With winter and coronavirus lockdowns walking hand in hand, it’s important to have some sort of connection to the outside world. Games have provided that critical connection by keeping us in touch with friends and family. And now, as usual, science has decided to chime in to tell us what we’d known all along.

Oxford University recently published a study that found playing video games caused a small but noticeably positive change in mental health for study participants. The study notes that it’s the first of its kind because it uses hard data from video game companies to compare against self-reported survey results.

Teaming up with EA and Nintendo, Oxford had 3,274 study participants play two games, Plants vs Zombies: Battle for Neighborville or Animal Crossing: New Horizons. After playing, they asked those participants to complete a survey that measured personal well-being, self-reported play, and motivational experiences. Then those same surveys were compared with play-time and actual game data recorded by EA and Nintendo.

“Our findings show video games aren’t necessarily bad for your health; there are other psychological factors which have a significant effect on a persons’ well-being," wrote Professor Andrew Przybylski, Director of Research at the Oxford Internet Institute and lead author of the study. “In fact, play can be an activity that relates positively to people’s mental health – and regulating video games could withhold those benefits from players.”

Some key takeaways from the study were the players must actually enjoy the game they’re playing to receive a benefit to their mental health. Also, players won’t experience that benefit if they’re already experiencing poor mental health, with Przybylski telling the BBC that “Animal Crossing by itself” won’t make you happy.

Additionally, a player’s subjective experience during gameplay was more important than the actual amount of time spent playing.

Przybylski also notes that the beneficial aspects of New Horizons and Battle for Neighborville might be largely due to the fact both are social, collaborative games. More research is needed, but It sounds like science is starting to think that gamers aren’t socially maladaptive basement-dwelling gremlins anymore.

Source: Oxford University, BBC