Time to garden You’ve suitably impressed the townsfolk and they’re ready to give you some land of your own. Go talk to the farmer to get yourself some seeds.
Time to garden You’ve suitably impressed the townsfolk and they’re ready to give you some land of your own. Go talk to the farmer to get yourself some seeds.
Click and hold on any plot to plant and miraculously grow a flower.
Click and hold on any plot to plant and miraculously grow a flower.
Video games aren't always considered something with the potential for good. In 2019, Gaming Disorder was listed in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases. It is “characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities.”
Such views sparked researchers like Hiroyuki Egami, assistant professor at Nihon University, to look more closely at the correlation and potential causation between video gaming and negative effects such as aggression. Some studies at the time suggested a link but Egami found that many of these were inconclusive about causation. Last year, Egami published a study addressing the causal effect of video gaming on mental well-being in Japan 2020–2022.
During the pandemic, supply chain disruptions and increased demand limited the availability of two major gaming consoles: the Nintendo Switch and the PlayStation 5. Japanese retailers implemented lotteries to assign the consoles to consumers, inadvertently creating a seemingly random distribution of opportunities for people to purchase them.
Egami's study found that owning a game console and increased gameplay reduced psychological distress and improved life satisfaction among participants. The study found that spending just one extra hour each day playing video games was associated with an increase in mental health and life satisfaction.
Other studies also point to a shift in perceptions of gaming. “As more research has emerged related to video games, we're beginning to recognize that they can actually offer a lot of benefits,” said Michael Wong, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences at McMaster University and former professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Wong surveyed 80 undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to uncover whether mindfulness meditation or “casual” gaming was better at reducing stress. The study published in 2021 measured the effectiveness of playing a casual game like Flower, developed by Thatgamecompany, against a 20-minute mindfulness meditation session in reducing stress.
“To our surprise, there really wasn't a difference between the two forms of interventions. For blood pressure and heart rate, there was no statistically significant difference between playing a video game and engaging in meditation,” Wong said.
Games are also used by therapists.
According to research from 2022 by Aarón Sújar, an assistant professor at Rey Juan Carlos University, video games are being investigated as an innovative method to manage Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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