The Relationship Between Lockdowns and Video Game Playtime: Multilevel Time-Series Analysis Using Massive-Scale Data Telemetry.

BACKGROUND: COVID-19 led governments worldwide to enact a variety of containment and closure policies. Substantial attention has been directed toward the idea that these public health measures may have unanticipated negative side effects. One proposed effect relates to video games. There is a nascent evidence base suggesting that individuals played video games for longer and in a more disordered manner during lockdowns and school closures specifically. These increases are commonly framed as a potential health concern in relation to disordered gaming. However, the evidence base regarding changes in gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic is based on self-report and, thus, is susceptible to bias. Therefore, it is unclear what the true consequences of lockdowns were for gaming behavior worldwide. OBJECTIVE: The primary objective of this study was to estimate whether any specific lockdown policy led to meaningful increases in the amount of time individuals spent playing video games. METHODS: Rather than relying on self-report, we used >251 billion hours of raw gameplay telemetry data from 184 separate countries to assess the behavioral correlates of COVID-19-related policy decisions. A multilevel model estimated the impact of varying enforcement levels of 8 containment and closure policies on the amount of time that individual users spent in-game. Similar models estimated the impact of policy on overall playtime and the number of users within a country. RESULTS: No lockdown policy can explain substantial variance in playtime per gamer. School closures were uniquely associated with meaningful increases in total playtime within a country (r2=0.048). However, this was associated with increases in the number of unique individuals playing games (r2=0.057) rather than increases in playtime per gamer (r2<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Previous work using self-report data has suggested that important increases in heavy gaming may occur during pandemics because of containment and closure ("lockdown") procedures. This study contrasts with the previous evidence base and finds no evidence of such a relationship. It suggests that significant further work is needed before increases in disordered or heavy gaming are considered when planning public health policies for pandemic preparedness.

Debate: Games-based collaboration as a driver for massive-scale mental health research.

Games have become a key part of the daily lives of many children and young people, irrespective of geographical location, age, gender or culture. Games form a gateway to these audiences - as well as tertiary groups like parents - which does not exist anywhere else. Additionally, behavioural telemetry from games forms an untapped and sizeable potential for mental health and well-being research. Working with the games industry gives mental health research and associated interventions a pathway for conducting research and working with communities at very large scales.

Cross-cultural patterns in mobile playtime: an analysis of 118 billion hours of human data.

Despite the prevalence of gaming as a human activity, the literature on playtime is uninformed by large-scale, high-quality data. This has led to an evidence-base in which the existence of specific cultural gaming cultures (e.g. exceptional levels of gaming in East Asian nations) are not well-supported by evidence. Here we address this evidence gap by conducting the world's first large-scale investigation of cross-cultural differences in mobile gaming via telemetry analysis. Our data cover 118 billion hours of playtime occurring in 214 countries and regions between October 2020 and October 2021. A cluster analysis establishes a data-driven set of cross-cultural groupings that describe differences in how the world plays mobile games. Despite contemporary arguments regarding Asian exceptionalism in terms of playtime, analysis shows that many East Asian countries (e.g., China) were not highly differentiated from most high-GDP Northern European nations across several measures of play. Instead, a range of previously unstudied and highly differentiated cross-cultural clusters emerged from the data and are presented here, showcasing the diversity of global gaming.

No evidence that Chinese playtime mandates reduced heavy gaming in one segment of the video games industry.

Governments around the world are considering regulatory measures to reduce young people's time spent on digital devices, particularly video games. This raises the question of whether proposed regulatory measures would be effective. Since the early 2000s, the Chinese government has been enacting regulations to directly restrict young people's playtime. In November 2019, it limited players aged under 18 to 1.5 hours of daily playtime and 3 hours on public holidays. Using telemetry data on over seven billion hours of playtime provided by a stakeholder from the video games industry, we found no credible evidence for overall reduction in the prevalence of heavy playtime following the implementation of regulations: individual accounts became 1.14 times more likely to play heavily in any given week (95% confidence interval 1.139-1.141). This falls below our preregistered smallest effect size of interest (2.0) and thus is not interpreted as a practically meaningful increase. Results remain robust across a variety of sensitivity analyses, including an analysis of more recent (2021) adjustments to playtime regulation. This casts doubt on the effectiveness of such state-controlled playtime mandates.

Mind the gap: Distributed practice enhances performance in a MOBA game.

Understanding how humans master complex skills has the potential for wide-reaching societal benefit. Research has shown that one important aspect of effective skill learning is the temporal distribution of practice episodes (i.e., distributed practice). Using a large observational sample of players (n = 162,417) drawn from a competitive and popular online game (League of Legends), we analysed the relationship between practice distribution and performance through time. We compared groups of players who exhibited different play schedules using data slicing and machine learning techniques, to show that players who cluster gameplay into shorter time frames ultimately achieve lower performance levels than those who space their games across longer time windows. Additionally, we found that the timing of intensive play periods does not affect final performance-it is the overall amount of spacing that matters. These results extend some of the key findings in the literature on practice and learning to an ecologically valid environment with huge n. We discuss our work in relation to recent studies that have examined practice effects using Big Data and suggest solutions for salient confounds.

Exploring the relationship between video game expertise and fluid intelligence.

Hundreds of millions of people play intellectually-demanding video games every day. What does individual performance on these games tell us about cognition? Here, we describe two studies that examine the potential link between intelligence and performance in one of the most popular video games genres in the world (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas: MOBAs). In the first study, we show that performance in the popular MOBA League of Legends' correlates with fluid intelligence as measured under controlled laboratory conditions. In the second study, we also show that the age profile of performance in the two most widely-played MOBAs (League of Legends and DOTA II) matches that of raw fluid intelligence. We discuss and extend previous videogame literature on intelligence and videogames and suggest that commercial video games can be useful as 'proxy' tests of cognitive performance at a global population level.

Game analytics for game user research, part 1: a workshop review and case study.

The emerging field of game user research (GUR) investigates interaction between players and games and the surrounding context of play. Game user researchers have explored methods from, for example, human-computer interaction, psychology, interaction design, media studies, and the social sciences. They've extended and modified these methods for different types of digital games, such as social games, casual games, and serious games. This article focuses on quantitative analytics of in-game behavioral user data and its emergent use by the GUR community. The article outlines open problems emerging from several GUR workshops. In addition, a case study of a current collaboration between researchers and a game company demonstrates game analytics' use and benefits.