According to a new study, smartphone games may be harmful to gamers who play to avoid negative emotions and boredom. The results of the study were published in the journal ‘Human Behavior Computer’. Researchers at the University of Waterloo found that those who are bored “escape players” who have difficulty interacting with the real-world environment and maintaining attention tend to “flow”, which is a deep and easy-to-focus state. Loss of awareness of time and space.
“We found that people who often feel extremely bored in their daily lives report that they will play games on their smartphones to avoid or alleviate this feeling of boredom,” the author and lead researcher of Cognitive Neurobiology at the University of Waterloo Dr. Chanel Larke said.
“The problem with this boring ‘solution’ is that whenever they are bored and have excessive gaming, they end up playing,” Larke added. “Although playing can achieve optimal excitement, focus, and alertness for players, and reduce monotony, the increased demand for players to escape from boredom may have negative consequences and lead to excessive playing,” Larche said. Learn from Professor Michael Dixon Professor Waterloo of Cognitive Neurology.
In the popular smartphone game “Candy Crush Saga”, Rush and Dixon have 60 players. The current game level is 77-3307, ranging from too easy to different levels of difficulty, which means that the balance between skill and challenge is very good. Balance, which is more difficult, and leads to more fluidity, excitement, less boredom, and more need to continue playing.
This is to determine whether players are willing to continue to strike a balance between challenge and skill to help a smooth game, rather than a simpler but less fluid game. Their results confirmed that people who played smartphone games like Candy Crush Saga to avoid boredom were more immersed in the game than those who were not ‘escape players’.
“Those who play escape games experience more smooth and positive effects than other gamers, and create a video game loop to improve depression,” Dixon said. Larke stated that these results may prompt game developers to consider embedding responsible gaming tools directly into their games. For example, for players prone to logout issues, it can be useful to have a time limit option that allows players to specify how long they want to play.
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