data on collaboration are useful to keep in mind while discussing disciplinary trends around information and technology needs. Widespread collaboration on game-related projects and other projects suggests a need for cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary collaboration among librarians on collection development and the creation of services. Some libraries that invested in game technology do serve a range of users and disciplines, 38 but other prominent collections of games and game technology in academic libraries were driven by the needs of only one or two departments. 39 Awareness of the collaborative partnerships that exist could help libraries go beyond serving one student, class, or researcher at a time, and investments in game technology have the potential to support the work of whole networks of researchers and instructors. Explicit library support of collaborative work with video games could even give fringe projects and new collaborations a space to intersect and thrive. At UMN there is the potential for many departments and subject librarians to guide the development of a possible video game collection, and this would require a very collaborative approach to collection development.

Academic Use of Video Games: Research and Teaching

Video games were commonly used in research across all four disciplines represented in our sample. This confirmed a need for the collection development practices of universities such as UChicago, 40 University of Michigan, 41 and Carleton University, 42 which accommodated users from multiple disciplines.

We did not anticipate how common video games are in classrooms, since published information about game-related courses only identified a handful of classes at any comparable institution, unless they were focused on game design. Additionally, very few course descriptions in the UMN course catalog mentioned video games, and, of the game-related courses we found during our initial searching, most were in the social sciences or arts and humanities. We did not expect so many STEM and health science classes to integrate games as well. In fact, the use of video games in classes was present within all the disciplines, especially in introductory undergraduate courses and upper level seminars. The course descriptions were often vague enough to give the instructor leeway in how to develop his or her individual section, and those who wished to incorporate games could do so. Some departments even encouraged game-related classes due to consistently high enrollment.

Most people in our sample incorporated games into both their research and teaching. We suspect that having a research interest in games may make it more likely for them to incorporate video games into the classroom as well. This may explain why only two people in our sample were using video games exclusively in the classroom.

Overall, knowing how scholars are using video games and gaming technology on campus formed the backbone of this needs assessment. Any effort to provide library support for video game–related work will impact both research and classroom/student needs. Since we know that most scholars are using games in both research and teaching capacities, the support of this work may have double the impact.

Role of Video Games in Research and Teaching

There were clear disciplinary trends in the types of research done with video game technology. The development of video games primarily occurred in STEM, while video games were most often used as a text or an object of study in arts and humanities research. There were also some strong similarities among the disciplinary groups. At least one interviewee in every discipline conducted research that studies “educational technology” or “the influences on people and society.” Since video games were used by different disciplines in different ways, the type of support the library offers should not be done through the lens of a single department or discipline, and a variety of materials need to be available for many different applications including development, study, and experimental design.

Disciplinary differences were more difficult to discern when examining the role of games in teaching. Many classes were new or were only offered once; even so, teaching game design or designing games from scratch occurred not only in STEM but also in social science and arts and humanities classrooms. Incorporating game technology as course material was common, and interviewees identified a number of different ways in which games were used: readings, storytelling devices, and technology in labs. Students were impacted by these course requirements as well. Many interviewees described accommodations for students who did not own a console or a computer equipped to run graphics-intensive games, but some required students to figure out how to access the games on their own (such as via a personal account on the Steam game distribution system). 43

Game design was taught in four classes from three disciplines, which was unexpected because there is no game design program or certificate at UMN. Supporting classes that incorporate game design would be easier if they were all in one area of study, but a subject liaison might only be aware of the one class in his or her discipline. Regular environmental scans might be needed to uncover common technology and material requirements for classes across disciplines for courses that use video games and other emerging technologies.

Information Needs

The most commonly used information sources were Google Scholar, journals, and web sources. The interviewees in the social sciences and arts and humanities were the strongest users of “traditional” library materials such as books and journals. Several interviewees described having to acquire the majority of their texts through interlibrary loan (ILL) because their library did not have the journals or books they needed. Libraries need to review collections in this and other emerging areas to minimize the need for backchannels and shortcuts.

Colleagues were the single most common source of information for interviewees, especially in STEM and health sciences. In one case, a project in health sciences was developed entirely with information and skills contributed from existing relationships. The frequency with which interviewees in this sample collaborate outside their department emphasizes the importance of colleague networks in new and emerging areas. Libraries cross departmental and disciplinary borders and can cultivate a role as a connector for scholars doing similar work in different subject areas with events, experimental technology space, or other strategies.

Libraries should pursue partnerships with existing video game archives and other libraries or investigate shared collection development efforts to help researchers and the public overcome barriers to accessing game-related information sources. Interview participants identified video games as both a kind of technology and a type of information. Games are available in some academic libraries and public libraries, but it is unclear how accessible they are outside their immediate communities or institutions through ILL. Game manuals and trade magazines like Nintendo Power were also used by several interviewees. Public libraries typically collect trade magazines but, according to Worldcat, many often only keep the last 1–2 years. Locating game manuals is even more difficult, as they typically lie only in the hands of hobbyists and collectors. A search on Worldcat shows that relatively few libraries have holdings for either game magazines or manuals, raising the question of how libraries can facilitate access to these materials.

The depth and variety of sources used makes it clear that libraries cannot be the sole gatekeepers of information on this subject. The people in our sample used subscription journals but also ephemeral, noncurated materials (such as game manuals, gaming websites, and streaming games). Other library resources like subscription databases were not as valuable for most interviewees, possibly because they are too narrow in scope or interviewees are simply not aware of them. Rather than collect all of the sources scholars need, libraries can create guides to help scholars locate these materials elsewhere, akin to the University of Michigan CVGA LibGuide. 44

Technology Needs

Interviewees’ needs for devices, displays, and peripherals show no disciplinary trends. Investing in a range of equipment would benefit the largest range of users at UMN. Arts and humanities and social science scholars had a greater need for video games, while those in STEM and health sciences had more software needs. In fact, only one person in STEM identified games as a need, and only one interviewee in arts and humanities used software of any kind.

Disciplinary trends ought to factor into decisions related to purchasing and marketing game technology. For example, at UMN, subject librarians and users in the arts and humanities and social sciences disciplines might be primarily responsible for selecting game titles. Subject librarians for STEM and health sciences should weigh in on video game software selection, since usage would be most expected from STEM and health sciences disciplines.

Among our interviewees, the PC was the most common technology necessary to research and teaching. PCs are necessary to academic work, but there was some nuance to how interviewees used them. PC games are used almost as much as nearly all other types of games combined (console, mobile, and web-based). Mobile games are a growing industry, 45 but they are not used heavily on this campus for academic purposes. Other technology needs are tied to PC games as well; PC accessories, most often graphics cards, were the third highest need in the equipment category. PC games do not require much additional technology besides a computer (unless a powerful game requires faster processing or graphics cards), so they may be more attractive to the researchers and instructors from arts and humanities and social science, who make up the majority of game users. Guidance on collecting PC games is limited, since few academic libraries currently collect them. Most libraries with game collections and services collect console games almost exclusively, likely because console games do not have restrictive digital rights management (DRM) or require an account to play and are easier to collect and lend.

Peripherals were a common technology need, especially in health sciences. Interviewees shared a diverse range of applications for peripherals that have nothing to do with consoles: to control robotics, play PC games, and modify to use as instrumentation. Interviewees also preferred them for their low cost and ability to interface with a number of technologies. Since they are flexible and relatively cheap, libraries and makerspaces could provide a variety of peripherals (with or without consoles) for on-site use or rental.

Acquisition of and Funding for Games and Gaming Technology

In general, interviewees found they could purchase games or technology at stores or online but did not always have funding to do so. The acquisition of games and video game technology was intrinsically tied to funding, which was mentioned as the largest barrier to acquiring technology.

Graduate students used a variety of creative strategies to acquire technology (such as using their personal game collection, borrowing from friends, and other means), whereas faculty and staff simply purchased technology with grants or other funds as needed or used freely available games and technologies, such as online emulators. Graduate students may have less funding available, or they do not know how to access existing funding. The majority of graduate students, all from the social sciences and arts and humanities, were paying out-of-pocket.

Graduate students had the same technology needs as faculty and staff and conduct their own research, often independent of their faculty advisors and any associated funding. STEM graduate students were the only ones receiving grants or new technology funds. We argue that graduate students would be the primary beneficiaries of having video games and technology available, as this would break down disciplinary acquisition and funding barriers. Underfunded graduate students are probably not unique to UMN; and, if libraries made these games and technologies available, graduate students would have much more flexibility in their research. The arts and humanities students who purchased video games out-of-pocket likely used the games as primary research materials, analogous to texts. Since many libraries purchase books for research, it should be easy to purchase games for analogous reasons.

Libraries can also help connect graduate students with funding. Many academic units at UMN provide grants to fund graduate research, and the UMN Libraries subscribe to grant databases and offer workshops on locating grant funding. Since graduate student research is highly valued, it makes sense to assist them in their efforts to acquire game technology by building their grant-seeking skills.

Even though faculty and staff theoretically have the same opportunities for funding, untenured faculty and staff seek more sources of funding to meet their needs, whereas tenured faculty receive most of their funding from grants. Startup packages supported three untenured faculty from STEM and the health sciences, and one staff member reported having to pay out-of-pocket to buy games for classroom use. Faculty and staff for the most part were successful in finding funding to purchase the required technology, but making materials available at the library would put less pressure on faculty and staff to acquire them in other ways and would give them an option to use their funding for other purposes.

Collections in the UMN Libraries are focused primarily on meeting faculty research and teaching needs, as faculty tend to stay at the university longer than students. We recognize that these data could suggest that faculty and staff do not have many barriers to accessing technology and that it is neither necessary nor urgent to include video games and video game technology in library collections. It could also be argued that grants and other funding sources already pay for research and classroom needs and that libraries are not in the business of directly funding research costs like instrumentation, experimental design, or technology development. However, many faculty we spoke to welcomed a chance to collaborate with librarians whether or not the library could directly support their research. Some faculty incorporate games into their outreach service, and many have classes that would benefit from the availability of game materials. We also argue that libraries have a great opportunity to engage with graduate and undergraduate students who want to experiment with games before personally investing in the technology.

By focusing our study on researchers and instructors, we have missed the opportunity to explore implications for students taking classes that incorporate games and gaming technology. What we know came solely from the instructors’ viewpoints; therefore, we do not have a comprehensive picture of how these technologies were made available to students or if they encountered barriers to accessing them. In some classes the game technology was provided, like a health sciences class where Wii balance boards were available to take measurements; but, in another case, students were expected to purchase World of Warcraft and install it on their PCs. Some instructors did note that requiring students to purchase video games may be prohibitive and not directly analogous to purchasing textbooks, as it requires students to own consoles or a high-powered PC that supports gaming. Some attempted to find alternative solutions such as asking the UMN Libraries to install games on library computers and investigating Steam licensing for computer labs. It would be worthwhile to interview students from some of these classes to uncover if they encountered any barriers in attempting to access these technologies.

There is little data available about the information and technology needs of researchers and instructors who use video games in higher education. This study attempted to fill that gap with interviews with faculty, staff, and graduate students from UMN. Scholars from all disciplinary groups were represented and demonstrated both a high level of collaborative activity and use of video games in both research and teaching. As libraries build new video game collections or expand existing collections, they should consider the following findings:

• Information used in game-related research and teaching includes nontraditional material such as trade magazines and game manuals. Journals were the most common source of information identified overall, but some essential titles may not be collected or indexed in library catalogs.
• Video games are most often researched as an influence on society and having a role in educational technology. This research is diverse and may have vastly different needs.
• Video games are commonly used as course material in courses from all disciplines, but console games may not be used as frequently as PC games.
• All of the interviewees needed game-related technology, though there was much variation among the disciplines: arts and humanities and social sciences required video games; STEM required software; health sciences required peripherals.
• Graduate students, especially those from arts and humanities, are at a major funding disadvantage compared to colleagues in the sciences. This impedes access to game technology required for research and teaching and often requires them to pay out-of-pocket.

This study found some consistency in video game applications between disciplines but even more differences, especially in technology and information use. This suggests that the support libraries provide should be done collaboratively through a multidisciplinary lens. We propose a strategic approach to video game services and collections focused on disciplinary needs. For UMN, this would mean building a collection focused on PC games, a few console games, cutting-edge equipment with game design software, and a collection of peripherals with or without consoles, perhaps associated with a makerspace. Each academic game collection should reflect its institution, based on an evaluation of the unique needs of its population.

Since this study was limited to the UMN campus, we would like to see similar studies undertaken at various institutions that look at how students use and acquire games for classroom use, as well as a large-scale multi-institution look at the use of games in higher education. As technology changes and moves away from physical media, academic institutions will benefit from studies looking at the impact of DRM on scholarship and libraries. Very few video game companies have partnerships with higher education, and more exploration of this issue is needed. These studies would provide a more complete understanding of scholarly video games–related work and scholars’ information and technology needs.

APPENDIX. Interview Themes, Codes, and Definitions

• Graduate student: both master’s and doctoral students
• Untenured faculty and staff: assistant professor, instructor, postdoc
• Tenured faculty: associate professor, full professor
• Arts and Humanities: includes any field where the human experience and expressions or explanations thereof are the primary objects of study. History is included here because the interviewees study video games and texts and consider the games as the object of study
• Health Sciences: medical, kinesiology, and related disciplines
• Social Sciences: includes any field where humans are the primary object of study
• STEM: includes disciplines from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
• Formal collaborations: working on a project, publishing a paper, working on a grant together, serving as an academic advisor or member of a thesis or dissertation committee
• Informal collaborations: talking to/with people, sharing ideas
• Both: a combination of both formal and informal collaborations
• Intradepartmental: work alone or only collaborate within their own department
• Interdepartmental (1–2): between 1–2 collaborations outside their own department
• Interdepartmental (3+): 3+ collaborations outside their own department or split positions between departments
• Development of games/technology: researcher has created the video game or associated technology
• Instrumentation: using video games to gather quantitative data
• Object of study: using critical analysis or thematic study of video games
• Influences on people or society: researcher is examining the societal impact of video games
• Educational technology: using video games to facilitate learning and improve student outcomes
• Undergraduate: lower-level classes, primarily for those pursuing their bachelor’s (1xxx–4xxx)
• Graduate: upper level classes, marketed toward master’s and doctoral students (5xxx–8xxx)
• Instructor designed a game: instructor created a video game for use in the classroom
• Taught game design: instructor taught students how to design their own games
• Used games as course material: video games were studied in the classroom, as primary sources
• Discussed games: video games were used in the classroom as secondary sources
• Other: any other response that did not fall within the above categories
• Borrowed/given: the material was owned by someone else and the researcher or instructor acquired from them
• Purchased: the material had to be purchased by the researcher or instructor either out-of-pocket or with other funds
• Already owned: the instructor or researcher previously owned the material
• Freely available: available at no cost to consumers
• Grant (general): acquired funding via another organization to pursue their research or teaching projects
• New technology funds: funds provided for the explicit purpose of acquiring new technologies
• Seed grant: initial capital to start a project
• Department funds: funding provided by researcher’s or instructor’s department
• Dissertation fund: funding provided by graduate student’s department or graduate school to support dissertation research
• Startup package: new professor was provided with funding to set up a lab
• Indirect cost recovery (ICR) funds: funds that the university collects to cover overhead costs when grants are written. A portion is returned back to departments
• Out-of-pocket: the instructor or researcher had to use personal money to cover the cost
• MNDrive grant: grant allocated via partnership between the UMN and the state of Minnesota that provides funding in areas of interdisciplinary research that align with specific industries
• Not required: no funding was required for this research or teaching
• Equipment, console: consoles, such as Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Wii, WiiU, or any other
• Equipment, controllers, and peripherals: secondary equipment for the gaming systems listed above, including controllers, Wiimotes, headsets, Xbox Kinects, Wii balance boards, steering wheels, and the like
• Equipment, mobile: smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads, and such
• Equipment, display: equipment used to view video games, including television screens, computer monitors, or any other display equipment
• Equipment, personal computer: includes Mac, Windows, and Linux systems
• Equipment, personal computer accessories: secondary equipment for PC gaming, including joysticks, controllers, headsets, webcams, and other equipment
• Games, web: games that are available through a browser or browser-based emulator, or for download online
• Games, PC: games purchased to play on personal computers
• Games, console: games purchased to play on consoles
• Games, mobile: games that are available on smartphones or tablets
• Programming languages: computer language used to communicate instructions to a machine, including C, C++, Java, Javascript, Python, and other languages
• Servers: computers or programs that manages access to a network resource
• Software, proprietary: software that must be purchased from the individual or company that developed it; often includes major restrictions for adaptation and use
• Software, free or open source: software that is available for free, typically on the web; often allows users to modify or adapt as needed
• Software, custom: software written by the researcher or instructor from scratch
• Software, game design: software developed for the specific purpose to design video games
• Web applications: software application that is available and runs on the web, such as streaming video
• Archives: historical documents or records
• Books: written or printed works
• Colleagues: talking to people in their discipline
• Conferences: formal meetings for people in related disciplines
• Course readings: resources that were provided while taking a class
• Datasets: collection of related sets of information
• Game manuals: instructions on how to play video games
• Game reviews: evaluations of video games
• Games: console, PC, mobile, or web video games
• Google Scholar: freely accessible web search engine that indexes scholarly literature
• Interviews: information obtained by interviewing appropriate people
• Journals: collections of articles about specific subjects or disciplines
• Library databases: catalog of both full-text resources and indexed citations that are accessible electronically
• Newsletters: bulletins that are issued periodically
• News sources: includes both print and website-based news
• Students: people enrolled in either undergraduate or graduate programs
• Trade magazines: periodicals that contain news and items about a particular topic
• Web sources: materials found on the open web

1. Meave Duggan, “Gaming and Gamers” (Report, Pew Research Center, 2015), available online at www.pewinternet.org/2015/12/15/gaming-and-gamers/ [accessed 18 December 2015].

2. Laurence F. Johnson et al., “NMC Horizon Report: 2015 Higher Education Edition,” Horizon Report (Austin, Tex.: The New Media Consortium, 2015), 22, 35, available online at www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2015-higher-education-edition/ [accessed 18 December 2015].

3. Association of College and Research Libraries, “ACRL Plan for Excellence,” 2015, available online at www.ala.org/acrl/aboutacrl/strategicplan/stratplan [accessed 11 January 2016].

4. Brena Smith, “Twenty-First Century Game Studies in the Academy: Libraries and an Emerging Discipline,” Reference Services Review 36, no. 2 (2008): 205–20, doi:10.1108/00907320810873066.

5. Examples include Mary Laskowski and David Ward, “Building Next Generation Video Game Collections in Academic Libraries,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 35, no. 3 (May 2009): 267–73, doi: 10.1016/j.acalib.2009.03.005 ; Kristen Mastel and Dave Huston, “Using Video Games to Teach Game Design: A Gaming Collection for Libraries,” Computers in Libraries 29, no. 3 (2009): 41–44, available online at http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ831241 [accessed 18 December 2015]; and Diane Robson and Patrick Durkee, “New Directions for Academic Video Game Collections: Strategies for Acquiring, Supporting, and Managing Online Materials,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 38, no. 2 (Mar. 2012): 79–84, doi: 10.1016/j.acalib.2012.01.003 .

6. Examples include Natalie Gick, “Making Book: Gaming in the Library: A Case Study,” in Gaming in Academic Libraries: Collections, Marketing, and Information Literacy (Chicago: American Library Association, 2008), 1–25; David Baker et al., “Lessons Learned from Starting a Circulating Videogame Collection at an Academic Library,” in Gaming in Academic Libraries: Collections, Marketing, and Information Literacy (Chicago: American Library Association, 2008), 26–38; Danielle Kane, Catherine Soehner, and Wei Wei, “Building a Collection of Video Games in Support of a Newly Created Degree Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz,” Science & Technology Libraries 27, no. 4 (Aug. 20, 2007): 77–87, doi:10.1300/J122v27n04_06; and Emma Cross, David Mould, and Robert Smith, “The Protean Challenge of Game Collections at Academic Libraries,” New Review of Academic Librarianship 21, no. 2 (May 4, 2015): 129–45, doi:10.1080/13614533.2015.1043467.

