6 ms·

Games’ affordance of childlike wonder and reduced burnout risk in young adults

168 points by azalemeth 10mo ago

silexia 10mo ago
This is not science. Like most of what far left universities produce these days, researchers set out with an outcome they wanted and made it happen.
christophilus 10mo ago
I’m skeptical of most studies, these days, but I’ll gladly reference this one as a justification for slacking off.
- peacebeard 10mo ago
  Some studies are better than others, and headlines / secondary sources don’t do enough to comment on this, but looking the source and having an opinion about their methodology, sample size, etc. can help a lot.
sktrdie 10mo ago
What about Call of Duty?
- fwipsy 10mo ago
  For me at least, competitive shooters are addictive, put me in an overstimulated reward-driven mindset that seeps into every aspect of life, affecting attention span, enjoyment, mood, and sleep. If there's childlike wonder in there it's not worth it for me. Quit planetside 2 in high school after about 1000 hours.
  - wiseowise 10mo ago
    Preach. It might start innocent, but give it a couple of days and I turn into a maniac.
- Aldipower 10mo ago
  Nice play of words. :-)
jebarker 10mo ago
I just bought a Switch 2 having not really played games much for decades. I'm finding that occasional breaks for "mindless" gaming noticeably relaxes my always on, work obsessed brain. The challenge is overcoming the feeling that it's an unproductive use of time and I should be reading, coding, exercising etc. But in balance I think it's just the break my mind needs right now.
- fwipsy 10mo ago
  I do this too, but it bothers me a little bit to think that my mind needs to be doing something all the time in order to feel relaxed. Video games are fun but the ones I play are not really that restful; ditto web browsing. I've been exploring breathing exercises, mindfulness, journaling, just listening to music by itself more but it's tough not to just get bored with it. Maybe that means I need to do it more.
  - jebarker 10mo ago
    FWIW I've had a meditation practice for over a decade and do use things like box breathing and journaling too. But sometimes my brain just needs stimulation and this has never gone away. I've learned that the thing I need to avoid is engaging with my monkey mind in spiraling thoughts, so video games are ideal as they require enough attention to prevent me getting distracted but I can also zone out and just play.
- goalieca 10mo ago
  People can be snobby about reading to the point of being too judgmental. Don’t feel guilty about your free time. There isn’t a hierarchy of pastimes with one better than another.
  - dugidugout 10mo ago
    I hear this more and more as I age. This isn't what original comment was doing, but when discussing recent readings or hobbies with my friends or community I often must prod for the actual object of their pass-time or sit through a winded preface devaluing their enjoyment. It saddens me that people can so easily betray their own experiences.
dqv 10mo ago
Tangential. I spent a long time thinking that entertaining myself was a waste of time and that I should just focus on "productivity". This was dumb. Reading fiction, playing games, leisure, etc. is necessary. Not only as a way to relax, but also to be imaginative and creative, which are necessary components to being productive. For a long time, social media slop kind of filled the void of leisure, but didn't really feed into my imagination. It's wild how I can read through a few pages of a novel and spend the next hour just thinking about the scene coming into existence, the real-world references that play into the story, and the implications of the events that are unfolding. In that same time, had I been on social media, I would have seen like 100 short clips that barely feed the imagination. I really enjoy "wasting time" thinking about and reading stories or playing games or whatever else, it really adds dimension to my life. I know that wise people have probably brought this up before (like I'm pretty sure a YouTube video has been recommended to me with the title of "I am BEGGING you to read fiction", which I did not watch, but took as a sort of "please come back from your coma, we miss you" message), but it just didn't click for me until I really felt creatively empty.
putzdown 10mo ago
This is an area that could really use good research, but this study looks badly designed and completely dismissible. I hope it’s true that video game playing has some mental health benefits, and I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re not going to determine whether it does by asking a bunch of people how they feel about Mario and Yoshi.
lynguist 10mo ago
There's a certain culture that prefers "efficiency", punishes non-productivity, and every little slack, even enjoyment of life must be "earned". In that culture these video games that are pure playfulness (but it doesn't just have to be video games, it could be poetry, whatever, just something with no productivity!) are the antidote. I'm happy I wasn't born into this culture. (I've seen and heard absurd, almost comical examples of this from my colleagues, like justifying not replacing a black and white TV in the 1990s... From my point of view they're ascetics, but from their point of view they're normal.)
- wiseowise 10mo ago
  A “certain culture” is an euphemism for bad economy, I assume?
  - rightbyte 10mo ago
    When I was a kid the general setup seemed to be the poorer the kid the more toys and higher weekly allowance it had. To compensate I guess. Obviously not very poor but relatively poor.
    - mft_ 10mo ago
