Search Results

The field of game studies rests on how video game players use their relationships with their avatars to fulfill the goals of the game. From studies on the effects of violence in video games to examinations of serious games for entertainment and/or education, all areas presume a level of connection between player and the avatar they control. This relationship is first defined by the type of play style—that is, the approach the player takes when sitting down to play. Next is the avatar—the graphical representation of the player—that will differ drastically from game to game. Based on these two individuals, one actual the other simulated, a relationship of some sort is built. This relationship can be monadic, meaning the player fully identifies with the avatar to the point that they are the same being. In contrast, it could be dyadic, in which a separation exists between player and avatar more akin to a parasocial relationship (PSR). Further, some scholars have suggested that the relationship between player and avatar exists on a continuum known as player-avatar relationships. Concepts like presence and empathy can be used to predict the strength of the relationship between player and avatar. This bond is incredibly important and can be used to predict both enjoyment of the game and cultivate story-consistent attitudes. Future research should examine more closely the nature of PSRs between avatar and player, as this context is relatively unexplored.

Competition and cooperation are both essential to human evolution and social interactions. Humans naturally compete with each other over resources, yet humans also evolved to engage in cooperation to enhance survivability. Competition and cooperation as complex social interactions can be observed in many contexts. Video games are a vivid illustration of how people compete, cooperate, or compete and cooperate at the same time with each other. The history of video games reflects how people are naturally inclined to build environments and construct rules to facilitate competition. Meanwhile, video game play also demonstrates how people are drawn to cooperation with each other whenever the need arises. Competition and cooperation have been examined and discussed in many fields of study. Social interdependence theory provides a clear theoretical framework for understanding competitive or cooperative situations. Competition in video game settings can be seen as a range of negative interdependence between players, while cooperation is a range of positive interdependence. With video game settings becoming more complex and connecting more players virtually, games that facilitate both competition and cooperation between teams of players emerged and became prevalent. Research has previously demonstrated that cooperation in video games tends to result in increased positive outcomes for players compared to competition. However, in games where competition and cooperation between human players coexist, newly observed phenomena, namely toxic behaviors and antisocial interactions, contradict previous findings. It is evident that we still have a lot to learn about human competition and cooperation in video games. With video game technologies improving and diversifying rapidly, more research is needed to understand players’ psychological processes and behaviors in video game settings.

Understanding of esport from a communicative perspective is offered, covering the history, expansion, and operationalization of esport, while highlighting five main areas to bolster the understanding of communication-based esport scholarship. First, theories that are often used for explaining the phenomenon of esport are explored. This section gives particular deference to uses and gratifications approaches as the most-often adopted theoretical lens for investigations in the area, while also listing parasocial interaction as a common secondary focus. Other theories include the theory of reasoned action, self-determination theory, entertainment theory, and media dependency. Second, motivations for esport consumption are advanced, showing that as many as 30 (and likely more) could at least conceivably be part of the equation for the appeals of esport consumption. Third, the sociocultural elements of esport participation are extrapolated upon, particularly with an eye to disparities in participation based on biological sex, race or ethnicity, nationality, and elements of the digital divide. Fourth, formal measurements of the motives for esport media consumption are offered, highlighting areas of overlap and deviation in equal measure. Finally, the Motivation Scale for esport Spectatorship Consumption. Along with consumption measures, 13 factors are advanced, each with a trio of Likert-based statement for measurement. More specifically, these factors include (alphabetically): (a) aggressive behaviors, (b) communication, (c) escapism, (d) family gathering, (e) friend gathering, (f) information load, (g) information supremacy, (h) knowledge acquisition, (i) personal education, (j) skillful performance, (k) support, (l) vicarious achievement, and (m) wholesome environment. Collectively, these five areas summarize the current state of esport scholarship in the communication discipline while signaling various trajectories for further understanding.