7. Mary Laskowski and David Ward, “Building Next Generation Video Game Collections in Academic Libraries,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 35, no. 3 (May 2009): 267–73, doi: 10.1016/j.acalib.2009.03.005 .

8. Andy Burkhardt, “Taking Games in Libraries Seriously,” The Academic Commons (blog), available online at www.academiccommons.org/2014/07/24/taking-games-in-libraries-seriously/ [accessed 5 November 2015].

9. Chris Nelson, “Gaming Reaches into Far Corners of Academic World as U of C Builds Huge Collection,” Calgary Herald (Mar. 16, 2015), available online at http://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/gaming-reaches-into-far-corners-of-academic-world-as-u-of-c-builds-huge-collection [accessed 4 November 2015].

10. Brian McNeill, “VCU Libraries Launches Collection of Critically Acclaimed Video Games,” VCU News (blog) (Nov. 6, 2014), available online at http://news.vcu.edu/article/VCU_Libraries_launches_collection_of_critically_acclaimed_video [accessed 4 November 2015].

11. Sarah G. Wenzel, “New Library Videogame Collection,” The University of Chicago Library News (blog) (May 25, 2012), available online at http://news.lib.uchicago.edu/blog/2012/05/25/new-library-videogame-collection/ [accessed 30 November 2015].

12. Patrick Jagoda, “Videogame Collection Supports Scholarly Study,” The University of Chicago Library News (blog) (May 25, 2012), available online at http://news.lib.uchicago.edu/blog/2012/05/25/videogame -collection-supports-scholarly-study/ [accessed 30 November 2015].

13. An overview of classes and disciplinary uses is discussed in Mary Claire Morris, “Computer & Video Game Archive Celebrating Five Years of Growth,” The University Record (blog) (Nov. 5, 2013), available online at http://record.umich.edu //articles/computer-video-game-archive-celebrating-five-years-growth [accessed 2 December 2015]. A list of classes and research applications can be found in Valerie Waldron, “Computer & Video Game Archive: CVGA,” University of Michigan Research Guides (2015), available online at http://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282987 [accessed 2 December 2015].

14. Emma Cross, David Mould, and Robert Smith, “The Protean Challenge of Game Collections at Academic Libraries,” New Review of Academic Librarianship 21, no. 2 (May 4, 2015): 135–37, doi: 10.1080/13614533.2015.1043467 .

15. David Ward, “Vintage Gaming Collection Development Policy and Description” (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2014), available online at www.library.illinois.edu/gaming/gamearchives.html [accessed 20 December 2015].

16. Valerie Waldron, “Computer & Video Game Archive: CVGA,” University of Michigan Research Guides (2015), available online at http://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=282987 [accessed 2 December 2015]

17. University of California Santa Cruz Library, “Video Games” (2015), available online at https://library.ucsc.edu/collections/video-games [accessed 18 December 2015].

18. Diane Robson and Patrick Durkee, “New Directions for Academic Video Game Collections: Strategies for Acquiring, Supporting, and Managing Online Materials,” Journal of Academic Librarianship 38, no. 2 (Mar. 2012): 82, doi: 10.1016/j.acalib.2012.01.003 .

19. Cross, Mould, and Smith, “The Protean Challenge of Game Collections,” 134.

20. McNeill, “VCU Libraries Launches Collection.”

21. Jagoda, “Videogame Collection Supports Scholarly Study.”

22. Adam DePollo, “Play On: Changing Gamer Culture at the ‘U,’” Michigan Daily (Oct. 22, 2014), available online at https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/10computer-video-game-archive22 [accessed 2 December 2015].

23. Laskowski and Ward, “Building next Generation Video Game Collections,” 268.

24. McNeill, “VCU Libraries Launches Collection.”

25. Jagoda, “Videogame Collection Supports Scholarly Study.”

26. University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources, “Video Games,” available online at http://library.ucalgary.ca/dmc/video-games [accessed 4 November 2015].

27. Emma Cross and Robert Smith, “The Evolution of Gaming at Academic Libraries,” Canadian Library Association Conference (Winnepeg, Manitoba, 2013), available online at https://prezi.com/supsungb2uil/the-evolution-of-gaming-at-academic-libraries/ [accessed 4 November 2015].

28. Burkhardt, “Taking Games in Libraries Seriously.”

29. Three examples of soliciting direct feedback from faculty and students are found in Kane, Soehner, and Wei, “Building a Collection of Video Games”; Laskowski and Ward, “Building Next Generation Video Game Collections”; and Cross, Mould, and Smith, “The Protean Challenge of Game Collections.”

30. Nelson, “Gaming Reaches into Far Corners of Academic World.”

31. DePollo, “Play On: Changing Gamer Culture at the ‘U.’”

32. Laskowski and Ward, “Building Next Generation Video Game Collections,” 268.

33. Cross, Mould, and Smith, “The Protean Challenge of Game Collections,” 133.

34. Jagoda, “Videogame Collection Supports Scholarly Study.”

35. Waldron, “Computer & Video Game Archive.”

36. Mark T. Gilderhus, History and Historians : A Historiographical Introduction , 7th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2010), 41.

37. Vincent Larivière, Yves Gingras, and Éric Archambault, “Canadian Collaboration Networks: A Comparative Analysis of the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and the Humanities,” Scientometrics 68, no. 3 (2006): 519–33, doi:10.1007/s11192-006-0127-8.

38. Nelson, “Gaming Reaches into Far Corners of Academic World.”

39. Kane, Soehner, and Wei, “Building a Collection of Video Games.”

40. Wenzel, “New Library Videogame Collection.”

41. Mary Claire Morris, “Computer & Video Game Archive Celebrating Five Years of Growth,” The University Record (blog) (Nov. 5, 2013), available online at http://record.umich.edu //articles/computer-video-game-archive-celebrating-five-years-growth [accessed 2 December 2015].

42. Cross, Mould, and Smith, “The Protean Challenge of Game Collections,” 144.

43. For more information, see http://store.steampowered.com/about /.

44. Waldron, “Computer & Video Game Archive.”

45. John Gaudiosi, “Mobile Game Revenues Set to Overtake Console Games in 2015,” Fortune , (Jan. 15, 2015), available online at http://fortune.com/2015/01/15/mobile -console-game-revenues-2015/ [accessed 15 January 2016].

* Shannon L. Farrell is Natural Resources Librarian in the Natural Resources Library at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities; e-mail: [email protected] . Amy E. Neeser is Assistant Librarian, Library Research—Science and Engineering in the University Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; e-mail: [email protected] . Carolyn Bishoff is Physics, Astronomy, and Earth Sciences Librarian in the Walter Library at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities; e-mail: [email protected] ). ©2017 Shannon L. Farrell, Amy E. Neeser, and Carolyn Bishoff, Attribution-NonCommercial ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) CC BY-NC.

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ISSN: 2150-6701

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The association between video gaming and psychological functioning.

• 1 Department of Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany
• 2 Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center, Mainz, Germany

Video gaming is an extremely popular leisure-time activity with more than two billion users worldwide ( Newzoo, 2017 ). However, the media as well as professionals have underscored the potential dangers of excessive video gaming. With the present research, we aimed to shed light on the relation between video gaming and gamers’ psychological functioning. Questionnaires on personality and psychological health as well as video gaming habits were administered to 2,734 individuals (2,377 male, 357 female, M age = 23.06, SD age = 5.91). Results revealed a medium-sized negative correlation between problematic video gaming and psychological functioning with regard to psychological symptoms, affectivity, coping, and self-esteem. Moreover, gamers’ reasons for playing and their preferred game genres were differentially related to psychological functioning with the most notable findings for distraction-motivated players as well as action game players. Future studies are needed to examine whether these psychological health risks reflect the causes or consequences of video gaming.

Introduction

Video gaming is a very popular leisure activity among adults ( Pew Research Center, 2018 ). The amount of time spent playing video games has increased steadily, from 5.1 h/week in 2011 to 6.5 h/week in 2017 ( The Nielsen Company, 2017 ). Video gaming is known to have some benefits such as improving focus, multitasking, and working memory, but it may also come with costs when it is used heavily. By spending a predominant part of the day gaming, excessive video gamers are at risk of showing lower educational and career attainment, problems with peers, and lower social skills ( Mihara and Higuchi, 2017 ). On the one hand, video game use is widespread, and it may come with certain precursors as well as consequences. On the other hand, little is known about the relations between various video gaming habits and psychological functioning. This study aims to shed light on these important relations using a large sample.

A video game is defined as “a game which we play thanks to an audiovisual apparatus and which can be based on a story” ( Esposito, 2005 ). In the last few years, the amount of scientific research devoted to video game playing has increased (e.g., Ferguson, 2015 ; Calvert et al., 2017 ; Hamari and Keronen, 2017 ). Most scientific studies in this area of research have focused on the extent of video game play and its diverse correlates. While some researchers have emphasized the benefits of game playing and even suggested a therapeutic use of video games ( Primack et al., 2012 ; Granic et al., 2014 ; Colder Carras et al., 2018 ), others have been intrigued by its potential dangers ( Anderson et al., 2010 ; Müller and Wölfling, 2017 ).

Parents and professionals may be worried about their excessively playing children being “addicted.” However, problematic and potentially addictive video game use goes beyond the extent of playing (in hours per week; Skoric et al., 2009 ). It also includes such issues as craving, loss of control, and negative consequences of excessive gaming. While it is still a matter of debate whether problematic video game play should be considered a behavioral addiction , its status as a mental disorder has been clarified since the release of the DSM-5 in 2013. In the DSM-5, the American Psychiatric Association (2013) defined Internet Gaming Disorder with diagnostic criteria closely related to Gambling Disorder. Generally, this decision has been supported by many researchers (e.g., Petry et al., 2014 ) but has also caused controversies. Researchers have criticized the selection of diagnostic criteria and the vague definition of the Internet Gaming Disorder construct, which excludes offline games from being related to addictive use (e.g., Griffiths et al., 2016 ; Bean et al., 2017 ).

Several studies, literature reviews, and meta-analyses have focused on the correlates of problematic video gaming, usually assessed as a continuum with addiction marking the upper end of the scale (e.g., Ferguson et al., 2011 ; Kuss and Griffiths, 2012 ). The degree of addictive video game use has been found to be related to personality traits such as low self-esteem ( Ko et al., 2005 ) and low self-efficacy ( Jeong and Kim, 2011 ), anxiety, and aggression ( Mehroof and Griffiths, 2010 ), and even to clinical symptoms of depression and anxiety disorders ( Wang et al., 2018 ). Potential consequences of video game use have been identified as well, such as a lack of real-life friends ( Kowert et al., 2014a ), stress and maladaptive coping ( Milani et al., 2018 ), lower psychosocial well-being and loneliness ( Lemmens et al., 2011 ), psychosomatic problems ( Müller et al., 2015 ; Milani et al., 2018 ), and decreased academic achievement ( Chiu et al., 2004 ; Gentile, 2009 ). Effect sizes have varied widely across studies ( Ferguson et al., 2011 ). There seem to be sex and age differences with regard to video gaming behavior: potentially problematic video gaming was found to be more likely among males than females (e.g., Greenberg et al., 2010 ; Estévez et al., 2017 ), and among younger gamers ( Rehbein et al., 2016 ).

In addition to looking at problematic video game use and its relation to psychological functioning, it is relevant to also focus on why individuals play video games. Players use video games for very different reasons ( Ryan et al., 2006 ; Yee, 2006 ) such as to distract themselves from daily hassles or because they enjoy the social relationships they have developed in the virtual world. Potentially problematic video gaming has been found to be related to various reasons for playing such as coping and escape ( Hussain and Griffiths, 2009 ; Schneider et al., 2018 ), socialization ( Laconi et al., 2017 ), and personal satisfaction ( Ng and Wiemer-Hastings, 2005 ). Coping ( Laconi et al., 2017 ), social interaction, and competition were among the main reasons for gaming among males but not among females ( Lucas and Sherry, 2004 ). Mixed results emerged concerning age differences ( Greenberg et al., 2010 ), but especially younger gamers seemed to be motivated for video gaming by social interactions ( Hilgard et al., 2013 ). However, so far it remains unclear to what extent people’s various reasons for playing video games are differentially related to their psychological functioning.

Besides investigating the links between potentially problematic video game use and psychological functioning as well as between reasons for playing video games and psychological functioning, it is relevant to also look at which game genres individuals prefer. Correlates of preferences for certain game genres (e.g., simulation, strategy, action, role-playing) are cognitive enhancement ( Dobrowolski et al., 2015 ; Bediou et al., 2018 ), but also the amount of time spent playing ( Lemmens and Hendriks, 2016 ; Rehbein et al., 2016 ) and psychopathological symptoms ( Laconi et al., 2017 ). Males were shown to prefer action and strategy games, whereas females showed a preference for games of skill ( Scharkow et al., 2015 ; Rehbein et al., 2016 ). Younger gamers seemed to prefer action games, older players more so games of skill ( Scharkow et al., 2015 ). However, it is not yet understood to what extent preferences for certain video game genres are differentially related to psychological functioning.

Typically, research has focused merely on violent video games (e.g., Anderson and Bushman, 2001 ; Elson and Ferguson, 2014 ) or one specific game within one specific game genre (frequently World of Warcraft; Graham and Gosling, 2013 ; Visser et al., 2013 ; Herodotou et al., 2014 ), thereby neglecting the variety of possible gaming habits across various game genres.

In the present study, our objective was to examine the relation between video gaming and psychological functioning in a fine-grained manner. For this purpose, we examined psychological functioning by employing various variables such as psychological symptoms, coping strategies, and social support. Likewise, we assessed video gaming in a similarly detailed way, ranging from (a) problematic video game use, (b) the reasons for playing, to (c) the preferred game genres. This strategy prevented us from making potentially invalid generalizations about video gaming in general and allowed us to examine the spectrum of gaming habits and the respective relations between such habits and a diverse set of variables representing psychological functioning.

Playing video games excessively should be appealing to individuals with poor psychological functioning because games allow people to avoid their everyday problems and instead immerse themselves in another environment ( Taquet et al., 2017 ). Moreover, video games offer people a chance to connect with other people socially despite any more or less evident psychological problems they may have ( Kowert et al., 2014b ; Mazurek et al., 2015 ). On the other hand, potentially problematic video game use may also lead to psychological problems because it reduces the amount of time and the number of opportunities gamers have to practice real-life behavior ( Gentile, 2009 ). Thus, we expected to find a negative correlation between problematic video gaming and variables representing psychological functioning such that we expected more potentially problematic video game use to be related to dysfunctional coping strategies ( Wood and Griffith, 2007 ), negative affectivity ( Mathiak et al., 2011 ), and poor school performance ( Mihara and Higuchi, 2017 ). Moreover, we expected to find differential correlates of people’s reasons for playing video games and their psychological functioning: Playing for escape-oriented reasons such as distraction should go along with diverse indices of poor psychological functioning ( Király et al., 2015 ), whereas playing for gain-oriented reasons such as the storyline or the social connections in the game should be related to adequate psychological functioning ( Longman et al., 2009 ). Also, we expected to find people’s preferred game genres (e.g., strategy, action) to be differentially related to their psychological functioning ( Park et al., 2016 ). Finally, we aimed to shed light on the unique contribution of each measure of psychological functioning to the prediction of problematic video game use.

Materials and Methods

Participants 1.

A total of N = 2,891 individuals (2,421 male, 470 female) with a mean age of 23.17 years ( SD = 5.99, Range: 13–65) participated in our study. Of these participants, N = 2,734 (95%) confirmed their use of video games and were thus included in further analyses (2,377 male, 357 female, with a mean age of 23.06 years; SD = 5.91, Range: 13–65). The distribution of participants with regard to sex and age mirrors the findings of past research with males and younger individuals being more likely to play video games (e.g., Griffiths et al., 2004 ). Participants’ place of residence was Germany.

Procedure and Instruments 2

We posted links to our online questionnaire on various online forums as well as on popular online game sites. To achieve heterogeneity of the sample, no exclusion criteria other than having access to the Internet and understanding German were specified. As an incentive to participate in the study, four vouchers of 50€ were raffled.

Video Gaming

Potentially problematic video game use.

The AICA-S, the Scale for the Assessment of Internet and Computer game Addiction ( Wölfling et al., 2016 ), was used to assess participants’ gaming behavior with regard to potential problematic use. Based on the DSM criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder (tolerance, craving, loss of control, emotion regulation, withdrawal, and unsuccessful attempts to cut back), this standardized self-report scale consists of 15 items usually with a five-point scale ranging from 1 ( never ) to 5 ( very often ). The final score (Min = 0, Max = 27 points) is computed using weighted scoring (items with an item-total correlation > 0.55 in the norm sample are weighted double; Wölfling et al., 2011 ). The AICA-S score can be used to differentiate between regular (0–6.5 points) and problematic use of video games (7–13 points: abuse; 13.5–27 points: addiction). In our sample, N = 2,265 (83%) were identified as regular gamers, and N = 469 (17%) as problematic gamers. We used the AICA-S as a continuous variable for all further analyses ( M = 3.98, SD = 3.22, Range: 0–24). The instrument has been validated for different age groups in the general population and in clinical samples ( Müller et al., 2014a , 2019 , but note small sample size; Müller et al., 2014b ). Cronbach’s alpha was α = 0.70. As expected, the AICA-S score was correlated with male sex ( r = 0.17 ∗∗∗ ) and age ( r = –0.15 ∗∗∗ ). On average, participants played video games for M = 4.09 hours per weekday ( SD = 4.44, Range: 0–24), and M = 4.21 h per day at the weekend ( SD = 2.99, Range: 0–24).

Reasons for playing

Gamers indicated how often they played video games for certain reasons. They rated each of 10 reasons separately on Likert scales ranging from 1 ( never ) to 4 ( very often ). The most prevalent reasons were relaxation ( M = 2.96, SD = 0.91), amusement ( M = 2.94, SD = 0.85), and because of the storyline ( M = 2.67, SD = 1.10).

Game genres

Gamers were asked how often they usually played various video game subgenres such as first-person shooter, round-based strategy, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), life simulations, and others. Ratings were made on Likert scales ranging from 1 ( never ) to 4 ( very often ). Using Apperley’s (2006) classification of game genres, we categorized the subgenres into the main genres action ( M = 2.54, SD = 0.84), strategy ( M = 2.13, SD = 0.80), role-playing ( M = 2.01, SD = 0.73), and simulation ( M = 1.58, SD = 0.44). A cluster for unclassified subgenres ( M = 1.54, SD = 0.39) was added to additionally account for such subgenres as jump’n’runs and games of skill. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations for all measures (including sex and age) are presented in Supplementary Tables S1–S4 .

Psychological Functioning

Participants provided ratings of their psychological functioning on the following constructs:

General psychopathology

The SCL-K-9 ( Klaghofer and Brähler, 2001 ), a short version of the SCL-90-R ( Derogatis, 1975 ), was administered to assess participants’ subjective impairment regarding psychological symptoms (somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism). The SCL-K-9 score is strongly correlated with the original score of the SCL-90-R ( r = 0.93). The 9 items were answered on 5-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 ( do not agree at all ) to 5 ( agree completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory (α = 0.77).