      Totally the opposite, from my recollection. Number and value of child’s toys/belongings correlated directly with parental income, with parental attitude as an independent variable. For example, my parents were probably at the lower-end-of-comfortable but definitely not wealthy, but I had less money spent on me as a result of their beliefs around raising a child, and politics more broadly.
  - sublinear 10mo ago
    It can also be argued that when a culture seeks escapism it's because things are bad. In other words, there's no correlation.
  - watwut 10mo ago
    No, because it existed when economy was good too. It has nothing to do with economy state. It is more of moral judgement thing, completely divorced from both needs and outcomes.
acbart 10mo ago
It took me a surprisingly long time to find the actual games: - Super Mario Bros Wonder - Yoshi’s Crafted World - Yoshi’s Woolly World So relatively modern games. I initially assumed that they were using the original Super Mario Bros game and Yoshi's Island - my millennial bias, I suppose. But I wonder if this result would replicate with a game like Yoshi's Island or Yoshi 64. Older graphics, in different ways. But I suspect that the fanciful aesthetic would still win out.
- bena 10mo ago
  Wonder for reducing burnout risk? I don't know, maybe it's because my experience with Wonder was unique, to a degree. My autistic stepson has the game. Loves Mario. Will gladly get into any game, whether it is an RPG like the Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi series, platformers like the core Mario games, or the action/adventure Luigi's Mansion. However there are parts and levels he knows he cannot do. He also loves schedules. Monday is the "free" day, but every other day of the week has a planned activity. He's gotten better at being flexible, but he still likes the regularity. And that's where I come in. I'm the "hard level" guy. And the last level of Mario Wonder, The Final-Final Test Badge Marathon, was just miserable. Eventually, I had to just tell him that if he wants to play another game, we'll just have to give this one up. The last section where you have to play blind is just too much. So we moved on to Super Mario 3D World. Eventually, I did beat Champion's Road, but once again, it was just a chore. I think the burnout reduction mostly comes from the ability to play in general. In my case, these games have become obligations for me.
- crims0n 10mo ago
  Yoshi’s Island still holds up, and I think it remains a contender for one of the best platformers of all time. Recently replayed with the little ones and they were completely captivated.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
vasco 10mo ago
> Over the course of 3 weeks, exploratory, in-depth interviews were conducted with 41 participants (women: n=19, 46.3%; men: n=21, 51.2%; preferred not to disclose sex: n=1, 2.4%; mean age 22.51, SD 1.52 years). All interviewees were full-time students (confirmed by their student IDs) and had experience playing a Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi game (screening questions by the RAs included the name of the specific Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi games respondents had played and which console they used to play the game, eg, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, or Nintendo Switch 2). Interviews were conducted in a university cafeteria and lasted between 25 and 40 minutes. All interviewees were reassured of the anonymity of their responses and were informed that their participation would help inform academic research. At the end of the interview, each interviewee was given a chance to ask any questions they may have had. Some tiktok videos have deeper research than this.
headmelted 10mo ago
The fact this study even exists is a sign of something having gone very wrong IMHO. The notion of tracking if time spent on anything helps “prevent burnout” speaks volumes to how we view ourselves as consumables. The whole culture we have emphasises trading working the best years of your life just so you can (maybe) rest for a little while at the end of your life when your health is failing, which has always been really sad to me.
- fwipsy 10mo ago
  I agree, but hard work is nothing new. Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it. I'm uncertain how to think about burnout in this context. Did they have burnout and were forced to work through it? Were they better at pacing themselves? Maybe the type of work (mental rather than physical labor) or circumstances (working for a corporation) today are more conducive to burnout?
  - jetrink 10mo ago
    > Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it. Recent anthropological and archaeological research is challenging the traditional view that ancient lives were "nasty, brutish, and short." Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day and frequently took time off for festivals or to travel long distances to visit friends and family. And unlike today, work usually had a more flexible rhythm where short periods of hard work were separated by long periods of light work and rest.
    - dugidugout 10mo ago
      Can you provide the specific research you are referring to?
      - Aurornis 10mo ago
        I don’t know what research they saw, but the claim was mainstreamed by the popular book “Sapiens”. The author romanticized past life and made claims that life was leisurely until agriculture came along and made us all miserable as we toiled working the soil. Before that we supposedly relaxed all day as our food was easy to catch and we didn’t have to build anything because we were always on the move. There are some very obvious problems with that statement that will be easily spotted by anyone who has ever done any hunting or camping.