“Flow” originated in the field of positive psychology and describes an optimal psychological state obtained when skilled individuals face challenges that leave them creatively stimulated, attentionally immersed, and flourishing. It was introduced into the communication literature at the turn of the 21st century, when media researchers began to revisit enduring questions surrounding media use, selection, and behavior. At the time, the established uses and gratifications (U&G) framework offered limited explanatory power to address newer questions arising from the emergence of interactive media such as the proliferation of video game consoles and advent of early social media. Flow has since become increasingly adopted within the field of media research as an alternate approach that addresses many of the criticisms of the U&G framework. Flow is characterized by a single key antecedent—that participants engage in an activity that maintains strict balance between task challenge and user skill. Video games in particular offer the ideal vessel for flow because they most easily fulfill the required challenge–skill balance due to their interactive and adaptable nature. Attempts to advance the development of the flow construct have faced challenges stemming from conceptual ambiguity and operational inconsistency, resulting in findings that are difficult to consolidate across studies. Despite these contentions, nascent research has been largely focused on identifying the correlates and predictors used to measure flow across new behavioral, psychophysiological, and neurological avenues. The development of more robust measures of flow will allow researchers to resolve lingering conceptual ambiguities and answer new and emerging questions, such as the length, depth, and stability of flow episodes and the role of flow in promoting problematic gaming behavior and behavioral addictions.

Since the 2010s, the live streaming—live online video broadcast—of digital gaming has emerged as a significant Internet phenomenon. Millions of people stream their digital gaming for leisure, profit, or some combination, in the process often accumulating large communities of fans and followers who enjoy their streamed content, or simply broadcasting to small but often very dedicated handfuls of viewers. Game live streaming is also plagued by harassment and toxicity, but nevertheless continues to have a significant influence on gaming by generating famous and noteworthy moments within wider gaming culture. Game live streaming is far from a niche practice, and rather one with interest and applicability to a range of media studies, communication studies, game studies, and Internet research agendas.

The study of addictive media use has a rather long tradition in media effects research and constitutes an interdisciplinary field that brings together scholars from communication science, psychology, psychiatry, and medicine. While older works focused on radio, film, or television addiction, newer studies have often examined the excessive use of interactive digital media and its consequences. Since the introduction of affordable home computer systems in the 1980s and 1990s, especially the pathological use of digital games (games addiction) has been discussed and investigated intensively. However, early research on the topic suffered from considerable methodological limitations, which made it difficult to assess the spread of the problem objectively. These limitations notwithstanding, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) decided to include the addictive use of digital games (Internet gaming disorder) as a “condition for further study” in its diagnostical manual, the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition), in 2013. A few years later, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially acknowledged addictive game use as a diagnosable mental condition (gaming disorder) by listing it in the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11). Some scholars viewed the decisions of the APA and the WHO with skepticism, arguing that healthy players may be stigmatized, while others greeted them as important prerequisites to facilitate appropriate therapies. Despite the question of whether the inclusion of disordered game use in the manuals of the APA and the WHO has greater advantages than disadvantages, it definitely triggered a research boom. New scales testing the APA and the WHO criteria were developed and applied in international studies. Representative studies were conducted that indicated that at least a small percentage of players seemed to show playing patterns that indeed could be considered problematic. Further, the correlates of gaming disorder have been examined extensively, showing that the addictive use of digital games is associated with particular demographics, motivations, and personality aspects as well as with other diverse impairments, such as physical and psychological health issues and problems in the social and working lives of affected players. However, the debate about the accuracy of the definitions and diagnostic criteria postulated by the APA and the WHO has not ended, and more high-quality research is needed to further improve the understanding of the causes, consequences, and specifics of gaming disorder. In addition, new aspects and innovations, such as micropayments, loot boxes, and highly immersive technologies such as virtual reality or augmented reality systems, may expose gamers to new risks that future debates and research need to consider.

