Most of my research is in Chinese religions, and I find it fascinating that popular video games ' like many popular films before them ' draw from the mythologies, cosmologies, unseen powers and heroic narratives found across the world's religious traditions. Recent examples such as 'Black Myth: Wukong' and 'Raji: an Ancient Epic' draw explicitly from mythologies and religious narratives of China and India, respectively, putting the player in direct contest against pantheons of gods. Meanwhile, games such as 'Sid Meier's CIV VI,' where players develop an historical civilization from the Stone Age to Space Age in a quest for global domination, explicitly utilize religion as ways to develop and conquer the world. At the same time, the interactive experience of a video game makes it an especially interesting place to study religion. When your character uses magic, interacts with powerful deities, or even achieves godlike status themselves, the player also shares such experiences on some level as well. Sometimes, viewers' experiences blur the lines between 'real life' and on-screen....
When Representative Al Green of Texas started shouting and waving his cane around during Donald Trump's address to Congress last month, pundits described the Democrat as causing a disruption, pulling a stunt, or peacefully protesting. In the wilds of online alternative media, another term was being used: malding. Mald is a blend of mad and bald. It's video-gamer slang for getting so angry after suffering a loss that you pull your hair out. I learned the word by watching Twitch, the streaming platform that is famous for turning video games into a spectator sport'and that has, of late, become an important forum for political commentary. One of the most popular Twitch streamers right now is a 35-year-old World of Warcraft expert who goes by the name Asmongold and primarily streams under the handle zackrawrr. On the day after Trump's congressional address, Asmongold kicked off his stream by telling his viewers he was excited to finish playing the new game Monster Hunter Wilds'and to sort through the fallout from Trump's speech....
In the final episode of Season 1 of The Last of Us, the most emotionally wrenching zombie-apocalypse TV show ever made, a loner named Joel stalks through a hospital, his face as emotionless as the Terminator's, killing everyone in his way. He is trying to save a young woman named Ellie, who holds the secret to curing the zombie plague, but to make that antidote, she has to die, and Joel would rather let his species go extinct than lose her. I recently asked the actor who plays Joel, Pedro Pascal, how he found a way to justify his character's rampage. He responded: 'I understand why he did it, but I can't justify it.' The Last of Us is based on a video game of the same name, and the second season of the series premieres this week. Before The Last of Us, I had never been a serious gamer, for the same reason I don't do cocaine: I'm an ADHD-addled depressive with escape fantasies, and if I tried it, I might never come back. So, outside of Mario Kart races with my kids, I abstained. But on one of the uncountable empty days of the early coronavirus pandemic, I put down $300 to buy a Playstation 4, which came prepackaged with The Last of Us. The game booted up and showed me an open window, its curtain blowing in a light breeze. I was told to 'Press Any Button.' I did....
The research ' which was done from December 2020 to March 2022 ' found that even just owning a game console increased life satisfaction and reduced psychological distress. The results were published today in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings are a first step towards demonstrating a causal link between gaming and mental-health benefits, says Andrew Przybylski, a psychologist who studies how video games influence players' mental health at the University of Oxford, UK. 'The study provides a worked example that games researchers all around the world should follow closely,' he says. But he adds that conducting the experiment during the pandemic could have amplified the mental-health benefits of gaming because people's mental health was generally poorer at that time and there were fewer opportunities to engage in other activities. The effect on well-being will need to be tested outside that situation, he says. Although studies have explored the effects of gaming on addiction, well-being, cognitive function and aggression, the results have been mixed2,3. Most of this research has relied on observational data, which cannot be used to tease apart cause and effect, says study co-author Hiroyuki Egami, a behavioural scientist at Nihon University in Tokyo. Many video-gaming studies are also done in controlled laboratory settings, making it difficult to assess the mental-health effects of gaming in daily life, adds Egami....