We assessed 10 coping strategies with the Brief COPE ( Carver, 1997 ; German version by Knoll et al., 2005 ), which is the shorter version of the COPE ( Carver et al., 1989 ): self-distraction, denial, substance use, venting, self-blame, behavioral disengagement, acceptance, active coping, planning, and positive reframing. The two items per subscale were administered on 5-point Likert-type scales ranging from 1 ( never ) to 5 ( very often ). Intercorrelations of the two items per subscale ranged from r = 0.32, p < 0.001 for positive reframing to r = 0.78, p < 0.001 for substance use (with one exception: r = -0.05, p = 0.01 for self-distraction).

We measured general affect as a trait and affect during video gaming as a state using the German version ( Krohne et al., 1996 ) of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988 ). On a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( completely ), participants rated the intensity of 20 adjectives. Cronbach’s alpha was α = 0.78 for general positive affect, α = 0.83 for general negative affect, α = 0.85 for positive affect while playing, and α = 0.83 for negative affect while playing.

The measure for the assessment of shyness in adults ( Asendorpf, 1997 ) consists of 5 items that were answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.86).

We administered the German version ( Elbing, 1991 ) of the NYU Loneliness Scale ( Rubenstein and Shaver, 1982 ). The 4 items were answered on 5- to 6-point Likert-type scales. Cronbach’s alpha was satisfactory (α = 0.79).

Preference for solitude

A 10-item measure of preference for solitude ( Nestler et al., 2011 ) was answered on a 6-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 6 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.86).

Life satisfaction

Participants answered a one-item life satisfaction measure on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 4 ( completely ).

Self-esteem

We administered the German version ( von Collani and Herzberg, 2003 ) of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES; Rosenberg, 1979 ). The 10 items were answered on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 4 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.88).

Self-efficacy

We administered a 10-item generalized self-efficacy scale ( Schwarzer and Jerusalem, 1995 ), which was answered on a 4-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 4 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.86).

Social support and friends

We administered the perceived available social support subscale from the Berlin Social Support Scales (BSSS; Schwarzer and Schulz, 2003 ). The 8 items were answered on a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 ( not at all ) to 5 ( completely ). Cronbach’s alpha was excellent (α = 0.94). Participants indicated how many offline friends and offline acquaintances they had ( r = 0.44, p < 0.001) as well as how many online friends and online acquaintances they had ( r = 0.33, p < 0.001). Due to left-skewed distributions, we logarithmized the data before aggregation.

Participants reported their grade point average. German grades are assessed on a scale that ranges from 1 ( excellent ) to 6 ( insufficient ). Thus, higher scores indicate worse grades.

Participants further reported their sex and age. Both were used as control variables in further analyses.

In a first step, we computed zero-order correlations between the video gaming variables and the measures of psychological functioning. In a second step, we computed partial correlations in which we controlled for sex and age because past research has repeatedly shown that sex and age are correlated with both video gaming ( Homer et al., 2012 ; Mihara and Higuchi, 2017 ) and psychological functioning ( Kessler et al., 2007 ; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012 ). Finally, we explored the unique contribution of each measure of psychological functioning to the prediction of potentially problematic video gaming. Therefore, we computed regressions with potentially problematic video gaming as the dependent variable and sex, age, and the measures of psychological functioning as predictors (entered simultaneously into the regression equation). By employing this procedure, we were able to determine the effect that each variable had over and above the other ones. For instance, we could identify whether general psychopathology was predictive of potentially problematic video game use when the influence of all other variables (e.g., shyness, loneliness, and others) was held constant.

Additionally, we included analyses regarding sex and age differences in the link between video gaming and psychological functioning. Since we collected a self-selected sample where different sexes and age groups were not represented equally, our findings are only preliminary, but may stimulate future research.

Potentially Problematic Video Game Use and Psychological Functioning

First, we examined whether potentially problematic video game use was related to various psychological functioning variables. As can be seen in Table 1 , the results for the zero-order correlations were similar to those for the partial correlations in which we controlled for sex and age. A medium-sized positive relation to the potentially problematic use of video games emerged for the presence of psychological symptoms including depression, anxiety, and hostility. Furthermore, several coping strategies were differentially associated with the potentially problematic use of video games: Self-blame and behavioral disengagement showed the strongest positive relations to potentially problematic video game use, followed by denial, acceptance, substance use, self-distraction, and venting. Planning, active coping, and, to a lesser extent, positive reframing were negatively associated with the potentially problematic use of video games. Moreover, the association with potentially problematic video game use was negative for general positive affect and positive and larger in size for general negative affect. However, potentially problematic video game use was clearly positively associated with the experience of both positive and negative affect while playing. Further, a preference for solitude, shyness, and loneliness were positively correlated with the potentially problematic use of video games. Lower self-esteem, lower life satisfaction, and, to a lesser extent, poorer perceived social support and lower self-efficacy went along with potentially problematic video game use. There was an association between fewer offline friends and acquaintances but more online connections with potentially problematic video gaming. Finally, poorer performance in school (i.e., higher grades) was related to the potentially problematic use of video games. These results suggest that potentially problematic video gaming goes along with poor psychological functioning and vice versa.

Table 1. Associations between potentially problematic video gaming and psychological functioning.

Reasons for Playing Video Games and Psychological Functioning

Second, we investigated whether players’ reasons for playing video games were differentially related to the psychological functioning variables. Table 2 presents the partial correlations, controlling for sex and age. Using video games to distract oneself from stress was clearly connected to a high level of psychological symptoms. Distraction-motivated gamers preferred coping strategies such as self-blame, behavioral disengagement, self-distraction, denial, substance use, venting, and acceptance, but they neglected active coping and planning. They showed less general positive affect and more negative affect both in general and while playing as well as more positive affect while playing. These gamers further reported low self-esteem and low life satisfaction, loneliness, a preference for solitude, shyness, a lack of self-efficacy and social support, and poor achievement in school. A similar but somewhat less extreme picture was revealed for gamers who played video games in order to have something to talk about . However, these gamers reported more online connections. Gamers who played video games to improve their real-life abilities also reported more online connections. In addition, these gamers showed higher levels of general positive affect. The strongest association with online friends and acquaintances emerged, as expected, for gamers who played because of the social relations in the virtual world. Although all reasons for playing video games were related to positive affect while playing, the strongest associations emerged for gamers who played because of the social relations , to stimulate their imagination , and for curiosity . It is interesting that, for gamers who played video games because of the storyline and for relaxation , there was a relation only to positive but not to negative affect while playing. Reasons for playing were only weakly related to sex and age (see Supplementary Table S2 ). In sum, several reasons for playing video games were differentially associated with psychological functioning.

Table 2. Associations between reasons for playing video games and psychological functioning.

Video Game Genre and Psychological Functioning

Third, we examined whether players’ preferences for different video game genres were differentially associated with the measures of psychological functioning. Table 3 shows the partial correlations in which we controlled for sex and age. There was a weak connection between general psychological symptoms and all of the video game genres we investigated except strategy. A preference for action games had the strongest association with affect while playing. Thus, action games seem to be both rewarding and a source of frustration. A preference for action games went along with poorer school performance. Gamers who preferred role-playing games scored higher on shyness and a preference for solitude and lower on self-esteem; they also reported fewer offline connections. By contrast, preferences for games of the unclassified category on average went along with a larger number of offline friends and more positive affect, both while playing and in general. Two game genres (i.e., role-playing and unclassified games) were related to the coping strategy of self-distraction. Because preferred game genre was related to participants’ sex (see Supplementary Table S3 ), we had a more detailed look at the correlations between preferred game genre and psychological functioning separately for both sexes: For males ( n = 2,377), the strongest correlation between general psychopathology and game genre emerged for action ( r = 0.08, p < 0.001), followed by role playing ( r = 0.07, p < 0.01), and unclassified ( r = 0.07, p < 0.01). For females ( n = 357), the strongest relation between general psychopathology and game genre emerged for simulation ( r = 0.17, p < 0.01). Differences were also found regarding the strength of the relation between number of friends online and the genre action: r = 0.06, p < 0.01 for males, and r = 0.27, p < 0.001 for females. Similarly, preferred game genre was related to participants’ age (see Supplementary Table S3 ). However, there were merely differences with regard to the relation of psychological functioning and game genre, when analyzed separately for different age groups (<19 years, n = 557; 19–30 years, n = 1916; >31 years, n = 261). In sum, our results speak to the idea that individuals with different levels of psychological functioning differ in their choices of game genres and vice versa.

Table 3. Associations between preferred video game genre and psychological functioning.

Predicting Potentially Problematic Video Game Use by Psychological Functioning Variables

In a final step, we entered all of the investigated psychological functioning variables as well as sex and age as predictors of the potentially problematic use of video games. By employing this procedure, we were able to determine the unique contribution of each psychological functioning variable when the influence of all other variables was held constant. As Table 4 shows, the number of online friends and acquaintances as well as positive affect while playing were most predictive of potentially problematic video game use over and above all other variables. General psychopathology, a lack of offline connections, and poor school performance were weaker but still relevant predictors of potentially problematic video game use.

Table 4. Prediction of potentially problematic video game use by psychological functioning variables.

With this study, we aimed to shed light on the association of diverse video gaming habits with gamers’ psychological functioning. Drawing on a large sample, our results revealed a medium-sized relation between potentially problematic video game use and poor psychological functioning with regard to general psychological symptoms, maladaptive coping strategies, negative affectivity, low self-esteem, and a preference for solitude as well as poor school performance. These findings are in line with those of prior work (e.g., Kuss and Griffiths, 2012 ; Milani et al., 2018 ). Also, reasons for playing video games were differentially related to psychological functioning with the most pronounced findings for escape-oriented in contrast to gain-oriented motives. Specifically, distraction-motivated gaming went along with higher symptom ratings, lower self-esteem, and more negative affectivity, whereas playing to establish social relationships in the virtual world was related to a larger number of online connections and more positive affect while playing. Furthermore, there were only weak relations between the preferred game genres and psychological functioning. The action games genre was associated with the strongest ratings of affect while playing. These results on reasons and genres may help to explain conflicting findings of former studies, because in our work we examined various reasons for playing, several game genres, and various aspects of psychological functioning simultaneously. Finally, positive affect while playing and a larger number of online friends were the strongest unique predictors of potentially problematic video game use, followed by psychological symptoms, a lack of offline connections, and poor school performance. These findings suggest that, on the one hand, independent of one’s psychological conditions, enjoying oneself during gaming (i.e., experiencing positive affect, connecting with online friends) may go along with potentially problematic use of video games. On the other hand, poor psychological functioning seems to be a unique risk factor for potentially problematic video gaming.

The presented results are generally in line with previous work that has identified a connection between video gaming and psychological health, academic problems, and social problems ( Ferguson et al., 2011 ; Müller et al., 2015 ). However, our study moved beyond prior research by providing in-depth analyses of both video gaming habits (including potentially problematic use, reasons for playing, and preferred game genre) and psychological functioning (including psychological symptoms, coping styles, affectivity, as well as variables that are related to individuals and their social environments). In addition, we identified unique predictors of potentially problematic video game use.

How can the findings on differential relations between video gaming and various indices of psychological functioning – ranging from beneficial results ( Latham et al., 2013 ) to unfavorable results ( Barlett et al., 2009 ; Möller and Krahé, 2009 ; Anderson et al., 2010 ) – be integrated? According to Kanfer and Phillips (1970) , problematic behavior (e.g., excessive video gaming) can be understood as a function of the situation (e.g., being rejected by a peer); the organism (e.g., low self-esteem); the person’s thoughts, physical reactions, and feelings (e.g., sadness, anger); and finally, the short- as well as long-term consequences of the behavior (termed SORKC model). In the short run, according to our results, playing video games may be a way to distract oneself from everyday hassles and may lead to positive affect while playing and a feeling of being connected to like-minded people, all of which are factors that have an immediate reinforcing value. In the long run, however, spending many hours per day in front of a computer screen may prevent a person from (a) developing and practicing functional coping strategies, (b) finding friends and support in the social environment, and (c) showing proper school achievement, factors that are potentially harmful to the person. Thus, differentiating between short- and long-term perspectives may help us understanding the differential correlates of intensive video gaming.

When is it appropriate to speak of video game addiction? More and more researchers have suggested a continuum between engagement ( Charlton and Danforth, 2007 ; Skoric et al., 2009 ) and pathological gaming/addiction, instead of a categorical perspective. In part, this recommendation has also been followed in the DSM-5 ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ) where Internet Gaming Disorder is classified with different degrees of severity, ranging from mild to moderate to severe, according to the functional impairment associated with it. The AICA-S also allows for a differential perspective on gaming behavior by providing ways to assess both the time spent playing video games and the main DSM criteria that indicate Internet Gaming Disorder. However, in our study we did not aim at making a diagnosis, but at having a closer look at potentially problematic gaming behavior and its correlates in a non-clinical sample.

In sum, it seems relevant to assess not only the extent of video game use but also the reasons behind this behavior (e.g., distraction) and the concrete rewards that come from playing (e.g., the experience of strong affect while playing action games) to fully understand the relation between video gaming and psychological functioning.

Limitations and Future Directions

With the present study, we aimed to uncover the association between video gaming and psychological functioning. Our approach was cross-sectional and warrants interpretative caution because correlations cannot determine the direction of causation. It remains unclear whether potentially problematic gaming is a factor that contributes to the development of psychological dysfunction or whether psychological dysfunction contributes to potentially problematic gaming. Also, a third factor (e.g., preexisting mental difficulties) may produce both psychological dysfunction and potentially problematic gaming. Thus, longitudinal studies that are designed to identify the causal pathway may provide a promising avenue for future research. Future studies may also answer the question whether the link between video gaming and psychological functioning is moderated by sex, age, the reasons for playing, or the preferred game genre. In addition, it is important not to forget that the present results are based on a self-selected sample in which potentially problematic video gamers were overrepresented (e.g., Festl et al., 2013 , for a representative sample). Thus, future research should replicate our findings in a representative sample. Further, we relied on self-reported data, which is a plausible method for assessing inner affairs such as people’s reasons for their behaviors, but it would be helpful to back up our findings with evidence derived from sources such as peers, caregivers, and health specialists. Our work reflects only a first approach to the topic, and future work may additionally collect in-game behavioral data from the players ( McCreery et al., 2012 ; Billieux et al., 2013 ) to objectively and more specifically investigate diverse patterns of use. Furthermore, one must not forget that the used taxonomy to classify video game genres is only one of various possible options and one should “think of each individual game as belonging to several genres at once” ( Apperley, 2006 , p. 19). Finally, some of the effects reported in our paper were rather modest in size. This is not surprising considering the complexity and multiple determinants of human behavior. In our analyses, we thoroughly controlled for the influence of sex and age and still found evidence that video gaming was differentially related to measures of psychological functioning.

The current study adds to the knowledge on gaming by uncovering the specific relations between video gaming and distinct measures of psychological functioning. Potentially problematic video gaming was found to be associated with positive affect and social relationships while playing but also with psychological symptoms, maladaptive coping strategies, negative affectivity, low self-esteem, a preference for solitude, and poor school performance. Including gamers’ reasons for playing video games and their preferred game genres helped deepen the understanding of the specific and differential associations between video gaming and psychological health. This knowledge might help developing adequate interventions that are applied prior to the occurrence of psychological impairments that may go along with potentially problematic video gaming.

Ethics Statement

In our online survey, participants were given information on voluntary participation, risks, confidentiality/anonymity, and right to withdraw. Whilst participants were not signing a separate consent form, consent was obtained by virtue of completion. We implemented agreed procedures to maintain the confidentiality of participant data.

Author Contributions

BB, BE, JH, and KM conceived and designed the study. BB, JH, and KM collected and prepared the data. JH analyzed the data. BE and JH wrote the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Supplementary Material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731/full#supplementary-material

• ^ The data were gathered as part of a larger project ( Stopfer et al., 2015 ; Braun et al., 2016 ). However, the analyses in the present article do not overlap with analyses from previous work.
• ^ Other measures were administered, but they were not relevant to the present research questions and are thus not mentioned in this paper. The data set and analysis script supporting the conclusions of this manuscript can be retrieved from https://osf.io/emrpw/?view_only=856491775efe4f99b407e258c2f2fa8d .

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Keywords : computer games, video gaming behavior, game genres, coping, psychological health

Citation: von der Heiden JM, Braun B, Müller KW and Egloff B (2019) The Association Between Video Gaming and Psychological Functioning. Front. Psychol. 10:1731. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01731

Received: 14 September 2018; Accepted: 11 July 2019; Published: 26 July 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 von der Heiden, Braun, Müller and Egloff. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Juliane M. von der Heiden, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Library Resources for Doing Scholarly Research on Video Games

So you are writing a research paper about video games but aren't sure where to begin? Since video games are a new medium of art that requires an interdisciplinary approach to conducting research, databases that draw on many different publications can equip students and scholars with the tools they need to succeed.

Before you begin exploring databases, here are a few useful tips:

• For quick, targeted results,  search by abstract instead of by keyword or by title. In an academic paper, the abstract is a brief summary of what the paper or study is about. Searching by abstract will give you a list of all the articles that discuss video games in the summary, so it will help you narrow down more quickly whether or not the article will be useful to you.
• Use full-text filters to only get results where the entire article is available for you to read.
• For the most scholarly results, use peer-reviewed filters to find only articles vetted by experts in the field.

Recommended Databases

Note that some of these databases are accessible from home with a library card while others can only be used onsite at an NYPL location.

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For those new to academia/scholarly research, EBSCO's Academic Search is a staple in libraries nearly everywhere to conduct general research. It is a good starting point to see the current literature out there for any paper, in this case, gaming scholarship. However, just typing in "video games" alone in the search will lead you to over 300,000 results; how do you narrow it down? As mentioned above, use limiters such as peer-reviewed/full text enabled for high-quality articles that you can read fully. Other available search limiters are "magazines" (think video game magazines) and "company" (e.g. if you want to research a specific video game company such as Capcom or Square Enix). Academic Search is good if you want to study video games in terms of education, how to utilize them in a teaching setting, in the workplace, and more. 

Business Source Complete

If you are interested in researching video games from a business point of view, then EBSCO's Business Source Complete is the database for you. Here you will find SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) analyses of gaming companies, research about NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), virtual and augmented reality, video games, and more. 

JSTOR (accessible from home with a library card)

Similar to Academic Search, JSTOR is a staple in many libraries and is a good area to conduct initial research while trying to figure out what you want your paper to be about. Typing "video games" alone in the search bar will net you more than 50,000+ scholarly articles about the popular entertainment medium. You can narrow your research to video games in Military Studies, Library Science, Political Science, and much more. 

"Can video games help alleviate seasonal depression?"

"Do violent video games cause behavioral problems in adolescents?" 

"Does Cognitive Dissonance explain the Console Wars?" 

"Does causing chaos in Grand Theft Auto correlate to causing chaos in real life?"

EBSCO's PsycINFO is useful if you are interested in studying video games in terms of the realm of psychology, and have ever pondered one of the above questions. You can find articles about video game addiction, aggression in players, mental health, personality development, and more.

Project Muse

This resource is a general favorite for anything art or media related, with tons of scholarly, peer-reviewed articles about video games including articles on diversity in video games, video games and the ecosystem, video games and civic development, and more. When starting research on video games, this database is highly recommended to be your number one starting point when trying to figure out what your paper is going to be about.  

Sage Knowledge

Sage is a good starting point if you want to read reference/textbook material about video games and gamification. In Sage you will find authoritative encyclopedias and handbooks that will help any gaming scholar in the beginning stages of their research. Some interesting encyclopedias that feature a chapter in video games are Death and the Human Experience, Out-of-School Learning, Communication Research Methods, and many more. 