Insanity 10mo ago
I’ll share this with my partner. But as I’ve told her before: “games aren’t meant to be relaxing to me, it’s to compete!” I do wonder how these results would translate to more competitive games like CS. FWIW, I used to game competitively (in tournaments) more than a decade ago. Now I _technically_ play just casually, such as “The Finals”. But I only play the ranked mode with friends who used to be in my competitive team. Some days when we play it’s just chatting and good fun (we’ve known eachother for almost 2 decades), but other days we get “in the zone” and it’s not truly relaxing.
- crims0n 10mo ago
  As I age, it gets harder to enjoy competitive games. I just can’t keep up with people who play 6 hours a day and are in their peak twitch-reflex years.
  - dugidugout 10mo ago
    I see this sentiment and rationalization a lot but I don't understand it. Age aside, presently, are you saying you cannot meet a threshold you would label competitive? Competitive games are almost always played on a spectrum? I would argue your placement in the spectrum should curate the ground for competition if the player base is large enough (and ladder system coherent). Now with my framing understood, how does age fit in? I can buy that as you age you have less time to put into a game and potentially weaker reflexes (I'm not going to pretend to know the science here), but this should simply inform your placement on the ladder? I don't think it has anything to do with "people who play 6 hours a day and are in their peak twitch-reflex years" unless you mean your enjoyment is derived from overcoming this archetype.
    - wiseowise 10mo ago
      Competitiveness implies desire to win. There’s no fun if you constantly lose, and you’ll always lose against a kid who spends half of their living day making sure they’re better than you in the game.
throwfaraway135 10mo ago
If someone was wondering if this is statistically significant after reading the first line in the method and seeing 41 interviews, then the answer is probably yes, as the final results are based on a study with 336 full-time university students. > The final sample consisted of 336 full-time university students (women: 19/41, 46.3%; men: 21/41, 51.2%; prefer not to disclose sex: 1/41, 2.4%; mean age 22.51, SD 1.52)."
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  > as the final results are based on a study with 336 full-time university students. The final results were from a survey, not a study where they trialed Super Mario games on students and followed their progress. Also did you notice that the numbers in your quote don’t even agree? In parentheses the numbers are out of 41, not 336. This is not a serious paper.
  - throwfaraway135 10mo ago
    > Also did you notice that the numbers in your quote don’t even agree? In parentheses the numbers are out of 41, not 336. I agree that it's at least sloppy. > The final results were from a survey, not a study where they trialed Super Mario games on students and followed their progress. afaik a study can consist of one single survey > This is not a serious paper. Maybe, maybe not, my only point was about the sample size which was surprising if you read only the top part.
    - gs17 10mo ago
      > afaik a study can consist of one single survey It definitely can (and they had interviews too), although there's a lot of limitations with their methodology they don't address in the paper.
- gs17 10mo ago
  It's "statistically significant", but it doesn't really say what the title says and they draw a lot of causal conclusions that don't really follow the data IMO. The main result is really that happiness and burnout risk were negatively correlated (what a surprise, people burning out aren't happy?), although the caveat is that's only shown in Mario-playing college students.
Aurornis 10mo ago
I wouldn’t put much weight into this paper. This is a self-reported survey paper. They gave people surveys with a lot of questions and then tried to find correlations in the data (aka p-hacking). Even the surveys had leading questions like “affordance of childlike wonder” from the game: > Second, quantitative data were collected in a cross-sectional survey (N=336) of players of Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi to examine the games’ affordance of childlike wonder, overall happiness in life, and burnout risk. There are even glaring numerical errors in the abstract that should have been caught by anyone doing any level of review or proofreading: > First, qualitative data were collected through 41 exploratory, in-depth interviews (women: n=19, 46.3%; men: n=21, 51.2%; prefer not to disclose sex: n=11, 2.4%; That n=11 is supposed to be n=1, if you didn’t catch it. It also doesn’t explain why the n=41 survey group separate from the 300+ survey group asked about burnout. So I know this will generate a lot of discussion about burnout, but this is not the kind of paper to draw conclusions from. Everything about it, from the self-reported survey format to the idea itself, looks like someone started with a highly specific idea (Super Mario reduces burnout) and wanted to p-hack their way to putting it in a paper.
- mrandish 10mo ago
  > This is a self-reported survey paper. Thank you for this post! The headline claim struck me as one that would be difficult to evidence with any scientific rigor. Reading the abstract furthered this feeling but I couldn't be bothered to read the methodology, so thanks for doing it. > Everything about it, from the self-reported survey format to the idea itself, looks like someone started with a highly specific idea (Super Mario reduces burnout) and wanted to p-hack their way to putting it in a paper. Indeed. Even the idea that individuals can reliably self-diagnose "burn-out" in an objective way is highly dubious.