Ehealth, also known as E-health, is a relatively new area of health communication inquiry that examines the development, implementation, and application of a broad range of evolving health information technologies (HITs) in modern society to disseminate health information, deliver health care, and promote public health. Ehealth applications include (a) the widespread development of specialized health information websites (often hosted by government agencies, health care systems, corporations, professional societies, health advocacy organizations, and other for-profit and nonprofit organizations); (b) the widespread use of electronic health record (EHR) systems designed to preserve and disseminate health information for health care providers, administrators, and consumers; (c) an array of mobile health education and support applications that have often been developed for use with smartphones; (d) mobile health behavior monitoring, tracking, and alerting equipment (such as wearable devices and systems imbedded in vehicles, clothing, and sporting equipment); (e) interactive telemedicine systems for collecting health data and delivering health care services remotely; (f) interactive adaptive tailored health information systems to support health education, motivate health behaviors, and to inform health decision making; (g) online social support groups for health care consumers, caregivers, and providers; (h) health promotion focused digital games to engage consumers in health education and train both providers and consumers about health promoting procedures; (i) dedicated computer portals that can deliver a variety of digital health information tools and functions to consumers, caregivers, and providers; and (j) interactive and adaptive virtual human agent systems that can gather and provide relevant health information, virtual reality programs that can simulate health environments for training and therapeutic purposes, and an ever-increasing number of digital applications (apps) for addressing a range of health conditions and activities. As information technology evolves, new ehealth applications and programs are being developed and introduced to provide a wide range of powerful ehealth systems to assist with health care and health promotion. Ehealth technologies have been found by many researchers, practitioners, and consumers to hold tremendous promise for enhancing the delivery of health care and promotion of health, ultimately improving health outcomes. Many popularly adopted ehealth applications (such as health websites, health care portals, decision support systems, and wearable health information devices) are transforming the modern health care system by supplementing and extending traditional channels for health communication. The use of new ehealth applications enables the broad dissemination of relevant health information that can be personalized to the unique communication orientations, backgrounds, and information needs of individuals. New ehealth communication channels can provide health care consumers and providers with the relevant health information that they need to make informed health care decisions. These ehealth communication channels can provide this information to people exactly when and where they need it, which is especially important for addressing fast-moving and dangerous health threats. Yet, with all the promise of ehealth communication, there is still a tremendous amount of work to be done to make the wide array of new ehealth applications as useful as possible for promoting health with different audiences. This article describes the current state of knowledge about the development and use of HITs, as well as about strategies for improving ehealth communication applications to enhance the delivery of health care and the promotion of public health.

Due to the massive engagement with video games worldwide in innumerable forms and iterations, researchers have sought to understand the impact playing video games might have on the human brain and behavior. Although research on video games resides in a vast array of disciplines, including social, developmental, clinical, and educational psychology, this work focuses on research specifically in the cognitive sphere. From early research providing sound evidence for the positive impacts of action games on perceptual cognitive skills, to recent work refining methodologies for differentiating the effects of a wide range of embedded mechanics within broader game genres, the field has addressed a number of increasingly complex and critical questions. Research in the field has explored the effects of many game genres’ unique mechanics and in-game goals. Specifically, studies have found that action games positively impact perceptual skills as well as higher-order attentional control and executive function skills, while game genres that utilize action-oriented mechanics including Action-Role Playing Games and Real Time Strategy games also induce similar effects, if to a lesser extent. These results have been observed both through correlational studies, where player status is an existing characteristic of participants, and through intervention studies, where novice participants are trained on a specific game to establish causality between game play and cognitive performance. Although less research has been dedicated to the effects of puzzle games, playing such games has been found to impact higher cognitive skills such as problem-solving and fluid intelligence. Building upon this body of work, future research should explore the cognitive impacts of a more diverse set of game types, in-game experiences, and cognitive constructs as well as the mechanisms through which they are impacted. This should include work dedicated to the effects of puzzle and mini games, and the impact of games on higher cognitive skills including planning, problem-solving, and fluid intelligence, where relatively little research has been dedicated in the past. Further, research should explore the differences in training outcomes from games, between immediate transfer of skills from training to test and the enhancement of the meta-skill of “learning to learn.” Together, such work will allow game play to continue to evolve from pure entertainment to a force for good.

Video game difficulty relates to several other key concepts in the study of games. Defined here as the player perception of the barriers that stand in the way of completing game tasks, difficulty is a perceptual variable that reflects both designed features and unintentional barriers as well as player skill. Employing this definition can help better elucidate difficulty as a player-focused experience that varies between players, whereas other terms, including challenge and task, can be used to describe design features. Difficulty is related to other concepts, such as demands, flow, and competency, and empirical research has not always effectively differentiated these ideas. Demands represent player understanding of intended challenges. They may be understood differently by different players but are not defined in terms of player mastery. Flow includes a central idea of skill–challenge balance but is also suggested to involve other experiences. Competency may have a non-linear relationship with difficulty, but further research is needed. Measurement of difficulty is still developing, and existing scales that reflect other concepts need further modification or replacement to directly capture difficulty as defined here. Scholarship shows that difficulty is influenced by game features, contextual factors, and individual differences. Aspects such as the complexity of tasks, pace of play, or precision of necessary actions can all amplify the experience of difficulty, as can the consequences for failure. Unusual or unfamiliar controls can amplify difficulty, as can social pressures. Prior research shows that difficulty and challenge influence psychological responses, learning, enjoyment, and other outcomes. Optimal difficulty should involve a moderate level of the variable, but evidence is mixed about where that optimal state exists and often suggests a simple, negative relationship between difficulty and positive experiences. Some advocates have suggested that games encourage players to embrace difficulty in education and other tasks, potentially increasing learning, but evidence is mixed. Specific traits that would make players more tolerant of difficulty remain to be identified. Improved standardization in vocabulary and study design when studying difficulty would be fruitful.