Additional resources:

• Our  LibGuides page will point you to themed research guides of Library resources. For example, if you wanted to create a video game about a time-traveling librarian that takes place in New York City in the 1800s, looking at local history and newspapers may be something you want to do. If you know the research you want to do requires in-depth assistance, it's encouraged to make an appointment with a librarian . 
• This list of Fellowships around the city and at NYPL may be of interest to scholars. 
• Our Interlibrary Services and Documents is also a service for scholars to utilize if you need an article or not owned by the Library. You can also use interlibrary loan for video games as well. 
• Flipster  is a magazine database accessible with your library card that includes video game magazines.
• Finally, an external resource, the Internet Archive , has all kinds of old-school video games you can play, as well as gaming manuals and much more. Anyone who needs primary sources will find this very useful. 

Violent Video Games and Aggression: The Connection Is Dubious, at Best

• Childhood Development
• Perspectives on Psychological Science
• Video Games

Summary: If you are worried about violent video games triggering aggressive behavior in children, new research may help to alleviate your concerns.

The coronavirus pandemic put a damper on many traditional summertime activities for kids, like trips to the pool and youth camps. This gave more opportunity for children to socialize with friends virtually through online gaming. But many hours of extra screen time may have worried parents, especially in light of a highly publicized 2015 report by the American Psychological Association (APA) linking violent video games with aggressive behavior in children.

However, a recent reanalysis of these findings published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science came to a very different conclusion, finding no clear link between video game violence and aggression in children. Both the 2015 and the 2020 studies were meta-analyses, statistical methods of finding significant patterns in a large group of independent studies.

“Our new meta-analysis found that the evidence base was not sufficient to make the conclusions outlined in the 2015 report,” said Christopher J. Ferguson, lead author on the new paper and a professor of psychology at Stetson University. “We found that violent video games do not appear to be linked to aggression.”

When Ferguson and his colleagues reexamined the data used in the earlier meta-analysis, they found that it did not include most of the existing studies of video games and violence and failed to take quality issues into consideration.

“Studies that are well designed, such as those using standardized and well-validated aggression measures, almost never find evidence for negative, violent effects,” said Ferguson. “Our new meta-analysis also illustrates the need to focus on well-designed studies when researching the impact of violent media.”

“Games are now more important than ever for socialization, feeling autonomy and control during an uncertain time, and just de-stressing,” said Ferguson.

Additional research on the potential connection between video games and violent behavior is featured in the APS Research Topic Video Games and Violence .

Reference : Ferguson, C. J., Coperhaver, A., & Marley, P. (2020). Reexamining the Findings of the American Psychological Association’s 2015 Task Force on Violent Media: A meta-analysis. Perspectives on Psychological Science . Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620927666

Perspectives on Psychological Science  is a bimonthly journal publishing an eclectic mix of provocative reports and articles, including broad integrative reviews, overviews of research programs, meta-analyses, theoretical statements, and articles on topics such as the philosophy of science, opinion pieces about major issues in the field, autobiographical reflections of senior members of the field, and even occasional humorous essays and sketches.

APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines .

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122 Video Games Research Paper Topics For Students

Oct 6, 2022

Oct 6, 2022 | Topics

Video games are a big part of our lives, just like political science, and they have been since the early days. Even with all that gaming available to us, there’s still something about a classic game that keeps us coming back for more. This is why we’ve decided to put together a list of 100 video game research paper topics.

The best video games research paper topics are those you’re passionate about. If you know how to write a video games research paper , it needs to be something that interests you and inspires you to write. The more the topic interests and inspires you, the easier it will be for you to write a good one.

When selecting your topic, make sure it’s something that has enough information available on it so that there is no need for any additional research beyond what has already been done on the subject matter.

Video Games Argumentative Essay Topics For Students

Best Video Games Research Paper Topics

• The History of Video Games
• How Video Games Affect the Brain
• The Psychology Behind Video Games
• Why Do We Play Video Games?
• How to Make Money with Your Gaming Skills
• How to Improve Your Gaming Skills
• What Makes a Good Game?
• How to Choose the Right Gaming Computer
• How to Clean Your PC and Keep It Running Smoothly
• The Psychology of Video Game Design Masturbation: Let’s Talk About It
• The Psychology of Gaming Addiction
• How to Improve Your Gaming Skills What Makes a Good Game?

Interesting Video Games Research Paper Topics

• The Impact of Video Games on Children’s Development
• The Effects of Violent Video Games on the Brain
• How Does a Gamer’s Body Impact Their Gaming Experience?
• How Do Gamers Use Interactive Fiction to Explore Human Nature?
• How Does Video Games Impact the Brain?
• How Do Children Use Video Games to Explore Social Issues?
• Can Video Games Change Society for the Better?
• How Do Mobile Apps Affect Our Lives as a Whole?
• How Do Video Games Affect Our Emotions?
• What Is the Relationship Between Video Games and Social Media?
• Can Video Games Help People With Special Needs ?
• How Does Technology Affect our Brain Health?

Simple Video Games Research Paper Topics

• Simple Video Games – A Definition and Explanation
• How to Create Your Own Game
• The Way Children Play Video Games Nowadays and Their Favorite Types of Games.
• What is the Most Popular Type of Game?
• Who Creates These Games?
• What is the Difference Between Video Games and Real Life?
• How Are Video Games Used in Education?
• Can Video Games Be Addictive?
• What are the Effects of Violent Video Games on Children’s Behavior?
• How Do You Feel About Video Games?
• What is the Future of Video Games?
• What Can Be Done to Reduce the Amount of Time Kids Spend Playing Video Games?
• How Do We Know If a Child Is Too Addicted to Playing Video Games?
• Should Children Play Violent Video Games?
• Are Any Benefits of Playing Violent Video Games on Children’s Behavior and Learning Abilities?

Controversial Video Games Research Paper Topics

• Video Games and Violence
• Video Games and Addiction
• Video Games in the Classroom
• The Effects of Violent Video Games on Children and Adolescents
• Obesity, Diabetes, Cancer, and Heart Disease as a Result of Game Play
• How to Make You’re Playing Time More Productive With These Tips From Experts
• Benefits of Gaming: Why Gamers Can Be Happier Than Non-Gamers
• Why is Playing Video Games Good for Your Mental Health?
• Does Technology Destroy Creativity?: How to Avoid Becoming a Cyber Zombie?
• How to Use Video Games to Improve Your Self-Esteem?
• How Can You Avoid Becoming Addicted To Video Games?:
• The Benefits of Playing Video Games
• 10 Ways Gaming Can Make You Smarter
• Why It’s Important To Maintain A Healthy Diet While Playing Video Games
• Is Gaming Bad For Your Eyes?
• How To Become More Productive By Playing Video Games
• How to Make Your Playing Time More Productive

Compare and Contrast Video Games Research Paper Topics

• Compare and contrast the stories of two video games based on the same universe
• Compare and contrast different types of mini-games in video games
• Compare and contrast the game design styles of two different developers (for example, Nintendo vs Sega)
• Which video game series improved gameplay over its sequels? Explain your reasoning with examples from each title in the series.
• Which video game series has the best story?
• Which video game world do you think is most likely to be real? Why?
• Compare and contrast the gameplay of two different video games within the same genre.
• Which video game is better? Why?
• Which video game has the best story? Why?
• Which video game is more fun to play? Why?
• Compare and contrast different types of mini-games in video games.
• Which game developer do you think creates better games? Why?
• Compare augmented reality with virtual reality in gaming

Video Games Research Paper Topics for Kids

• Video Game Addiction: Is it a Real Problem?
• The History of Video Games, Past and Present
• The Benefits of Playing Video Games to Children’s Development
• How to Choose the Best Educational Toys for Your Child’s Development
• Video Games Research Paper Topics for Middle School
• How to play video games?
• What are the best video games of 2020?
• What is the difference between online and offline gaming?
• How to make your own video game?
• What are the popular gaming trends in 2020? *Top 10 Video Game Trends In The United States Of America*
• What is a pirated game and how can we avoid it when playing online video games or downloading apps on our phones/tablets/laptops etc.?
• Why did I lose my score while playing Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch?

Video Games Research Paper Topics for High School

• Video Games Are a Waste of Time.
• What is the Best Gaming Platform?
• Which is Your Favorite Game and Why?
• Discuss the Benefits of Having a Gaming Console in the Home.
• Do You Have an Xbox, PlayStation or Wii? Why Didn’t You Choose The Other One?
• Video Games Are A Great Way to Socialize. How Do They Help You Connect With Friends and Family Members?
• What Are Your Favorite Types of Video Games?
• What Are Some Fun Things You Have Done While Playing Video Games?
• What Does Your Family Say About Your Gaming Habits? How Do They Feel About It?
• What Would You Tell Someone Who Doesn’t Understand Why You Play Video Games?

Video Games Research Paper Topics for College

• Video Game Violence and Its Effects on Children
• The Role of Women in the Video Game Industry
• How Technology is Affecting Our Relationship with Games
• The History of Video Game Development
• Why Do People Play Violent Games?
• How Technology Is Changing Our Relationship with Games
• The Role of computer games and its impacts on Society
• How Do People Interact with Each Other and the Environment in a Virtual World?
• The Effect of Violent Video Games on Youth
• What Are the Benefits of Playing Video Games?

Video Games Research Paper Questions

• What was the first video game ever made? What made it so special at that time?
• How have different generations of gamers interacted with different types of technology over time (e.g., arcades vs consoles) or even between generations (e.g., Millennials vs Generation Z)?
• What is the biggest video game ever made?
• How does playing video games affect your brain?
• What are some of the most important technological advancements in gaming over time?
• How have different cultures worldwide responded to new types of technology, such as video games?
• What is the history behind classic games like Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong?

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This article lists some of the best research paper topics for kids, middle school and high school students. These topics will help students better understand video games and write a good essay on this topic. Choosing your topic wisely before you start writing is important, as it can make or break your research paper. So, if you are looking for some interesting ideas, we have covered them all here!

With a passion for education and student empowerment, I create blog content that speaks directly to the needs and interests of students. From study hacks and productivity tips to career exploration and personal development

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Video games and research: a two-way relationship?

• How to recreate sound virtually in 3D
• 4 myths surrounding generative AI

Blockchain and video games: a happy marriage?

• With over $100bn annual revenue, video games have the biggest audience in terms of entertainment on the planet.
• Science and video games have always had an unbreakable bond, both being based on experience and technology.
• Both make use of innovative technologies: virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), network technology, artificial intelligence (AI), computer graphics, 3D modelling and more.
• Video game development has driven technological advances in graphics computing and, to a lesser extent, artificial intelligence.
• Conversely, for Raphaël Granier de Cassagnac, scientific research such as cognitive science can provide inspiration for game experiences.

For the past two years, our aim at the Sci­ence and Video Games research and teach­ing chair has been to facil­i­tate exchanges between three main play­ers: researchers from all fields of sci­ence, experts from the video game indus­try and, final­ly, our stu­dents. The for­mer has known how to use video games to pop­u­larise sci­ence since the ear­ly days of this form of enter­tain­ment. For exam­ple, the game Ten­nis for two – the ances­tor of Pong – was devel­oped in 1958 at Brookhaven, a research lab­o­ra­to­ry near New York. The researchers’ idea was to demon­strate the capa­bil­i­ties of the com­put­er to the pub­lic at an open day.

Also, the first gamers were sci­en­tists from all over the world based in research cen­tres; a sit­u­a­tion that last­ed for years before video games became pop­u­lar in the ear­ly 1970s. This chair, which relies on a hand­ful of gam­ing pro­fes­sion­als in res­i­dence at Poly­tech­nique, for exam­ple, push­es col­lec­tive sci­en­tif­ic projects that allow some fifty sec­ond-year stu­dents to explore the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with video games.

Common points: experience and technology

Sci­ence and video games have always had an unbreak­able bond. Their com­mon fron­tiers are twofold: expe­ri­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. Sci­ence, like video games, is all about expe­ri­ence; for both, the notions of tri­al and error are cen­tral, essen­tial. More­over, both sci­ence and video games make use of tech­nolo­gies, often inno­v­a­tive ones. Exam­ples include vir­tu­al real­i­ty (VR), aug­ment­ed real­i­ty (AR), net­work tech­nol­o­gy, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI), com­put­er graph­ics, 3D mod­el­ling and more. In 2016, aug­ment­ed real­i­ty was glob­al­ly pop­u­larised by a game, Poké­mon Go, which achieved half a bil­lion down­loads only three months after its release. New dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have been used very quick­ly to pro­duce or enrich games. The lat­ter some­times even serve as illus­tra­tors, if not pop­u­laris­ers, of these same technologies.

In my opin­ion, video games com­bine at least four impor­tant ele­ments that explain this strong link. First­ly, it has an audi­ence, the largest in terms of enter­tain­ment on the plan­et, with over $100bn annu­al rev­enue. In fact, almost every­one plays today, thanks to mobile phones. The sec­ond aspect is the pow­er of rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the mov­ing image, which can also be found in ani­mat­ed films. The third impor­tant fea­ture is game mechan­ics. These mechan­ics can be inspired by the sci­en­tif­ic approach, allow­ing peo­ple to under­stand an envi­ron­ment through experience.

Final­ly, the fourth asset is the strength of inter­ac­tiv­i­ty in learn­ing. One of the best ways to learn is to put knowl­edge into prac­tice rather than to be sub­ject­ed to it. For exam­ple, as a teenag­er, I felt that I under­stood some­thing about the his­to­ry of human civil­i­sa­tion by play­ing the game Civ­i­liza­tion. It was an ide­al first step towards a more seri­ous course or con­tent. So, games are fan­tas­tic tools for learn­ing or at least for illus­trat­ing science.

Video games in the service of research

But can video games help research? On the face of it, this enter­tain­ment indus­try has dri­ven devel­op­ment in tech­nol­o­gy of graph­ics com­put­ing, and to a less­er extent, arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Com­put­er graph­ics because with the advent of 3D, the gam­ing indus­try has seized on every advance in this tech­nol­o­gy, often before the ani­ma­tion indus­try. A French game like Alone in the Dark, in 1992, was a pio­neer in this field.

AI has seen progress thanks to video games, too. You may remem­ber when Deep Blue, the IBM super­com­put­er, man­aged to beat Gar­ry Kas­parov at chess in 1997. Is it con­sid­ered a video game or not? It’s a ques­tion of def­i­n­i­tion. Today, video games at least advance AI because they rep­re­sent a new chal­lenge. In 2019, AlphaS­tar, an AI sys­tem designed by Deep­Mind – a sub­sidiary of Google – ranked among the top 0.2% of play­ers in the world on the game Star­craft 2. The best human play­ers are able to per­form about 300 actions per minute with infi­nite com­bi­na­torics; still a major chal­lenge for an AI.

But in some cas­es, the play­ers’ intel­li­gence can be used to solve prob­lems that AI can­not. This is the case of the game Foldit, which has been try­ing for sev­er­al years to pro­vide a col­lec­tive answer to unsolved pro­tein fold­ing prob­lems in biol­o­gy. After solv­ing the struc­ture of an enzyme called M‑PMV in 3D in 2011, the plat­form was used in the fight against Covid-19 to make the 200,000 play­ers on the site ‘work’ togeth­er. But just recent­ly, Deep­Mind announced that they had bent this prob­lem thanks to AI.

In fact, while I doubt that there will be much more progress of this kind for the hard sci­ences, there is still a lot of research to be done on the play­er, his brain, his social atti­tudes, etc. When the sub­ject becomes human­i­ty, there is still, in my opin­ion, a lot to be done using video games and what they can pro­vide in terms of data. The cog­ni­tive, social, and eco­nom­ic sci­ences should take advan­tage of this in the years to come, via crowd­sourc­ing for example.

Science at the service of video games

Final­ly, we can ask the oppo­site ques­tion. Can sci­ence inspire game expe­ri­ences? This is one of the aspects I believe in the most. There have been thought exper­i­ments in games for a few years now. A play­er with a hel­met on his head is able to play a kind of Space Invaders with­out a con­troller, just by think­ing. This is an exam­ple where a sci­ence, cog­ni­tive sci­ence in this case, would help to pro­duce a new tech­nol­o­gy, in this case the hel­met, which can cap­ture the player’s thoughts and trans­late them into com­mands. If research makes advances on this issue, it will lead to new inno­v­a­tive games. From these games, we will be able to col­lect the data pro­duced by the play­ers. And ask, for exam­ple, how cog­ni­tive process­es and the brain itself work. Once again, sci­ence will be re-fuelled by video games.

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Neural Basis of Video Gaming: A Systematic Review

Marc palaus.

1 Cognitive NeuroLab, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

Elena M. Marron

Raquel viejo-sobera.

2 Laboratory for Neuropsychiatry and Neuromodulation, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Diego Redolar-Ripoll

Associated data.

Background: Video gaming is an increasingly popular activity in contemporary society, especially among young people, and video games are increasing in popularity not only as a research tool but also as a field of study. Many studies have focused on the neural and behavioral effects of video games, providing a great deal of video game derived brain correlates in recent decades. There is a great amount of information, obtained through a myriad of methods, providing neural correlates of video games.

Objectives: We aim to understand the relationship between the use of video games and their neural correlates, taking into account the whole variety of cognitive factors that they encompass.

Methods: A systematic review was conducted using standardized search operators that included the presence of video games and neuro-imaging techniques or references to structural or functional brain changes. Separate categories were made for studies featuring Internet Gaming Disorder and studies focused on the violent content of video games.

Results: A total of 116 articles were considered for the final selection. One hundred provided functional data and 22 measured structural brain changes. One-third of the studies covered video game addiction, and 14% focused on video game related violence.

Conclusions: Despite the innate heterogeneity of the field of study, it has been possible to establish a series of links between the neural and cognitive aspects, particularly regarding attention, cognitive control, visuospatial skills, cognitive workload, and reward processing. However, many aspects could be improved. The lack of standardization in the different aspects of video game related research, such as the participants' characteristics, the features of each video game genre and the diverse study goals could contribute to discrepancies in many related studies.

Introduction

Nowadays, video gaming is a highly popular and prevalent entertainment option, its use is no longer limited to children and adolescents. Demographic data on video gaming shows that the mean age of video game players (VGPs) (31 years old, as of 2014) has been on the rise in recent decades (Entertainment Software Association, 2014 ), and it is a common activity among young adults. Moreover, the increasing ubiquity of digital technologies, such as smart-phones and tablet computers, has exposed most of the population to entertainment software in the form of casual video games (VGs) or gamified applications. Therefore, an important segment of society, over 30% in tablet computers and 70% in smart phones, has been exposed to these technologies and can be considered now, in some form, casual gamers (Casual Games Association, 2013 ).

It is not uncommon to hear both positive and negative health claims related to VGs in the mass media. Most of the time, these are unverified and sensationalist statements, based on “expert” opinions, but lacking evidence behind them. On the other side, as VGs become more complex (due to improvements in computer hardware), they cater to audiences other than children, appealing to older audiences, and VGs have gained prevalence as a mainstream entertainment option. Consequently, the number of people who spend hours daily playing these kinds of games is increasing.

There is interest in knowing the possible effects of long-term exposure to VGs, and whether these effects are generally positive (in the shape of cognitive, emotional, motivation, and social benefits) (e.g., Granic et al., 2014 ) or negative (exposure to graphic violence, contribution to obesity, addiction, cardio-metabolic deficiencies, etc.) (e.g., Ivarsson et al., 2013 ; Turel et al., 2016 ). Moreover, VGs possess a series of intrinsic features which make them suitable for use in experimental procedures: they seem to increase participants' motivation better than tasks traditionally used in neuropsychology (e.g., Lohse et al., 2013 ) and, in the case of purpose-made VGs, they offer a higher degree of control over the in-game variables.