cons0le 10mo ago
This seems like a pretty loosey goosey study. How do you realistically quantify someone's "overall happiness in life" and "burnout risk" into 1 number ? I'm not sure how they did the control group, but I would be curious about the difference between 15 minutes playing Mario, and just getting a 15 minute break. I think any significant time away from work/studying could reduce burnout risk
- gs17 10mo ago
  > How do you realistically quantify someone's "overall happiness in life" and "burnout risk" into 1 number ? There's existing survey methodologies for these, and then they added a Mario-specific set of questions (IMO these questions were poorly designed, they expected people to be able to accurately report how much Mario games specifically change their childlike wonder, which even if true, kind of changes the conclusion they should be able to make). > I'm not sure how they did the control group It's not that kind of study. They didn't sit half the participants down with Mario and half took a nap, it's interviews and surveys. Their only "control" was showing it didn't correlate with gender.
djaouen 10mo ago
From experience, my childhood hobby of playing video games, such as Final Fantasy VII, influenced my view of reading other, non-video-game material, such as novels, short stories, and non-fiction. I don't know how many fewer books I would have read in my life had I not played those games when I was younger!
pdpi 10mo ago
"Childlike wonder" is an interesting turn of phrase here, that reminds me of one specific game — Outer Wilds. The way I like to describe Outer Wilds is that you're exploring the star system in your grandma's back garden, escaping a blackhole just in time for dinner. Everything about the game seems designed to elicit that response. The in-world technology is absolute jank, with wooden spaceships and patched-over spacesuits. Both groups of aliens in the game (the Hearthians and the Nomai) are intensely curious and driven by wanderlust. The story's stakes are simultaneously enormous and none at all, like a child playing make-believe. Playing it genuinely gets me feeling like a child, and that's something truly special.
- gatkinso 10mo ago
  One of my favorites as well. A folk space exploration sim. I did find a few of the puzzles a bit too difficult though.
zenethian 10mo ago
Is anyone else really bothered by the title of this? Super Mario Bros is a specific game, but what are “Yoshi” games? Feels like the none of the researchers had ever played video games before.
- gs17 10mo ago
  There's a "Yoshi" series now, but they specifically mean Yoshi’s Crafted World and Yoshi’s Woolly World.
throwaway743 10mo ago
I'd assume Katamari has the same effect. Felt a sense of joy I haven't felt in a while, when playing the latest one after having not played a Katamari game since around 08.
kevinfiol 10mo ago
Might have just been nostalgia, but I've played video games since I was a child, and largely took a extended break from Nintendo titles when I became an almost-exclusive PC gamer in the late 2000s. I finally played Mario Odyssey for the first time last year, and I instantly felt like a kid in 1997 again, and my mood was elevated with excitement for playing this game -- it was clear a ton of love was poured into the level design and game mechanics. It was the best gaming experience I've had in my adult life.
- rightbyte 10mo ago
  > I finally played Mario Odyssey I have no words for how good that game is. It is both fresh and nostalgic at the same time. And the hat thing is done perfectly. Like, the more hats the bosses have the better they are, duh, of course. Dark(er) side of the moon gets really challanging for adults too. It would be so easy for Nintendo to just spam Mario games but they don't.
- loloquwowndueo 10mo ago
  Wait until you play Super Mario Wonder!
  - npodbielski 10mo ago
    I do not know... Oddysey felt better. Wonder is rushing you. Always. In odyssey you can just explore some city a bit and there is no pressure. No timer, no nagging. You can just sit on the bench.
    - loloquwowndueo 10mo ago
      Odyssey gives me motion sickness and headaches :(
      - npodbielski 10mo ago
        That is really sad mate. It is really great game. I hope you will be able enjoy it someday.
grugagag 10mo ago
I’ve been cooling off my brain after work on my way home on the bus by playing video games and it is very effective. Time flies and they move you in a completely different mental space. Initially I got Miyoo mini for my kid and installed a lot of Pico-8 games. Quickly I decided to get another one for myself and it’s been quite some therapy for the past year. By the way, I’m in my mid 40s and haven’t been playing games for a really long time, since the 80s or the 90s. I highly recommend Pico-8 games. I find the games very creative and novel and yet quite simple and to the point. I recently got into making a few myself, of course with the help of LLMs.
dartharva 10mo ago
Sounds like very hot selection bias - "people who like doing specific stuff to relax actually relax when doing specific stuff". Pick subjects who aren't used to video games and then let us see.
piperdob 9mo ago
Dennis from JMIR Publications here. Just wanted to jump in and confirm that this was indeed a typo (it should have been n=1). We've corrected the article and appreciate the sharp eyes here for catching it. We definitely agree that this should have been caught during the proofing stage and we apologize for the error.