Research on meaningful or eudaimonic gaming experiences explores players’ profound responses to video games. It rests on the observation that video games have ‘grown up’ in the 2000s and 2010s. While the medium traditionally aimed at providing fun, modern games increasingly afford meaningful experiences, for example by addressing serious topics (e.g., loss). Drawing on philosophical and psychological well-being research, these meaningful experiences are often termed “eudaimonic.” Beyond this shared categorization, however, no consensual definition of eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences has yet been developed. Instead, various competing and partially overlapping conceptualizations exist in the literature, including (a) appreciation, (b) the covariation of meaningfulness, being emotionally moved or challenged, and self-reflection, (c) deep social connectedness, and (d) specific emotional responses (e.g., nostalgia, awe). The formation of eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences has mostly been attributed to game characteristics, including (1) game mechanics that allow rare performances or promote reflection by disrupting players’ gameplay expectations; (2) narratives that address emotionally challenging topics, feature moral dilemmas, or facilitate deep social bonds with game characters; (3) multiplayer features that enable cooperative interactions with close co-players; and (4) game aesthetics that facilitate awe or aesthetic contemplation. In contrast, little is known about how player characteristics affect the formation of eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences. Similarly, research on the effects of these experiences is sparse. However, initial studies suggest that eudaimonic/meaningful experiences may benefit players beyond gaming by increasing their well-being or promoting pro-social behavior. Additionally, eudaimonic/meaningful gaming experiences appear to have a motivational appeal, as preliminary studies suggest that seeking such experiences can motivate playing games in general and specific titles in particular. Overall, this burgeoning line of research is still in its infancy but has already provided valuable insights into the quality and formation of eudaimonic/meaningful experiences in interactive media and the attraction and positive effects of video games.

As a nascent form of screen culture, video games provide a challenging new lens to think about emerging media. Because video games do not abide by traditional narrative structure and because many different kinds of media objects fall under the purview of video games, they provide particular complications for researchers. In turn, within video game studies, which has been a growing field since the early 2000s, researchers often focus on a specific approach to understanding video games: studying the industry, studying audiences, or studying games as texts. Additionally, many researchers have found it useful to consider “assemblage”-type approaches that look holistically at several aspects of a video game object in order to understand the game from a broader context.

Entertainment is fun, and fun is an emotion. What fun is as an emotion, and how it depends on features of entertainment messages and on other emotions, needs to be understood if we want to explain the appeal of entertainment. Entertainment messages such as movies, stories, drama, games, and sports spectacles can move us in a great variety of ways. But characteristic for the use of all genres is a remarkable, intense focus on interacting with the entertainment message and the virtual world it stages. Gamers in action or listeners of radio drama tend to persist in using the message, apparently blind and deaf to any distraction. Persistence is emotion driven. Intrinsic pleasure in what is a playful activity drives this passionate persistence. Enjoyment, interest, or excitement and absorption are the emotions that make entertainees go for more fun in the ongoing use of an entertainment message. In the use of an entertainment message, these go-emotions complement emotional responses to what happens in the world staged by the message. Horror incites fear and disgust, while serious drama elicits sadness and bittersweet feelings. In our conception, go and complementary emotions are immediate effects of the use of entertainment content: I feel excitement and apprehension now, while I am watching this thriller. Models of distal effects of media entertainment, such as ones on mood, behavior, beliefs, attitudes, and preferences require a proper understanding of immediate emotional responses to concrete messages. The effects of entertainment are only incidental; the emphasis is on immediate emotional experiences in the use of entertainment messages. Immediate emotional responses can be understood and predicted from an analysis of entertainment messages. Entertainment comes in messages with a characteristic temporal structure. Entertainment emotions develop across the presentation time of the message. Their development can be captured and understood in models of a message’s emotion structure. The emotion structure of a message represents the dynamics of go and complementary emotions across consecutive events, such as story episodes or drama scenes, and within these. Research into the uses and effects of media entertainment has a long tradition. Immediate emotional responses to mediated entertainment messages have been theorized and researched since the seminal work of Dolf Zillmann in the 1970s. The state of the art in research on the entertainment emotions needs to be discussed—starting with a general model of these, and elaborating it for selected entertainment genres.