For all the reasons mentioned above, VGs have recently sparked more scientific interest. The number of publications that study or use some form of gaming has been increasing, since 2005, at a constant rate of 20% per year. While during the 90's around 15 VG-related articles were published per year, in 2015 that number was over 350 (see Figure ​ Figure1 1 ).

Increasing trend in VG-related articles . Since 2005, the average annual growth is around 20%. (Source: MEDLINE).

However, the concept of VG is extremely heterogeneous and within the category we find a myriad of hardly comparable genres. The behavioral effects and the neural correlates derived from the use of VGs depend both on the nature of the VG, the exposition to the game (hours of game play, age of onset, etc.) (Kühn and Gallinat, 2014 ), and, to a large extent, the individual characteristics of each participant (Vo et al., 2011 ).

Furthermore, due to the popularity of VG genres where graphic violence is prevalent (shooters, survival horror, fantasy), many studies have chosen to focus on this variable. Therefore, there is a reasonable amount of scientific literature devoted to the study of violent behaviors and violence desensitization as a consequence of violence in VGs (e.g., Wang et al., 2009 ; Engelhardt et al., 2011 ). Lastly, in particular since the emergence of online VG play, there are concerns about the addictive properties of VGs, akin to gambling and substance abuse, consequently making it another recurrent topic in the literature (e.g., Young, 1998 ).

For the time being, this whole body of knowledge is a complex combination of techniques, goals and results. On one hand, there are articles which study the effects of VG exposure over the nervous system and over cognition (e.g., Green and Seitz, 2015 ); it seems that there is solid evidence that exposure to certain kinds of VGs can have an influence on behavioral aspects, and therefore, we should be able to appreciate changes in the neural bases (Bavelier et al., 2012a ). Actually, assessing the cognitive and behavioral implications of VG exposure has already been the object of study in recent systematic reviews and meta-analysis that used neuropsychological tasks to measure the influence of these games in healthy individuals. This is highly relevant since they evaluate the possible transfer effects of VG training to wider cognitive domains, providing a global perspective on how experimental and quasi-experimental designs differ in the size of the effect depending on the cognitive function (Powers et al., 2013 ), and how aging interferes with cognitive training by means of computerized tasks (Lampit et al., 2014 ) and VGs (Toril et al., 2014 ; Wang et al., 2016 ). Knowledge obtained about transfer effects is very important since it allows us to establish a link between VGs and cognition, indirectly helping us understand its neural basis, which in this case acts as a bridge between them. From an applied perspective, this knowledge can be used to design more effective rehabilitation programs, especially those focusing on older populations, keeping the most useful components and reducing those which are shown to have less benefits.

On the other hand, VGs have been used as a research tool to study the nervous system. In this group of studies, it is common to find exposure to VGs as the independent variable, especially in most studies that use unmodified commercial VGs. However, it is not unusual to employ custom designed VGs, such as the widely used Space Fortress, where in-game variables can be fine-tuned to elicit certain mental processes in consonance with the research hypothesis (e.g., Smith et al., 1999 ; Anderson et al., 2011 ; Prakash et al., 2012 ; Anderson et al., 2015 ). Nevertheless, in both cases, the study of the VG exposure over the nervous system and the use of VGs as a research tool, VGs are used to obtain information about the underlying neural processes relevant to our research interest.

As yet there is no systematic review on this topic. The aim of this article is to gather all the scientific information referring to neural correlates of VGs and synthesize the most important findings. All articles mentioning functional and structural changes in the brain due to video gaming will be analyzed and information about the most relevant brain regions for each kind of study will be extracted; the main objective of many VG-related articles is not to study their neural correlates directly. Studies focusing on the addictive consequences or the effects of violence will be categorized independently.

Our final goal is to highlight the neural correlates of video gaming by making a comprehensive compilation and reviewing all relevant scientific publications that make reference to the underlying neural substrate related to VG play. This is the first effort in this direction that integrates data regarding VGs, neural correlates and cognitive functions that is not limited to action-VGs or cognitive training programs, the most frequently found research topics.

In order to structure reliably the gathered information in this systematic review, the guidelines and recommendations contained in the PRISMA statement (Liberati et al., 2009 ) have been followed.

Eligibility criteria

All articles which included neural correlates (both functional and structural) and included VG play in the research protocol or studied the effects of exposure to VGs were included in the review. Both experimental and correlational studies were included. No restrictions regarding publication date were applied.

Healthy participants of any age and gender were considered. Studies include both naive and experienced VG participants. Participants that reported gaming addiction or met criteria for internet gaming disorder (IGD) were also included in the review owing to the interest in observing neural correlates in these extreme cases. Other pathologies were excluded in order to avoid confounding variables.

Articles employing several methodologies were included. These can be organized into three main groups: studies where naive participants were trained in the use of a VG against a control group, studies comparing experienced players vs. non-gamers or low-experience players, and studies comparing differential characteristics of two VG or two VG genres.

The primary outcome measures were any kind of structural and functional data obtained using neuroimaging techniques including computerized tomography (CT) scan, structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), magneto encephalography (MEG), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), electroencephalogram (EEG), event-related potentials (ERP), event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP), steady state visually evoked potential (SSVEP), Doppler, and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), following or related to VG use.

Information sources

Academic articles were located using two electronic databases: MEDLINE and Web of Science, and by scanning reference lists in other studies in the same field. Only the results from these two databases are reported since results from other sources (Scopus, Google Scholar) did not provide any relevant new results. The search was not limited by year of publication and only articles published in English, Spanish, or French were considered for inclusion. The first studies relevant to the topic are from 1992, while the most recent studies included in this review were published in February 2016.

A systematic search was performed using a series of keywords which were expected to appear in the title or abstract of any study containing neural correlates of VGs. These keywords were grouped in two main categories. First of all, a group of keywords trying to identify articles which used VG as a technique or as a study goal. These keywords included search terms related to “video games” proper (in different orthographic variants), types of players (casual, core, and hardcore gamers) and references to serious gaming. In second place, two groups of keywords were used to detect articles which studied the neural basis: (1) keywords related to anatomical features, such as structural or functional changes, gray, or white matter (WM) volumes, cortical features, and connectivity and (2) keywords which mentioned the neuroimaging technique used to obtain that data, such as EEG, MRI, PET, or NIRS. (See Appendix)

Study selection

Due to the large amount of results obtained by the previous search terms, strict exclusion criteria were applied to limit the final selection of studies. The same criteria were applied in a standardized way by two independent reviewers, and disagreements between reviewers were resolved by consensus. Due to high variability in the terminology and the diversity of keywords used in the search, a large number of false positive studies (65% of items found) appeared during the review process (see Figure ​ Figure2 2 ).

Study selection diagram flow . * Articles in these sections may not be mutually exclusive.

By performing a search using standardized terms, a list of studies from the two databases was extracted. A large number of studies (62% of those that met the inclusion criteria) were found to be duplicates in both databases, so a careful comparison was made in order to merge the references.

No unpublished relevant studies were considered. Studies relevant to the topic but not published in peer-reviewed journals, such as conference posters and abstracts were considered.

Data collection process

All the relevant information was classified in a spreadsheet, according to the variables listed below. Variables related to violence and abuse of VGs were also categorized, since a significant portion of the studies focused on these behaviors. A small number of articles ( n = 7) were found in sources other than the two databases, mainly through references in other articles.

For each study, the following data was extracted: (1) characteristics of the sample, including sample size, average age and range, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and gaming experience; (2) aim of the study, specially noting if it is focused on gaming abuse or exposure to violent content; (3) name and genre of the VG used during the study, if applicable; (4) study design; (5) main neuroimaging technique applied in the study, and whether the technique was applied while participants played; (6) functional and structural neural correlates observed in the study. Studies were then classified in several groups as to whether they provided structural or functional data, and whether they addressed violent or addictive aspects.

Moreover, in order to understand the outcomes derived from the neural correlates, most of the studies establish a connection between these correlates and their cognitive correspondence, either by directly measuring the outcomes using cognitive tasks and questionnaires, or by interpreting their results based on existing literature.

In the discussion section of this review, we attempted to summarize the main findings by associating the neural changes to their cognitive and behavioral correspondences. Whereas, in many cases the original articles provided their own explanation for the phenomena, we also worked on integrating the general trends from a cognitive perspective. We therefore indicate which studies provide and interpret empirical cognitive or/and behavioral data (non-marked), those which discuss cognitive or/and behavioral implications without assessing them (marked with * ), and those which did not provide any cognitive nor behavioral information (marked with ** ).

The combined search of MEDLINE and Web of Science provided a total of 306 unique citations. Of these, 205 studies were discarded because they did not seem to meet the inclusion criteria after reviewing the abstract. The main reasons for exclusion were: being a review article ( n = 22), absence of neural correlates ( n = 70), presence of pathology in the participants ( n = 65), not being related to VGs or using simple computerized tasks which could not be considered VGs ( n = 69), testing of new technologies in which the brain correlates were a mere by-product ( n = 25), articles focused on motor functions ( n = 15), pharmacological studies ( n = 2), and finally, articles in languages other than English, Spanish, or French ( n = 18). Excluded articles often met more than one exclusion criteria. As mentioned in the eligibility criteria, an exception were those articles in which the pathology consisted of gaming overuse or addiction and articles which featured psychopathology and included groups of healthy participants from whom neural data was provided.

Fifteen extra articles that met the inclusion criteria were found after examining the contents and following the references in the previously selected studies. As expected, articles written in English comprised the vast majority; among the rest (8.9%), 10 of them (4.9%) were discarded from the review solely for language reasons. No unpublished relevant studies were considered. Studies relevant to the topic but not published in peer-reviewed journals, such as conference posters and abstracts were considered. Ultimately, a total of 116 studies were identified for inclusion in the review (see flow diagram in Figure ​ Figure2 2 ).

Most studies ( n = 100; 86.2%) provided functional data, while only 22 (18.9%) of them studied structural changes in the brain. A few ( n = 6; 5.2%) provided both structural and functional data. A significant number of the studies focused their attention on excessive playing or VG addiction. That was the case for 39 (33.6%) of the reviewed articles, so we considered it appropriate to analyze them in their own category. Likewise, 16 studies (13.8%) focusing on the violent component of VGs were also placed in their own category. These categories were not always exclusive, but there was only one case where the two criteria were met. (See Table ​ Table1 1 for a breakdown by category).

Article breakdown by category .

IGD, Internet Gaming Disorder .

Characteristics of included studies

Based on their methodology, studies in this review could be classified as experimental ( n = 54; 46.6%), randomly assigning the participant sample to the experimental groups, and quasi-experimental ( n = 62; 53.4%), where the groups were usually constructed according to the participants' characteristics. While studies involving excessive gaming almost always followed a quasi-experimental design comparing experienced gamers against low-experience VG players, articles studying normal gaming and the effects of violence exposure used both experimental and quasi-experimental designs. A fraction of the studies ( n = 15; 13%), both experimental and quasi-experimental, compared the results to a baseline using a pretest-posttest design. That was the case for most studies involving a training period with VGs.

The cumulative sample included in this review exceeds 3,880 participants. The exact number cannot be known since participants could have been reused for further experiments and in some cases the sample size was not available. Most studies used adolescents or young adults as the primary experimental group, since that is the main demographic target for video gaming. In many cases, only male participants were accepted. In the cases where VG experience was compared, the criteria varied greatly. For the low video gaming groups, VG usage ranged from <5 h/week to none at all. For the usual to excessive VG groups, it could typically start at 10 h/week. In some cases, where the level of addiction mattered, the score in an addiction scale was used instead.

In more than half of the studies ( n = 67; 57.8%) participants actually played a VG as part of the experimental procedure. In the rest, either neural correlates were measured in a resting-state condition or VG related cues were presented to the participants during the image acquisition.

Structural changes in the gray matter (GM) were measured in the form of volumetric changes, whereas WM was assessed using tractography techniques. Functional changes were typically measured comparing activation rates for different brain regions. Nearly half ( n = 55; 47.4%) of the assessed studies used fMRI as the neuroimaging technique of choice, while other functional techniques remained in a distant second place. Functional connectivity was assessed in several studies employing resting-state measures. EEG in its multiple forms was also widely used ( n = 32; 27.6%) to obtain functional data, either to measure activation differences across regions or in the form of event related potentials. (See Table ​ Table2 2 for a breakdown by neuroimaging technique).

Neuroimaging techniques used in the reviewed studies .

EEG, Electroencephalography; ERP, Event-related potentials; ERSP, Event-related spectral Dynamics; fMRI, Functional magnetic resonance imaging; MRI, Magnetic resonance imaging; NIRS, Near-infrared spectroscopy; PET, Positon emission tomography; SPECT, Single-photon emission computed tomography; SSVEP, Steady-state visual evoked potential .

The high variability in the study designs, participants and objectives meant we focused on describing the studies, their results, their applicability, and their limitations on a qualitative synthesis rather than meta-analysis.

Structural data

Data regarding structural changes following VG use was available from 22 studies, fourteen of which provided structural data for more than 800 participants that had a normal VG use and included both VGPs and non-VGPs (see Table ​ Table3). 3 ). The remaining eight studies examined aspects concerning the excessive or professional use of VG (see Table ​ Table4 4 ).

Studies providing structural data dealing with healthy, non-expert participants .

ACC, Anterior cingulate cortex; ACR, Anterior corona radiata; AD, Axial diffusivity; BA, Brodmann area; BG, Basal ganglia; CC, Corpus callosum; CST, Corticospinal tract; dlPFC, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DS, Dorsal striatum; DTI, Diffusion tensor imaging; EC, External capsule; FA, Fractional anisotropy; FEF, Frontal eye fields; FG, Fusiform gyrus; GM, Gray matter; HC, Hippocampus; IFG, Inferior frontal gyrus; IFOF, Inferior frontooccipital fasciculus; IGD, Internet Gaming Disorder; ILF, Inferior longitudinal fasciculus; ITC, Inferior temporal cortex; MFG, Middle frontal gyrus; MRI, Magnetic resonance imaging; MTG, Middle temporal gyrus; PFC, Prefrontal cortex; PoCG, Post central gyrus; POT, Parieto-occipito-temporal; PrCG, Pre-central gyrus; SCR, Superior corona radiata; SFG, Superior frontal gyrus; SLF, Superior longitudinal fasciculus; SPG, Superior parietal gyrus; TO, Temporo-occipital; VG, Video game; VGP, Video game player; VS, Ventral striatum; WM, White matter. Articles marked with an asterisk

Studies providing structural data dealing with VG experts or excessive gaming .

ACC, Anterior cingulate cortex; CG, Cingulate gyrus; dlPFC, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DTI, Diffusion tensor imaging; FA, Fractional anisotropy; GM, Gray matter; IGD, Internet gaming disorder; IOG, Inferior occipital gyrus; IPC, Inferior parietal cortex; ITC, Inferior temporal cortex; lOFC, Lateral orbitofrontal cortex; MFG, Middle frontal gyrus; MMORPG, Massively multiplayer online role-playing game; MOG, Middle occipital gyrus; MRI, Magnetic resonance imaging; MTG, Middle temporal cortex; OFC, Orbitofrontal cortex; PCu, Precuneus; PFC, Prefrontal cortex; PoCG, Post-central gyrus; PPC, Posterior parietal cortex; PrCG, Pre-central gyrus; SFG, Superior frontal gyrus; SMA, Supplementary motor area; SN, Salience network; SPECT, Single-photon emission computed tomography; SPG, Superior parietal gyrus; VGP, Video game player. Articles marked with an asterisk

(**) did not provide either empirical cognitive data nor discuss cognitive implications. The rest of the articles (non-marked) have measured cognitive correlates with specific tasks .

In studies dealing with healthy, non-addicted participants, eight studies used MRI to provide structural information for the GM, while six focused on the WM using diffusion tension imaging (DTI).

Three studies compared lifetime VG experience prior to the study, while the rest used a training paradigm where participants were exposed to a VG during the experimental sessions prior to the neuroimaging procedure and compared to a baseline. Seven studies provided WM integrity data using the DTI technique while the rest analyzed cortical thickness variations using regular structural MRI.

The most researched areas in studies examining volumetric differences found relevant changes in prefrontal regions, mainly the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and surrounding areas, superior and posterior parietal regions, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the cerebellum, the insula, and subcortical nuclei, as well as the striatum and the hippocampus. In addition to this, structural connectivity studies observed changes in virtually all parts of the brain, such as in fibers connecting to the visual, temporal and prefrontal cortices, the corpus callosum, the hippocampus, the thalamus, association fibers like the external capsule, and fibers connecting the basal ganglia.

Functional data

A 100 articles provided functional data combined with VG use. Of these, around half ( n = 51) were studies which did not include violence or addiction elements (See Table ​ Table5). 5 ). A third ( n = 34) corresponded to articles aiming at understanding the neural bases of IGD (See Table ​ Table6), 6 ), often drawing parallels with other behavioral addictions and trying to find biomarkers for VG addiction. The rest ( n = 16) were devoted to study the effects of violence exposure in VGs (See Table ​ Table7). 7 ). In total, these studies provided functional data for 3,229 experimental subjects, including control groups. Note that there is some overlap with the structural section, since a few ( n = 6) studies provided both structural and functional data.

Studies providing functional data dealing with healthy, non-expert participants, without violent content .

ACC, Anterior cingulate cortex; AG, Angular gyrus; CN, Caudate nucleus; CPEI, Composite permutation entropy index; dACC, Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; dlPFC, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DS, Dorsal striatum; EEG, Electroencephalography; ERP, Event-related potentials; ERSP, Event-related spectral dynamics; FFA, Fusiform face area; FC, Functional connectivity; FG, Fusiform gyrus; fMRI, Functional magnetic resonance imaging; FPN, Frontoparietal network; HC, Hippocampus; IFG, Inferior frontal gyrus; ITG, Inferior temporal gyrus; IPS, Intraparietal sulcus; liPFC, Lateral inferior prefrontal cortex; MCA, Middle cerebral artery; MCG, Middle cingulate gyrus; MFG, Middle frontal gyrus; MRI, Magnetic resonance imaging; NAcc, Nucleus accumbens; NIRS, Near-infrarred spectroscopy; OFC, Orbitofrontal cortex; PCA, Posterior cerebral artery; PPC, Posterior cingulate cortex; PCu, Precuneus; PFC: Prefrontal cortex; PHG, Parahippocampal gyrus; PoCG, Post central gyrus; POT, Parieto-occipito-temporal; PPC, Posterior parietal cortex; PrCG, Pre-central gyrus; PTC, Posterior temporal cortex; rACC, Rostral anterior cingulate cortex; SFG, Superior frontal gyrus; SPG, Superior parietal gyrus; SSVEP, Steady state visually evoked potential; tDCS, Transcranial direct current stimulation; TO, Temporo-occipital; TPJ, Temporo-parietal junction; VG, Video game; VGP, Video game player; vmPFC, Ventromedial prefrontal cortex; VS, Ventral striatum. Articles marked with an asterisk

Studies providing functional data dealing with VG experts or excessive gaming .