168 points by azalemeth 10mo ago

This is not science. Like most of what far left universities produce these days, researchers set out with an outcome they wanted and made it happen.

christophilus 10mo ago

I’m skeptical of most studies, these days, but I’ll gladly reference this one as a justification for slacking off.

peacebeard 10mo ago
Some studies are better than others, and headlines / secondary sources don’t do enough to comment on this, but looking the source and having an opinion about their methodology, sample size, etc. can help a lot.

sktrdie 10mo ago

What about Call of Duty?

fwipsy 10mo ago
For me at least, competitive shooters are addictive, put me in an overstimulated reward-driven mindset that seeps into every aspect of life, affecting attention span, enjoyment, mood, and sleep. If there's childlike wonder in there it's not worth it for me. Quit planetside 2 in high school after about 1000 hours.
- wiseowise 10mo ago
  Preach. It might start innocent, but give it a couple of days and I turn into a maniac.
Aldipower 10mo ago
Nice play of words. :-)

jebarker 10mo ago

I just bought a Switch 2 having not really played games much for decades. I'm finding that occasional breaks for "mindless" gaming noticeably relaxes my always on, work obsessed brain. The challenge is overcoming the feeling that it's an unproductive use of time and I should be reading, coding, exercising etc. But in balance I think it's just the break my mind needs right now.

fwipsy 10mo ago
I do this too, but it bothers me a little bit to think that my mind needs to be doing something all the time in order to feel relaxed. Video games are fun but the ones I play are not really that restful; ditto web browsing. I've been exploring breathing exercises, mindfulness, journaling, just listening to music by itself more but it's tough not to just get bored with it. Maybe that means I need to do it more.
- jebarker 10mo ago
  FWIW I've had a meditation practice for over a decade and do use things like box breathing and journaling too. But sometimes my brain just needs stimulation and this has never gone away. I've learned that the thing I need to avoid is engaging with my monkey mind in spiraling thoughts, so video games are ideal as they require enough attention to prevent me getting distracted but I can also zone out and just play.
goalieca 10mo ago
People can be snobby about reading to the point of being too judgmental. Don’t feel guilty about your free time. There isn’t a hierarchy of pastimes with one better than another.
- dugidugout 10mo ago
  I hear this more and more as I age. This isn't what original comment was doing, but when discussing recent readings or hobbies with my friends or community I often must prod for the actual object of their pass-time or sit through a winded preface devaluing their enjoyment. It saddens me that people can so easily betray their own experiences.