ACC, Anterior cingulate cortex; CEN, Central executive network; CG, Cingulate gyrus; CIAS, Chen's Internet addiction scale; CN, Caudate nucleus; dACC, Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; dlPFC, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DS, Dorsal striatum; FC, Functional connectivity; FEF, Frontal eye fields; FG, Fusiform gyrus; IFG, Inferior frontal gyrus; IGD, Internet gaming disorder; IPC, Inferior parietal cortex; IPS, Intraparietal sulcus; ITC, Inferior temporal cortex; ITG, Inferior temporal gyrus; MCG, Middle cingulate gyrus; MFG, Middle frontal gyrus; MOG, Middle occipital gyrus; MTG, Middle temporal gyrus; NAcc, Nucleus accumbens; OFC, Orbitofrontal cortex; omPFC, Orbitomedial prefrontal cortex; PCC, Posterior cingulate cortex; PCu, Precuneus; PFC, Prefrontal cortex; PHG, Parahippocampal gyrus; PoCG, Post-central gyrus; PrCG, Pre-central gyrus; preSMA, Pre-supplementary motor area; SFG, Superior frontal gyrus; SMA, Supplementary motor area; SN, Salience network; SPG, Superior temporal gyrus; STG, Superior temporal gyrus; TPJ, Temporo-parietal junction; vlPFC, Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; VS, Ventral striatum. Articles marked with an asterisk

Studies providing functional data focused on the violent contents of VG .

3D, Three-dimensional; ACC, Anterior cingulate cortex; CN, Caudate nucleus; dACC, Dorsal anterior cingulate cortex; dlPFC, Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; DMN, Default mode network; EEG, Electroencephalography; ERP, Event-related potentials; FC, Functional connectivity; FG, Fusiform gyrus; fMRI, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; FPN, Frontoparietal network; IFG, Inferior frontal gyrus; MTG, Middle temporal gyrus; OFC, Orbitofrontal cortex; Pcu, Precuneus; PFC, Prefrontal cortex; PoCG, Post-central gyrus; rACC, Rostral anterior cingulate cortex; SFG, Superior frontal gyrus; SPECT, Single-photon emission computed tomography; STG, Superior temporal gyrus; VG, Video game; VGP, Video game player. Articles marked with an asterisk

The rich diversity of methodologies and research goals means that the study of functional brain correlates covers practically all regions of the brain. The most studied areas are found in frontal and prefrontal regions and are concerned with high-order cognitive processes and motor/premotor functions. Activity changes in parietal regions, like the posterior and superior parietal lobe, relevant for diverse functions such as sensory integration and visual and attentional processing, are also a common find. The anterior and posterior cingulate cortices, together with other limbic areas, such as the amygdala, and the entorhinal cortex, display activity changes possibly as a consequence of learning and emotion processing and memory. Structures in the basal nuclei also have a prominent role, particularly the striatum, in studies related to VG addiction. Finally, we must not overlook a series of brain regions which do not appear as frequently, such as occipital and temporal cortices, the cerebellum, the thalamus, and the hippocampus, where distinctive activity patterns have also been observed as a result of VG play.

Due to the given amount of data provided in the reviewed articles, we decided to categorize all the information based on the cognitive functions which are associated with the neurophysiological correlates, rather than focusing on the main research goal for each study. Thus, the discussion has been grouped into six main sections: attention, visuospatial skills, cognitive workload, cognitive control, skill acquisition, and reward processing. These cognitive processes are not clearly independent since they present some degree of overlap. This is particularly relevant in the cases of cognitive workload, which may be linked to virtually any cognitive function, and attention, which is also closely related to cognitive control, among other functions. Nevertheless, after analyzing the literature, virtually all the articles included in this review focused on one or more of the mentioned cognitive functions in order to explain their findings. Thus, the proposed categories have sufficient presence in the literature to justify their use as separate domains for the study of cognition. While they should not be understood as independent aspects of cognition, the chosen categorization will allow a link between the underlying neural correlates and corresponding behavior to be easily established.

Within each one of the sections, structural and functional correlates are discussed according to their contributions to cognitive functioning, including possible inconsistencies between studies and the presence of transfer effects. Owing to the close link between VG violence, limbic and reward systems, and the possible abnormal reward mechanisms in addicted players, studies previously classified with violence in VGs and VG addiction are predominantly discussed in the reward processing section.

Attentional resources are one of the main cognitive domains in which VGs are involved and one of the most researched. The involvement of attentional networks during gameplay is closely related with other brain regions responsible for cognitive control, especially when more complex operations toward a specific goal are required. Many brain regions are involved in attention, particularly nodes in the dorsal frontoparietal system, mediating top-down attentional processes in goal-oriented behavior, but also nodes in the ventral network, responsible for bottom-up sensory stimulation (e.g., Vossel et al., 2014 ) dealing with those salient stimuli to which the player must pay attention.

There is evidence that VGPs display enhanced performance in a range of top-down attentional control areas, such as selective attention, divided attention, and sustained attention (Bavelier et al., 2012b ). The ACC is an area that consistently shows functional activity during VG play due to its involvement as the main hub in top-down attentional processes (selective or focused attention) and goal-oriented behavior (e.g., Anderson et al., 2011 * ; Bavelier et al., 2012b ).

Non-VGPs, compared to VGPs, showed greater frontoparietal recruitment, a source of selective attention, as task demands increased, showing that habitual gamers have more efficient top-down resource allocation during attentional demanding tasks (Bavelier et al., 2012a ). That resource optimization effect can also be observed in attentional control areas, such as the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG), right superior frontal gyrus (SFG), and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) (Prakash et al., 2012 * ). Functional connectivity changes in the attentional ventral stream, particularly in occipitotemporal WM, responsible for bottom-up reorienting toward novel stimuli, have also been observed as a result of VG training and were linked to cognitive improvement (Strenziok et al., 2014 * ). Integration between attentional and sensoriomotor functions has been observed in expert VGPs in the form of increased structural GM and functional connectivity in anterior and posterior insular sub regions where long-term exposure to attentional VG demands coordinated with the fine skills involved in using the VG controller may have resulted in plastic changes in these two regions that are respectively involved in attentional and sensoriomotor networks (Gong et al., 2015 * ).

Using electrophysiological techniques, it seems that VG play correlates with an increment of the frontal midline theta rhythm, associated with focused attention (Pellouchoud et al., 1999 * ), and increases with VG practice (Sheikholeslami et al., 2007 ** ; Smith et al., 1999 ), both in an action and a puzzle VG, attributable to ACC activity. Likewise, amplitudes in the P200 (Wu et al., 2012 ), an early visual stimuli perceptual component, and P300 components (Mishra et al., 2011 ; Wu et al., 2012 ), which involved in early stages of decision-making, were also linked to top-down spatial selective attention improvements after training and lifetime exposure to action VG. Action VGPs and non-action VGPs seem to respond differently in the way they deploy attention to central and peripheral targets in visual attention tasks, as measured by the N2pc component (West et al., 2015 ), which is also linked to selective attention.

If we consider different VG genres, it seems that action VGs are better at improving selective attention than other slow-paced VGs such as role-playing games (RPG) (Krishnan et al., 2013 ), puzzle (Green and Bavelier, 2003 ), or strategy VGs (Tsai et al., 2013 ) which require high planning skills and other forms of proactive cognitive control. This is probably due to the extensive use of attentional systems, paired with precise timings that action VGs require. While these improved attentional skills are typically observed in habitual VGPs, it is possible to achieve long-lasting improvements as a result of a single VG training procedure (Anguera et al., 2013 ).

Visuospatial skills

Visuospatial skills encompass processes that allow us to perceive, recognize, and manipulate visual stimuli, including visuomotor coordination and navigational skills, and VGs are predominantly interactive visual tasks.

The areas implicated in visuospatial processing have traditionally been classified along a visual ventral stream (responsible for object recognition) and a visual dorsal stream (responsible for spatial location). Both depart from the visual cortex, in the occipital lobe, and reach the posterior parietal cortex (dorsal stream) and the inferior temporal cortex (ventral stream). More recent proposals have refined that model, broadening the traditional conceptualization of the two-stream model (for further details see Kravitz et al., 2011 ). Among other nodes, the role of the hippocampus stands out for its function in higher order visual processing and memory (Kravitz et al., 2011 ; Lee A. C. H. et al., 2012 ).

Neural correlates related to visuospatial skills have been detected in relationship with structural volume enlargements of the right hippocampus (HC), both in long-term gamers and experimentally after a VG training period (Kühn et al., 2013 ; Kühn and Gallinat, 2014 * ). Increased hippocampal volumes were also found by Szabó et al. ( 2014 ** ), although the authors do not attribute that effect to the VG training. The entorhinal cortex, associated with navigational skills (Schmidt-Hieber and Häusser, 2013 ), which together with the HC is involved in spatial memory (Miller et al., 2015 ), was also correlated with lifetime experience in logic/puzzle and platform VG (Kühn and Gallinat, 2014 * ).

Decreased activation in occipitoparietal regions, associated with the dorsal visuospatial stream (Goodale and Milner, 1992 ), has also been linked to improved visuomotor task performance, suggesting a reduction of the cognitive costs as a consequence of the VG training, dependent on the training strategy used in the VG (Lee H. et al., 2012 ). Earlier N100 latencies in the visual pathways are another feature found in long-term VGPs, which may contribute to faster response times in visual tasks after years of practice (Latham et al., 2013 ).

Reduced WM integrity in interhemispheric parietal networks for spatially-guided behavior could be another symptom for a decreased reliance on specific visuospatial networks after VG training as performance improved (Strenziok et al., 2013 * ). However, other studies found that increased WM integrity in visual and motor pathways was directly responsible for better visuomotor performance in long term VGPs (Zhang et al., 2015 * ). Despite these connectivity changes, brain functional differences between VGPs and non-VGPs do not always reflect performance in visuospatial skills, which were best predicted by non-visual areas (Kim Y. H. et al., 2015 * ).

Cognitive workload

Brain activation patterns depend on the cognitive demands of the environment and also on the associated level of workload (Vogan et al., 2016 ), which is directly related to the allocation of resources to the working memory and its associated attentional processes (Barrouillet et al., 2007 ). When we manipulate this variable and observe its neural correlates, it is likely that we are seeing the result of neural recruitment mechanisms as the cognitive demands increase (Bavelier et al., 2012a ). VGs have often been employed to obtain cerebral measures of cognitive workload, given the ability to adjust many of their features, particularly in a purpose-made VG, such as the popular Space Fortress. Due to the nature of this task, it is likely that functional changes related to the manipulation of cognitive load appear along the attentional networks and in specific key nodes related to executive functions, mainly in prefrontal and parietal cortices.

Cognitive workload is not a unitary concept; some studies have been able to identify different activation patterns by manipulating the difficulty of a task (e.g., Anderson et al., 2011 * ). Namely, the number of stimuli appearing simultaneously on the screen and the complexity of each stimulus seem to elicit different responses from the brain. For instance, in the context of an air traffic control simulator, when directly manipulating the task difficulty by increasing the number of planes that a participant had to attend, the theta band power increased (Brookings et al., 1996 ). Theta band power also displayed higher power compared to a resting condition, and gradually increased during gameplay (Sheikholeslami et al., 2007 ** ). The theta band seems to be directly related to the level of cognitive demand in a wide range of cognitive abilities, such as attention, memory, and visuospatial processes, although this finding is not universal and decreased theta band power has been observed as a feature of sustained attention. So it appears that it is both related to task complexity and levels of arousal and fatigue. On the other hand, beta band power seemed to be more associated with the complexity of the task, especially in frontal and central areas, likely indicating a qualitative change in the cognitive strategy followed by the participant or the type of processing done by the brain (Brookings et al., 1996 ).

Assessing cognitive workload with ERP shows that during VG play, amplitudes tend to correlate negatively with game difficulty in expert VGPs, with most ERP (P200, N200) having its maximum amplitude in frontoparietal locations, with the exception of the P300, being larger in parietal regions (Allison and Polich, 2008 ). This is consistent with previous literature about cognitive workload related to attention and working memory demands and ERP peak amplitude decrements (Watter et al., 2001 ).

Frontoparietal activity, linked to attentional processes, also exhibits recruitment effects as game difficulty increases, which also affects reaction times, making them slower (Bavelier et al., 2012a ). As mentioned above, comparing habitual VGPs with non-VGPs, it appears that the former show less recruitment of frontoparietal networks when compared to the non-gamers, which could be attributed to their VG experience and the optimization of their attentional resources (Bavelier et al., 2012a ). Increased blood flow in prefrontal areas like dlPFC was also associated with increasing cognitive demands related to attention, verbal and spatial working memory and decision making (Izzetoglu et al., 2004 * ).

The intensity of the events displayed in the VG was also linked with certain electrophysiological correlates. High intensity events, such as the death of the VG character, were associated with increased beta and gamma power when compared with general gameplay (McMahan et al., 2015 ).

Cognitive control

During the course of a VG, the player can encounter many situations in which he has to use one of several possible actions. For instance, while playing a game, the player might be required to interrupt and quickly implement an alternate strategy, or manipulate a number of elements in a certain way in order to solve a puzzle and progress in the storyline. All these abilities can be characterized under the “umbrella” of cognitive control, which includes reactive and proactive inhibition, task switching and working memory (Obeso et al., 2013 ). These cognitive control aspects are key to overcoming the obstacles found the VG. In fact, they are frequently used in parallel (Nachev et al., 2008 ) in order to engage in goal-directed behavior. These processes have their neural substrate in the prefrontal cortex, supported by posterior parietal areas and the basal ganglia (Alvarez and Emory, 2006 ). Therefore, most changes regarding cognitive control observed after VG play will likely be detected in these regions.

Indeed, prefrontal regions are one of the brain areas in which GM volumetric changes have been observed as a result of a cognitive training with a VG, which is remarkable if we consider that the common VG training period spans from a few weeks to a couple of months. These regions, such as the dlPFC, determinant for cognitive control (Smith and Jonides, 1999 ), show volumetric changes that seem to correlate with VG performance and experience, likely as a result of the continuous executive demands found in a VG, such as attentional control and working memory (Basak et al., 2011 ). These volumetric changes even result in correlations with transfer effects in cognitive control tasks (Hyun et al., 2013 ). Volumetric-behavioral correlations work both ways, since individuals with decreased orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) volumes as a consequence of VG addiction show poorer performance in similar tasks (Yuan et al., 2013a ).

During VG play, these prefrontal regions increase their activation in response to the cognitive demands (game difficulty) and display a positive correlation with performance measures (Izzetoglu et al., 2004 * ). Still, prefrontal activity is not only affected by the complexity of the task, but also by the nature of the task and the individual differences of the participants (Biswal et al., 2010 ). Some research groups have found deactivation of dorsal prefrontal regions during gameplay. A possible explanation for this phenomenon could be the interference effect of attentional resources during visual stimuli, since activity in the dlPFC remained stable while passively watching a VG, but not while actively playing it (Matsuda and Hiraki, 2004 * ). Likewise, the same team also found that finger movement while handling the game controller did not seem to contribute as a source of prefrontal deactivation. Further studies also noted that the observed prefrontal deactivation was not affected by age or performance level (Matsuda and Hiraki, 2006 * ), although some authors have challenged that finding, claiming that prefrontal activation during video gaming was age-dependent, where most adults tended to show increased prefrontal activity while it was attenuated in some of the children. So prefrontal activation could be a result of age, game performance, level of interest and attention dedicated to the VG (Nagamitsu et al., 2006 ** ).

It has been possible to establish a causal relationship between dlPFC activation and cognitive control using non-invasive stimulation methods. Stimulating the left dlPFC using tDCS results in a perceptible improvement in multitasking performance in a three-dimensional VG (Hsu et al., 2015 ).

Changes in functional activity after a training period in other executive-related nodes, such as the superior parietal lobe (SPL) have also been associated with working memory improvements (Nikolaidis et al., 2014 ).

Connectivity-wise, Martínez et al. ( 2013 ) found resting-state functional connectivity changes in widespread regions (frontal, parietal, and temporal areas) as a result of a VG training program, which were attributed to the interaction of cognitive control and memory retrieval and encoding.

Despite the observed structural and functional changes in prefrontal areas, executive functions trained in a VG show poor transfer effects as measured with cognitive tasks (Colom et al., 2012 ; Kühn et al., 2013 ). Others, showing neural correlates related to executive functions, visuospatial navigation and fine motor skills, failed to observe far transfer effects even after a 50 h training period, as measured by neuropsychological tests (Kühn et al., 2013 ). By studying lifelong experts or professional gamers, some studies have detected structural GM changes that correlated with improved executive performance, involving posterior parietal (Tanaka et al., 2013 ), and prefrontal (Hyun et al., 2013 ) regions. Regarding structural connectivity, WM integrity changes in thalamic areas correlated with improved working memory, but integrity of occipitotemporal fibers had the opposite effect (Strenziok et al., 2014 ). VG experience also seems to consolidate the connectivity between executive regions (dlPFC and the posterior parietal cortex -PPC-) and the salience network, composed by the anterior insula and the ACC, and responsible for bottom-up attentional processes (Gong et al., 2016 ).

Different VG genres seem to affect which cognitive skills will be trained. Training older adults in a strategy VG seemed to improve verbal memory span (McGarry et al., 2013 ), but not problem solving or working memory, while using a 2D action VG improved everyday problem solving and reasoning. Transfer effects were even more relevant in the case of a brain training/puzzle VG, where working memory improvements were also observed (Strenziok et al., 2014 ). Using a younger sample, working memory improvements were detected after training with a 2D action VG (Space Fortress, Nikolaidis et al., 2014 ). Nevertheless, training periods found in scientific literature vary greatly and it is difficult to ascertain if a lack of transferred skills cannot be due to a short training period.

Regarding electrophysiological methods, electroencephalography studies have shown functional correlations with alpha oscillations in the frontal cortex that could reflect cognitive control engagement in the training VG (Mathewson et al., 2012 ).

Skill acquisition

Several studies have attempted to determine which regions could act as predictors for skill acquisition. Since this is a domain in which multiple cognitive functions are involved, volumetric and functional changes will appear in a wide range of cortical regions. Most of the learning in VGs is non-declarative, including visuospatial processing, visuomotor integration, and motor planning and execution. Improvements in these areas will generally lead to decreased cortical activation in the involved areas due to the optimization of resources, whereas this is not the case for striatal and medial prefrontal areas, which display a distinctive pattern of activation and typically increase their activity due to skill acquisition (Gobel et al., 2011 ).

Striatal volumes were determined as predictors for skill acquisition, although structural changes in the hippocampal formation were not (Erickson et al., 2010 ). Particularly, the anterior half of the dorsal striatum was the region which more accurately predicted skill acquisition in a complex VG (Vo et al., 2011 ). Other areas identified as predictors were the medial portion of the Brodmann area 6, located in the frontal cortex and associated with motor control in cognitive operations and response inhibition and the cerebellum, likely associated with motor skill acquisition (Basak et al., 2011 ). The same authors also considered the post-central gyrus, a somatosensory area that could be related to a feedback mechanism between prefrontal and motor regions, while the volume of the right central portion of the ACC also correlated with skill acquisition and is responsible for monitoring conflict. Finally, dlPFC volumes, with a central role on the executive functions, also showed correlation with VG performance over time (Basak et al., 2011 ).

On a functional level, Koepp et al. ( 1998 ** ) was the first team to identify a relationship between striatum activity, associated with learning and the reward system, and performance level in a VG. The study by Anderson et al. ( 2015 ) also support the notion that the striatum, particularly the right dorsal striatum, composed of the caudate nucleus and the claustrum, is a key area in skill acquisition. However, the same team was able to predict learning rates more accurately by comparing whole sequential brain activation patterns to an artificial intelligence model.

Learning gains seemed to be best predicted by individual differences in phasic activation in those regions which had the highest tonic activation (Anderson et al., 2011 * ). Differences related to learning rates were also observed in the activation of the default mode network, especially when different training strategies were employed by the participants. Using electrophysiological methods, the best predictors were the alpha rhythms (Smith et al., 1999 ), particularly frontal regions, and alpha and delta ERSP, which are associated with cognitive control (task switching and inhibition) and attentional control networks (Mathewson et al., 2012 ). Frontal midline theta rhythms, linked with focused concentration and conscious control over attention, seemed to increase over the course of the training sessions with a VG (Smith et al., 1999 ).

Reward processing

VG addiction is understood as an impulse-control disorder with psychological consequences, not unlike other addictive disorders, especially non-substance addictions such as pathological gambling (Young, 1998 ). Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) has been recently proposed for inclusion as a psychiatric diagnosis under the non-substance addiction category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders 5th ed. (DSM-5) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ), with its diagnostic criteria being adapted from those of pathological gambling. Efforts in order to find a consensus regarding its assessment are still ongoing (Petry et al., 2014 ). In some cases, VG addiction is included as a subset within the broader definition of Internet addiction, although this categorization is not always consistent, since many VGs in which addiction is studied do not have an online component. Several instruments have been developed to assess gaming addictions: the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Young ( 1998 ) and the Chen Internet Addiction Scale (CIAS) (Chen et al., 2004 ) being the most used in research and clinical practice.

Within the VG literature, there is a great deal of interest in knowing the neurobiological basis of VG addiction and whether it can be related to other behavioral addictions by observing abnormal reward processing patterns. This seems to be the case, since many regions involved in the reward system have been found affected in people with VG addiction (e.g., Liu et al., 2010 * ; Hou et al., 2012 * ; Hahn et al., 2014 ). Among the complex set of structures that are involved in the reward system, the cortico-ventral basal ganglia circuit is the center of the network responsible for assessing the possible outcomes of a given behavior, especially in those situations where, during a goal-oriented behavior, complex choices must be made and the value and risk of secondary rewards must be weighed (Haber, 2011 ).

Differential structural and functional changes in addicted individuals can be found throughout the reward system. The main components of this circuit are the OFC, the ACC, the ventral striatum, ventral pallidum, and midbrain dopaminergic neurons (Haber, 2011 ), but many other regions seem to be involved in the wider context of addiction.

By exposing the participants to gaming cues, it is possible to elicit a craving response and study which regions show stronger correlation in IGD patients compared to controls. The model proposed by Volkow et al. ( 2010 ) involves several regions, which are mentioned consistently across studies, to explain the complexity of the craving. First, the precuneus, which showed higher activation in addicted individuals (Ko et al., 2013 * ), is an area associated with attention, visual processes, and memory retrieval and integrates these components, linking visual information (the gaming cues) to internal information. Regions commonly associated with memory and emotional functions are also involved: the HC, the parahippocampus and the amygdala seem responsible for providing emotional memories and contextual information for the cues (Ding et al., 2013 * ), regions where subjects showed higher activation (O'Brien et al., 1998 ). Central key regions of the reward system, like the limbic system and the posterior cingulate have a role in integrating the motivational information and provide expectation and reward significance for gaming behaviors (O'Doherty, 2004 ). The OFC and the ACC are responsible for the desire for gaming and providing a motivational value of the cue-inducing stimuli (Heinz et al., 2009 ), contributing to the activation and intensity of the reward-seeking behavior (Kalivas and Volkow, 2005 ; Brody et al., 2007 ; Feng et al., 2013 * ). In the last step, prefrontal executive areas such as the dlPFC have also shown involvement during craving responses (Han et al., 2010a * ; Ko et al., 2013 * ), and are linked to the formation of behavioral plans as a conscious anticipation of VG play. All these frontal regions[dlPFC, OFC, ACC, and the supplementary motor area (SMA)] tend to show reduced GM volumes in participants with IGD (Jin et al., 2016 * ).

Striatal volumes, particularly the ventral striatum, responsible for a key role in reward prediction, were reduced in people with excessive internet gaming compared to healthy controls (Hou et al., 2012 * ) and in the insula, with its role in conscious urges to abuse drugs (Naqvi and Bechara, 2009 ).

Overall, these features are characteristic of reward deficiencies that entail dysfunctions in the dopaminergic system, a shared neurobiological abnormality with other addictive disorders (Ko et al., 2009 * , 2013 * ; Cilia et al., 2010 ; Park et al., 2010 ; Kim et al., 2011 ).

Several regions seem to be related to the intensity of the addiction. In a resting state paradigm, connectivity between the left SPL, including the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and the right precuneus, thalamus, caudate nucleus, nucleus accumbens (NAcc), SMA and lingual gyrus (regions largely associated with the reward system) correlated with the CIAS score, while at the same time, functional connectivity with the cerebellum and the superior parietal cortex (SPC) correlated negatively with that score (Ding et al., 2013 * ). The distinctive activation and connectivity patterns related to the PCC (Liu et al., 2010 * ), an important node in the DMN and reward system (Kim H. et al., 2015 ), could be used as a biomarker for addiction severity, both in behavioral and substance dependence. As the addiction severity increases, changing from a voluntary to a compulsive substance use, there is a transition from prefrontal to striatal control, and also from a ventral to a dorsal striatal control over behavior (Everitt and Robbins, 2005 ), Matching evidence in the form of weaker functional connectivity involving the dorsal-caudal putamen has been found in IGD patients (Hong et al., 2015 * ).

It is important to note that, even controlling the amount of time playing VGs, professional and expert gamers display very different neural patterns compared to addicted VGPs. Gamers falling into the addiction category show increased impulsiveness and perseverative errors that are not present in professional gamers and, on a neural level, they differ in GM volumes in the left cingulate gyrus (increased in pro-gamers) and thalamus (decreased in pro-gamers), which together may be indicative of an unbalanced reward system (Sánchez-González et al., 2005 ; Han et al., 2012b ).

Exposure to violent content

Many articles use violent VGs in their designs as a way to study the effects of violence exposure, emotional regulation and long-term desensitization. Exposure to violent content has been associated with reduced dlPFC activity and interference in executive tasks (inhibition, go/no-go task) (Hummer et al., 2010 ), which cannot be interpreted without studying the link with the limbic and reward systems. It is likely that repeated exposure to violent content will trigger desensitization processes that affect regions linked to emotional and attentional processing, particularly a frontoparietal network encompassing the left OFC, right precuneus and bilateral inferior parietal lobes (Strenziok et al., 2011 ). It is hypothesized that this desensitization may result in diminished emotional responses toward violent situations, preventing empathy and lowering the threshold for non-adaptive behaviors linked to aggressiveness (Montag et al., 2012 ).

Limbic areas are associated with violence interactions, shown by the activation changes detected in the ACC and the amygdala in the presence of violent content (Mathiak and Weber, 2006 * ; Weber et al., 2006 * ). Lateral (especially left) prefrontal regions might be involved as well, integrating emotion and cognition and therefore working as a defense mechanism against negative emotions by down-regulating limbic activity (Montag et al., 2012 ). Wang et al. ( 2009 ) also provided evidence of that regulation mechanism by observing differing functional correlations between the left dlPFC and the ACC, and medial prefrontal regions & the amygdala during an executive task after a short-term exposure to a violent VG.

The reward circuit also seems to be implicated in the presence of violent content. Activation decreases in the OFC and caudate appeared in the absence of an expected reward. However, it does not seem that violence events were intrinsically rewarding (Mathiak et al. ( 2011 * ). Zvyagintsev et al. ( 2016 * ) found that resting-state functional connectivity was reduced within sensory-motor, reward, default mode and right frontotemporal networks after playing a violent VG, which could be linked to short-term effects on aggressiveness.

Gender differences in neural correlates were observed in one study (Chou et al., 2013 * ) after being exposed to violent content, with reduced blood flow in the dorsal ACC after playing a violent VG in males, but not females, possibly as a result of the role of the ACC in regulating aggressive behavior in males.

The effect of certain personality traits, particularly empathy, have been assessed using violent VG exposure (Lianekhammy and Werner-Wilson, 2015 * ). However, while empathy scores correlated with neural activity (frontal asymmetry during EEG), they were not affected by the presence of violent content. Markey and Markey ( 2010 ) found that some personality profiles, especially those with high neuroticism and low conscientiousness and agreeableness, are more prone to be affected by the exposure to violent VGs.

VG player's perspective may also be determinant to the level of moral engagement; while ERP N100 amplitudes were greater during a first person violent event, if the player was using a distant perspective, general alpha power was greater, which is indicative of lower arousal levels (Petras et al., 2015 ).

Montag et al. ( 2012 ), observed that regular gamers have been habituated to violence exposure and show less lateral prefrontal activation, linked to limbic down-regulation, compared to non-gamers. However, gamers have not lost the ability to distinguish real from virtual violence, as Regenbogen et al. ( 2010 * ) found, although that also depended on each person's learning history.

While attenuated P300 amplitudes have been linked to violence desensitization, both in short and long term exposure (Bartholow et al., 2006 ), these amplitudes did not increase using a pro-social VG (Liu Y. et al., 2015 ). Engelhardt et al. ( 2011 ), experimentally linked the lower P300 amplitudes to violence desensitization and their effects on aggression. Bailey et al. ( 2010 ) also supported the link between violent VG exposure and desensitization to violent stimuli, associating it with early processing differences in attentional orienting.

Flow and boredom states during VG play have also been the subject of research using neural correlates. The concept of flow, described by Csikszentmihalyi ( 1990 ), is understood as a mind state of being completely focused on a task that is intrinsically motivating. Among other characteristics, the state of flow implies a balance between the task difficulty and the person's skills, the absence of ambiguity in the goals of the task, and is commonly accompanied by a loss of awareness of time. Considering that the concept of flow is a complex construct which itself cannot be directly measured, it is necessary to operationalize its components. Some authors have identified some of these components as sustained attention (focus), direct feedback, balance between skill and difficulty, clear goals and control over the activity (Klasen et al., 2012 * ) and it has been theorized to be firmly linked to attentional and reward processes (Weber et al., 2009 ).

VGs provide the appropriate context in which flow states are encouraged to occur, since feedback is offered continuously and the level of difficulty is programmed to raise progressively, in order to match the improving skills of the player (Hunicke, 2005 ; Byrne, 2006 ). Therefore, VGs are perfect candidates to operationalize the components involved in the flow theory.

During gameplay in an action VG, Klasen et al. ( 2012 * ) could not relate the feedback component to any meaningful neural activity, but the four remaining flow-contributing factors showed joint activation of somatosensory networks. Furthermore, motor regions were implicated in the difficulty, sustained attention and control components. Together, the authors identify this sensorimotor activity as a reflection of the simulated physical activity present in the VG, which can contribute to the state of flow. The rest of the components elicited activity in several different regions. The reward system was involved in the skill-difficulty balance factor, observed by activation in the ventral striatum and other basal nuclei, rewarding the player in successful in-game events. In addition to activity in reward regions, this factor also correlated with simultaneous activity in a motor network comprised of the cerebellum and premotor areas. The factor comprising concentration and focusing during the VG was associated with changes in attentional networks and the visual system, as players switched away from spatial orientation to processing the numerous elements of the VG in high focus settings. Goal-oriented behavior showed decreased activity in the precuneus and regions of the ACC, while activity in bilateral intraparietal sulcus and right fusiform face area (associated with face processing) increased, which the authors explain as a result of a shift from navigation in a known environment to seeking new game content (Klasen et al., 2012 * ).

When manipulating the VG settings to elicit states or boredom, operationalized as the absence of goal-oriented behavior, one of the main aspects of flow, affective states appear. While the lack of goal-directed behavior resulted in an increase of positive affect, the neural correlates were characterized by lower activation in the amygdala and the insula (Mathiak et al., 2013 ). However, a different neural circuit was responsible when negative affect increased, characterized by activation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and deactivation of the HC and the precuneus, that seemed to counteract the state of boredom, possibly by planning future actions during inactive periods (Mathiak et al., 2013 ). Involvement of frontal regions was also observed by Yoshida et al. ( 2014 ) related to flow and boredom states. During the state of flow, activity in bilateral ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (vlPFC) [comprising the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and lateral OFC] increased, and it decreased when participants were subject to a boredom state. The OFC is linked to reward and emotion processing (Carrington and Bailey, 2009 ), and monitoring punishment (Kringelbach and Rolls, 2004 ). However, this study employed boredom differently, using a low difficulty level in the VG instead of the suppressing goal-directed behavior.

Brain-computer interfaces, using electrophysiological methods to measure brain activity, have been able to differentiate states of flow and boredom, created by adjusting the level of difficulty of a VG. The EEG frequencies that were able to discern between flow states were in the alpha, low-beta and mid-beta bands, measured in frontal (F7 and F8) and temporal (T5 and T6) locations (Berta et al., 2013 ).

Gender differences

Although some studies have already discussed the presence of gender differences in cognitive processes related to VG playing, the lack of studies dealing with this topic and providing neural data are notable. The most relevant study of gender differences (Feng et al., 2007 * ) found that a 10-h training in an action VG (but not in a non-action VG) was enough to compensate for baseline gender differences in spatial attention, and to reduce the gap in mental rotation skills. Whether the initial difference was innate or a product of lesser exposure to this kind of activities in women is a matter of debate (Dye and Bavelier, 2010 ). Actually, one of the reasons men do not improve as much as women could be explained by a ceiling effect due to previous exposure to VGs. On the other hand, women with less experience in these activities are able to achieve equal performances in visuospatial skills that reach the same ceiling effect with a short training period. In this respect, Dye and Bavelier comment on the possible effects of lifetime VG exposure since the gender gap in attentional and non-attentional skills is smaller or non-existent during childhood compared to adult life, and the greater development of these skills in male individuals is partially due to games targeting a male audience.

Other authors (Ko et al., 2005 ) have focused on other psychosocial factors to explain gender differences in online VG addictions. Considering most online VGPs are men and this difference is also observed in addiction cases, they studied the possible factors and observed that lower self-esteem and lower daily life satisfaction are determinant in men, but not women. They attribute these differences to the reasons on why they play VGs: while men declared to play to pursue feelings of achievement and social-bonding, it was not the case for women. This aspect is not new to VG addiction and is shared aspect with other addictions. It is likely that VGs are used as a way to cope with these problems, leading up to the development of the addiction.

Limitations

The study of neural correlates of VGs entails a number of inherent difficulties. The main limitation encountered during the development of this review was the dual nature of studies with regard to VGs as a research tool or as an object of study. The lack of standardization in study objectives is another limitation that should be addressed. Despite the recent popularity of VG-related studies, there are a multitude of similar research lines that offer hardly comparable results, making it difficult to draw general conclusions. We aimed to unify all sorts of studies in order to interpret and generalize the results.

First of all, we compared a large number of studies that not only used completely different techniques, but also had very heterogeneous research goals. We grouped them together with the aim of extracting all the available neuroimaging information, but it is likely that some information that would have been relevant for us was missed in the studies because their research objectives differed greatly from our own. In fact, in certain cases, VGs were almost irrelevant to the aim of the study and were only used as a substitute for a cognitive task, so the provided results may not directly reflect the VG neural correlates. Similarly, VGs were sometimes used as tools to provide violence exposure or to study the effects of behavioral addictions without the VG being the central object of study.

Another issue was the lack of a proper classification for VG genres. While the most common division is between action and non-action VGs, it would be interesting to establish which variables determine this classification. For instance, both first person shooters and fighting games could be considered action VGs. Both demand quick response times and high attentional resources, but first person shooter games require much higher visuospatial skills while fighting games do not. Consequently, efforts should be made to determine which aspects of each VG genre are related with each cognitive process and its associated neural correlates.

Apart from these aspects, comparisons between gamers and non-gamers are common in VG literature. Nevertheless, there is no consensus on the inclusion requirements for each group and it seems that no scientific criterion has been used to establish a cut-off line. Current dedication to VGs, measured in hours per week, seems to be the most common classification method. Non-gamer groups sometimes are so strict as to exclude any gaming experience, but on other occasions, for the same category, several weekly VG hours are tolerated. This is problematic since, in some cases, cognitive changes have been found after just a few weeks of VG training. However, in most cases, the onset age of active VG play, which is a particularly relevant aspect (Hartanto et al., 2016 ), is not taken into account. Another relevant variable, which tends to be forgotten, is lifetime VG experience, usually measured in hours. Moreover, despite the clearly different outcomes caused by different VG genres, this variable is not included when describing a participant's VG experience. Therefore, VG experience should be measured taking into account all the variables mentioned above: onset age, lifetime VG experience (in hours), current VG dedication (hours per week) and VG genres.

With regard to this review, it was really difficult to extract all the relevant information because of the limitations of the existing literature about the topic. But we did our best to clarify the results and to extract valuable conclusions.

Another limitation was the link between neural changes and cognitive functions. The neural correlates of VGs are the focus of this review, and we found it essential to complement this data by discussing their cognitive implications. In most cases these implications were directly assessed by the individual studies, but in some cases they were extrapolated based on previous literature. Furthermore, even when functional or structural changes are detected, they do not always reflect cognitive changes. This may be due to a lack of sensitivity in the cognitive and behavioral tasks employed. In order to detect both neural and cognitive changes, specific research designs, with sufficiently sensitive measurements of the three dimensions (functional, structural, and cognitive) are needed. Ideally, to determine when each change starts to appear as a result of VG exposure, an experimental design, including a VG training period, should be used. In this design, the neural and cognitive data would be assessed along a series of time points until the three types of changes were detected. An exhaustive discussion of the cognitive implications of VGs is beyond our scope since there are already other works that deal with this particular issue (Powers et al., 2013 ; Lampit et al., 2014 ; Toril et al., 2014 ; Wang et al., 2016 ).

Efforts should be made to systematize VG-related research, establishing VG training protocols and determining the effects of lifetime VG exposure, in order that more comparable results can be obtained and to improve the generalizability of results.

Conclusions

The current work has allowed us to integrate the great deal of data that has been generated during recent years about a topic that has not stopped growing, making it easier to compare the results of multiple research groups. VG use has an effect in a variety of brain functions and, ultimately, in behavioral changes and in cognitive performance.

The attentional benefits resulting from the use of VG seem to be the most evidence-supported aspect, as many studies by Bavelier and Green have shown (Green and Bavelier, 2003 , 2004 , 2006 , 2007 , 2012 ; Dye et al., 2009 ; Hubert-Wallander et al., 2011 ; Bavelier et al., 2012b ). Improvements in bottom-up and top-down attention, optimization of attentional resources, integration between attentional and sensorimotor areas, and improvements in selective and peripheral visual attention have been featured in a large number of studies.

Visuospatial skills are also an important topic of study in VG research, where optimization of cognitive costs in visuomotor task performance is commonly observed. Some regions show volumetric increases as a result of VG experience, particularly the HC and the entorhinal cortex, which are thought to be directly related to visuospatial and navigational skills. Optimization of these abilities, just like in attention and overall skill acquisition, is usually detected in functional neuroimaging studies as decreased activation in their associated pathways (in this case, in regions linked to the dorsal visual stream). It is likely that the exposure to a task first leads to an increase of activity in the associated regions, but ultimately, as the performance improves after repeated exposures, less cortical resources are needed for the same task.

Likewise, although not always consistent, even short VG training paradigms showed improvements in cognitive control related functions, particularly working memory, linked to changes in prefrontal areas like the dlPFC and the OFC. How to achieve far transfer in these functions remains one of the most interesting questions regarding cognitive control. Despite VGs being good candidates for cognitive training, it is still not well-known what the optimum training parameters for observing the first effects are. It seems intuitive that longer training periods will have a greater chance of inducing far transfer, but how long should they be? We also commented on how VG genre can have differential effects on cognitive control, so we cannot expect to observe these effects without first controlling this variable, since different VG genres often have little in common with each other.

Cognitive workload studies have offered the possibility of observing neural recruitment phenomena to compensate for the difficulty and complexity of a cognitive task and a number of studies have pointed to the importance of frontoparietal activity for this purpose.

It has been also possible to link skill acquisition rates with certain cerebral structures. Several brain regions are key in this regard, mainly the dlPFC, striatum, SMA, premotor area, and cerebellum. Moreover, as suggested by Anderson et al. ( 2015 ), models of whole-brain activation patterns can also be used as an efficient tool for predicting skill acquisition.

The role of the reward system is always present when we talk about VGs, due to the way they are designed. Addiction has a heavy impact throughout the neural reward system, including components like the OFC, the ACC, the ventral striatum, ventral pallidum, and midbrain dopaminergic neurons, together with diverse regions that have support roles in addiction. The role of structures that link addiction to its emotional components, such as the amygdala and the HC should not be underestimated. Limbic regions work together with the PCC to integrate the motivational information with the expectation of reward.

Exposure to violent content has implications regarding the reward circuits and also emotional and executive processing. Reduced functional connectivity within sensory-motor, reward, default mode and right frontotemporal networks are displayed after playing a violent VG. The limbic system, interacting with the lateral prefrontal cortex, has a role in down-regulating the reaction to negative emotions, like those found in violent contexts, which may lead to short-term violence desensitization.

Despite the difficulties in locating the main components of flow in the brain, it seems that several networks are involved in this experience. General activation of somatosensory networks is observed while being in this state, whereas activation in motor regions is only linked to three components of flow: skill-difficulty balance, sustained attention and control over the activity. The reward system has key implications in the experience of flow, showing that the ventral striatum and other basal ganglia are directly linked to the skill-difficulty balance in a task. When seeking new content in order to avoid boredom, the bilateral intraparietal sulcus and the right fusiform face area seem to be the most implicated regions. During a flow-evoking task, the absence of boredom is shown by activity in the IFC, the OFC, and the vmPFC. Flow is also linked to emotional responses, and both positive and negative affect during a VG have shown changes in the amygdala, insula, vmPFC and the HC.

It is also worth commenting on the negative effects of VGs. While much has been written about the possible benefits of VG playing, finding articles highlighting the negative outcomes in non-addicted or expert VGPs is much less common. To our knowledge, only four studies pointed out neural correlates which predicted hindered performance in a range of cognitive domains. VG use has been linked with reduced recruitment in the ACC, associated with proactive cognitive control and possibly related to reduced attentional skills (Bailey et al., 2010 ). Likewise, exposure to violent content in VG is associated with lower activity in the dlPFC, interfering with inhibitory control. The same team (Bailey and West, 2013 ) observed how VG play had beneficial effects on visuospatial cognition, but in turn had negative effects on social information processing. Lastly, VG exposition has been linked to delayed microstructure development in extensive brain regions and lower verbal IQ (Takeuchi et al., 2016 ).

Finally, although this review is focused on the neural correlates of VG, not their cognitive or behavioral effects, we believe in the importance of integrating all these aspects, since raw neuroimaging data often offer little information without linking it to its underlying cognitive processes. Despite the fact that this integration is increasingly common in the literature, this is not always the case and it is an aspect that could be addressed in future studies.

Author contributions

All authors had an equal involvement during the process of making this review article. The article's design, data acquisition, and analysis of its content has been made by consensus among all the authors.

This study has been supported by the doctoral school of the Open University of Catalonia, Spain, under the IN3-UOC Doctoral Theses Grants Programme 2013-2016 ( http://in3.uoc.edu ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The reviewer JMRA and handling Editor declared their shared affiliation, and the handling Editor states that the process nevertheless met the standards of a fair and objective review.

Acknowledgments

We would like to sincerely thank our colleague Cristina García Palma for her assistance during the whole process of extracting and processing information from the scientific databases and for her valuable contributions during the course of this work. We would also like to express our gratitude to Nicholas Lumsden, who assisted in the proof-reading and English-language correction of the manuscript.

Supplementary material

The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00248/full#supplementary-material

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Video Games Research Paper Topics

• Good Video Games Research Paper Topics
• Interesting Video Games Research Paper Topics

Video Games Research Paper Topics for College Students

Video games research paper topics for high school students, ✒️ good video games research paper topics.

• Violent Video Games Contribute To Youth Violence?
• Violence In Video Gamess
• Video Games Do Not Cause Violence
• Video Games Consoles: Ps3 And Xbox 360
• Video Games And Violence Speech
• Video Games And Violence
• Video Games Affect The Brain
• Video Game Violence Research Paper Video
• Video Game Violence Research Paper Gorefest
• Video Game Industry
• Video Game And Young People
• Video Game Addiction
• The Wii: Nintendo’S Video Game Revolution
• The Video Game Industry Competition
• The Negative Effects Of Video Games
• The Impact Of Video Games On Children
• The Effects Of Video Games On The Heart
• The Bad Effects That Video Games Have On Children
• Speech On Video Game Violence
• Some People Regard Video Games As…

Popular Questions

✨ Best video games Topic Ideas & Essay Examples

• A Critique of “Do Video Games Kill?” Sample In the essay “Do Video Games Kill? ” Karen Sternheimer takes on the subject of the media’s influence on adolescent and adolescent force in America. She focuses chiefly on video games peculiarly the late popular “first-person shooter” games (p. 204 )…..
• Violence and Video Games “The Columbine shooters played violent video games; that has to be a factor in their decision to brutally murder their classmates!” Society is quick to point fingers and approach unknown situations with a causal mentality that often results in a ….
• Video Games Cause Aggressive Behavior Argumentative Essay In today’s economy, I believe that violent video games do promote violent and more aggressive behavior amongst our children. Parents need to step up and monitor what type of video games their kids are playing. You never know ….
• The Impact of Video Games The author continues to emphasis that on utilitarian grounds that video games provides billions of hours to millions of people of fun and entertainment evidently outweighing the potential harm it can cause. In addition to the positives, gaming fuels ….
• Do Video Games Lead to Violence? President Donald Trump said Thursday during a White House meeting on school safety that the nation needs to address what young people are seeing. ‘I’m hearing more and more people saying the level of violence on video games is really shaping young ….
• Are Video Games Good for You A typical story told by parents is that staring at the TV too long can ruin your eyes or watching SpongeBob or any other cartoons make you dumber to steer their children from consuming hours of TV. People invest more time looking at screens from ….
• Video Games vs Cinema Resident Evil is a multimillion-dollar production, from video games, to movies, this take on the modern-day plague, opened the door to many branches off undead productions. Resident Evil is noted to be one of the best video games of all time. It is ….
• Do Video Games Make You More Violent “I know, it’s hard to wrap your head around such a fact of after years of listening to ‘don’t sit too close to the TV, you’ll ruin your eyes,’ or ‘stop wasting your time playing video games—go outside!(https://www.idtech.com/blog/video-games-are-….
• Video Games and Attentional Control The video game industry is thriving like never before. According to a 2018 study, 60% of Americans report playing video games daily (Entertainment Software Association, 2015). Red Dead Redemption 2, released by Rockstar Games in October of 2018, ….
• Analysis of the Attractiveness of Video Games To determine the attractiveness of the video game business, PEST analysis, and Porter’s five forces will be used. PEST analysis will be used to analyse the external environment of the video game business faced by Tencent and the industry. Tencent is ….
• Why Would Video Games Hurt Have video games ever hurt you? Have they ever hurt someone you love? If you answered no, then the article “Do Video Games Inspire Violent Behavior” By Gregg Toppo got its point across. This article mainly how horrible behavior from kids comes from ….
• Violent Video Games Should Be Banned Almost every child enjoys playing video games as it acts as a source of entertainment. However, as time passed by vicious contents are now being portrayed through gaming that dehumanizes children and encourages in promoting violent behavior. Parents ….
• Video Games and Why They Should Not be Regulated This paper will discuss how video games are regulated by the rating system, how violent video games encourage regulations, the positive effects of playing video games, how parents can bond with their children using video games and … Video games have ….
• Are Violent Video Games Really That Bad for You A lot of people play video games these days. You can look at people of many and different ages, religions, backgrounds, race, and economic scale. New apps and video games are being created each and every day. This generation meaning millennials and ….
• Some People Regard Video Games As Some people regard video games as harmless fun, or even as a useful educational tool. Others, however, believe that videos games are having an adverse effect on the people who play them. In your opinion, do the drawbacks of video games outweigh the ….
• Essay – Violence in Video Games There is a growing phenomenon that threatens our safety every minute.Violent video games are causing our children to be aggressive monsters.If we allow these games to continue, there will be more school shootings and more mad men with weapons…..
• Violent Video Games Leading to Criminal Behavior Violent video games and its effect on gamers has been a debatable topic for decades. Although scientists have not came up with an official answer, many people have different opinions on where they stand in the argument. Many people believe violent ….
• Video Games Are Good to Educate Throughout the history of gaming there has always been a stigma. The stigma is that games are bad for the youth and do not teach them anything necessary to further their development. A lot of individuals feel as though games are a waste of time and ….
• Favorite Heroines of Female Video Games If you were to ask many video game enthusiasts about their favorite female video game heroines, the answers you’d get would be very varied – some will say Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider series, others say Alyx from the Half-Life series, few say Jade ….
• Violent Video Games and their Positive Effects How many times a day do our children ask us for something and we so quickly reply, “No” without second guessing it or even listening to the whole question? A million and one times, right? Most children play video games, and regardless of how we ….

✍ Interesting Video Games Research Paper Topics

• Social And Ethical Issues Of Video Games
• Rhetorical Analysis Of Video Game Violence
• Research Paper- Benefits Of Video Games
• Psychological Effects Of Video Game Violence On Children
• Production Of Non-Educational Video Games Should Be Banneds
• Positive Effects Of Video Games
• Persuasive Speech – Benefits Of Video Game
• Effect Of Violent Video Games
• Comparison And Contrast Two Video Games
• Argumentative-Video Game Violence
• Argument Parents And Video Games
• Are Video Games Influencing Our Children
• A Critique Of “Do Video Games Kill?”
• A Controversial Topic of Video Games as a Cause of Violence
• A Journey Through Digital Literature: Hidden Literature and Literary Criticism in Video Games
• A Positive Impact of Video Games on People
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Video game devotees are much more likely to be working-class than middle-class, says research

by Tony Trueman, British Sociological Association

Adults who play video games daily are much more likely to be working-class than middle-class, new research shows.

Although as teenagers their rates of daily playing were similar, by aged 20 middle- class people were devoting more time to their careers, the study found.

Xiaobin Zhou, Dr. Adrian Leguina and Professor Paula Saukko, from Loughborough University, interviewed 37 gamers and analyzed survey data on 3,357 English people aged 16–34.

From the survey, they found that among people aged 20–24, 8.7% working in higher managerial or professional jobs played video games every day, compared with 20% of people in routine or manual jobs. The figures for 25- to 34-year-olds were 8.7% and 13% respectively.

Xiaobin Zhou told the British Sociological Association's online annual conference held today (Friday 5 April 2024) that after aged 20, "the rate of those playing daily decreased dramatically among the middle-class, which contrasts with the routine-manual group where the decline is considerably less marked."

In his interviews with 37 gamers, he found that "most middle-class and upwardly mobile participants' gaming time gradually decreased because of educational or professional responsibilities. They considered self-control a valuable achievement, and underlined that they had found a balance between gaming as a hobby and normal life."

Their self-disciplined habit was "likely inculcated in higher education institutions and professional workplaces. It affects participants' gaming as well as enhances careers and economic positions."

As middle-class people moved away from their homes to study or work, they gamed less together or switched to solo gaming, which allowed them to fit gaming into their busy everyday routine.

The gaming habits of working-class people changed less when they became adults because their life situation stayed the same.

"Working-class participants, especially in further education or not fully employed, often continued to play more frequently and for longer each session when transitioning to young adulthood.

"Some held negative views about their gaming and considered they probably spent too much time gaming, which might not be healthy, but nonetheless rarely sought to control it. Not adopting such controlled gaming habits might make them acutely conscious or ashamed of their gaming."

The study found that working-class participants, who often remained in the same social circle throughout their lives, stressed the bonding they experienced when they played video games with the same friends. This further encouraged them to play video games.

A working-class interviewee told Xiaobin Zhou that he spent about eight hours a day playing video games, "maybe more, maybe less, depending on how well my gaming session is going. It's probably not a healthy amount, but for me personally I quite enjoy it."

One middle-class participant told him, "I'd love to be able to play more and put more time into it but I know it's not the most important thing in my life at this point, so it's always going to take a back seat to something else."

Xiaobin Zhou said that the research was the first to study the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. "We can see video game studies flourishing during the past two decades, but the impact of social class on video gaming has been frequently overlooked."

The survey recorded data on the careers of 16- to 19-year-olds, a few of whom were in managerial jobs, some by running their own business. Of these, 33% played video games every day, compared with 38% of those in routine or manual jobs.

Half of 16- to 19-year-olds in a higher managerial job never played video games, compared with a third in routine or manual jobs. For later ages the figures were 50%–60% for both classes.

The study analyzed data from the English Taking Part Survey, which is an annual survey representative of the English population conducted by the DCMS. The study analyzed a sub-sample of young respondents grouped in three age categories (16–19, 20–24 and 25–34).

The secondary analysis involved merging data from two waves of the TPS (years 2018–2019 and 2019–2020) on 1,771 out of 8,156 people in TPS 2018–2019 and 1,586 out of 7,483 people in TPS 2019–2020 who fell into the selected age range. The interviews carried out by the three researchers were of people between the ages of 18 to 35 years who frequently played games, mainly recruited online from Facebook groups and sub-Reddits in the UK Midlands.

Provided by British Sociological Association

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Fact check: Claim of link between video games, school shootings refuted by studies

The claim: Post implies school shootings are linked to violent video games

A March 29 Facebook post ( direct link, archived link ) shows a cartoon image of a boy playing a video game while two adults watch a news broadcast about a school massacre.

"Guns cause all of this trouble!" reads a text bubble attributed to one of the adults. A text bubble attributed to the child reads, “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Some commenters linked video games to school shootings. 

"Your (sic) exactly right and the kids are getting younger that are playing these types of games!" reads one comment. 

"They are being brainwashed and desensitized," reads another comment.

The post generated over 1,000 shares in less than a week.

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim here conflicts with the expert consensus. There is no evidence of a causal link between school shootings and video games, according to an array of studies, meta-analyses and psychology and sociology experts.

Belief in link between shootings, video games based on logical fallacies

On March 27, a 28-year-old gunned down three children and three adults at a private elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, before being confronted and killed by police, as USA TODAY reported.

The incident led some social media users to revive a widely circulated claim that video games, particularly those that are violent or graphic, are linked to school shootings. Former President Donald Trump  and  House Speaker Kevin McCarthy  made similar claims in the wake of past school shootings.

The link between video games and aggressive behavior is a subject of debate among researchers, said James Ivory, a new media and communication technology expert at Virginia Tech. And some studies have claimed to show a link.

But experts have come to a broad consensus that video games don’t cause people to commit violent acts like school shootings.

"There is a relevant fallacy called the base rate fallacy wherein people attribute common activities, e.g., playing video games, to rarer events, e.g., mass shootings, even if the common activity is not tied to the rarer event," Ivory said in an email. "For example, most mass shooting perpetrators also wear shoes, but wearing shoes is not tied to mass shootings."

Fact check: Post falsely links antidepressant use to school shootings

A group of psychologists with the American Psychological Association released a 2017 statement that said there's scant evidence of "any causal or correlational connection between playing violent video games and actually committing violent activities."

Whitney DeCamp,  a sociology professor at Western Michigan University, said his research found that a properly nuanced analysis reveals no statistical connection.

"My own research has found a correlation, but it disappears after controlling for other factors," DeCamp said. "Other studies have sometimes reported finding a correlation, but sometimes fail to introduce controls that would properly examine that finding for potential spuriousness. ... We lack evidence supporting any effects from video games on violent behavior."

James Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, agreed that other factors must be taken into consideration when examining why people commit violent acts like school shootings.

"If a person already has a tendency toward violence, and they play violent video games, (that) doesn't necessarily mean that video game made them violent," Fox said. "It's a function of who you are. It doesn't create who you are." 

Research studies and data show no proof of link

Most research studies show no evidence of a causal link between video games and school shootings. This consensus becomes clear through meta-analysis studies, which combine findings from large numbers of studies that use different methodologies.

A 2008 meta-analysis  authored by Chris Ferguson , a psychology professor at Stetson University, found that existing scientific literature on violent video games and aggression demonstrated “no significant relationship between violent video game exposure and school shooting incidents."

Likewise, a  2014 time-series analysis  examined the associations among violent crime (particularly homicides and aggravated assaults), video game sales, internet keyword searches for violent video game guides and popular video game release dates. The analysis found that violent crime across the U.S. decreased at the same time video games were becoming more popular.

In addition, a 2019 meta-analysis found that violent video games do increase aggressive behavior but that these effects are almost always quite small. One of the co-authors, Maya Mathur, told The Nation's Health that "research on video games, as a whole, says almost nothing on video games and mass violence."  

Fact check: Baseless 'false flag' conspiracy theory on Nashville shooting circulates online

Data also shows that the rate of mass shooters who play video games is low.

A 2021 study Ferguson co-authored analyzed 169 male firearm mass homicide perpetrators and males of the same age who had not committed mass murders between 1992 and 2020. He found that mass homicide perpetrators played fewer violent video games than the control group. 

Other countries with a large number of video gamers also have far fewer school shootings than the U.S. For instance, China surpassed the U.S. in 2018 with video game revenue, according to data compiled by Newzoo and CNBC News.  But China had only one school shooting from January 2009 to May 2018, CNN reported

A 2012 Washington Post analysis that examined the world’s 10 largest video game markets found there was no statistical correlation between video game consumption and gun-related murders. Countries such as the Netherlands and South Korea, which have some of the highest video game spending per capita, were found to have the fewest gun-related murders.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

The New York Times, NBC News, the Washington Post and CNN have addressed similar versions of the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

• James Ivory, April 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• Chris Ferguson, April 10, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• James Fox, April 10, Phone interview with USA TODAY
• Whitney DeCamp, April 11, Email exchange with USA TODAY
• American Psychological Association, March 3, 2020,  APA Reaffirms Position on Violent Video Games and Violent Behavior
• American Psychological Association, October 2019,  APA TASK FORCE REPORT on Violent Video Games
• The Amplifier Magazine, accessed April 11,  News Media, Public Education and Public Policy Committee
• Secret Service and Department of Education, June 2004,  THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES
• Journal of Mass Research Violence, Nov. 28, 2021,  Exposure to Bullying, Childhood Trauma, and Violence in Video Games Among Perpetrators of Mass Homicides: A Brief Report
• Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, accessed April 12,  The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Link or Moral Panic?
• American Psychological Association, accessed April 12,  Violent Video Games and Real-World Violence: Rhetoric Versus Data
• Association for Physiological Science, June 12, 2019,  Finding Common Ground in Meta-Analysis “Wars” on Violent Video Games
• The Nation's Health, October 2019,  Video games and health: Sorting science from popular beliefs — Many believe games cause gun violence
• CNBC News, accessed April 13,  Video game industry revenue vs. violent gun deaths
• Washington Post, Dec. 17, 2012,  Ten-country comparison suggests there’s little or no link between video games and gun murders
• CNN, May 21, 2018,  The US has had 57 times as many school shootings as the other major industrialized nations combined
• NBC News, Aug. 5, 2019,  Fact check: Trump suggests video games to blame for mass shootings
• New York Times, Feb. 23, 2018,  Do Video Games Lead to Mass Shootings? Researchers Say No
• New York Times, Aug. 5, 2019,  Video Games Aren’t Why Shootings Happen. Politicians Still Blame Them.
• Washington Post, Aug. 9, 2019,  Video games don’t cause mass shootings. But gamer culture encourages hate.
• CNN, Aug. 5, 2019,  Fact check: Are violent video games connected to mass shootings?

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