dqv 10mo ago

Tangential. I spent a long time thinking that entertaining myself was a waste of time and that I should just focus on "productivity". This was dumb. Reading fiction, playing games, leisure, etc. is necessary. Not only as a way to relax, but also to be imaginative and creative, which are necessary components to being productive. For a long time, social media slop kind of filled the void of leisure, but didn't really feed into my imagination. It's wild how I can read through a few pages of a novel and spend the next hour just thinking about the scene coming into existence, the real-world references that play into the story, and the implications of the events that are unfolding. In that same time, had I been on social media, I would have seen like 100 short clips that barely feed the imagination. I really enjoy "wasting time" thinking about and reading stories or playing games or whatever else, it really adds dimension to my life. I know that wise people have probably brought this up before (like I'm pretty sure a YouTube video has been recommended to me with the title of "I am BEGGING you to read fiction", which I did not watch, but took as a sort of "please come back from your coma, we miss you" message), but it just didn't click for me until I really felt creatively empty.

putzdown 10mo ago

This is an area that could really use good research, but this study looks badly designed and completely dismissible. I hope it’s true that video game playing has some mental health benefits, and I wouldn’t be surprised. You’re not going to determine whether it does by asking a bunch of people how they feel about Mario and Yoshi.

lynguist 10mo ago

There's a certain culture that prefers "efficiency", punishes non-productivity, and every little slack, even enjoyment of life must be "earned". In that culture these video games that are pure playfulness (but it doesn't just have to be video games, it could be poetry, whatever, just something with no productivity!) are the antidote. I'm happy I wasn't born into this culture. (I've seen and heard absurd, almost comical examples of this from my colleagues, like justifying not replacing a black and white TV in the 1990s... From my point of view they're ascetics, but from their point of view they're normal.)

wiseowise 10mo ago
A “certain culture” is an euphemism for bad economy, I assume?
- rightbyte 10mo ago
  When I was a kid the general setup seemed to be the poorer the kid the more toys and higher weekly allowance it had. To compensate I guess. Obviously not very poor but relatively poor.
  - mft_ 10mo ago
    Totally the opposite, from my recollection. Number and value of child’s toys/belongings correlated directly with parental income, with parental attitude as an independent variable. For example, my parents were probably at the lower-end-of-comfortable but definitely not wealthy, but I had less money spent on me as a result of their beliefs around raising a child, and politics more broadly.
- sublinear 10mo ago
  It can also be argued that when a culture seeks escapism it's because things are bad. In other words, there's no correlation.
- watwut 10mo ago
  No, because it existed when economy was good too. It has nothing to do with economy state. It is more of moral judgement thing, completely divorced from both needs and outcomes.

acbart 10mo ago

It took me a surprisingly long time to find the actual games: - Super Mario Bros Wonder - Yoshi’s Crafted World - Yoshi’s Woolly World So relatively modern games. I initially assumed that they were using the original Super Mario Bros game and Yoshi's Island - my millennial bias, I suppose. But I wonder if this result would replicate with a game like Yoshi's Island or Yoshi 64. Older graphics, in different ways. But I suspect that the fanciful aesthetic would still win out.

bena 10mo ago
Wonder for reducing burnout risk? I don't know, maybe it's because my experience with Wonder was unique, to a degree. My autistic stepson has the game. Loves Mario. Will gladly get into any game, whether it is an RPG like the Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi series, platformers like the core Mario games, or the action/adventure Luigi's Mansion. However there are parts and levels he knows he cannot do. He also loves schedules. Monday is the "free" day, but every other day of the week has a planned activity. He's gotten better at being flexible, but he still likes the regularity. And that's where I come in. I'm the "hard level" guy. And the last level of Mario Wonder, The Final-Final Test Badge Marathon, was just miserable. Eventually, I had to just tell him that if he wants to play another game, we'll just have to give this one up. The last section where you have to play blind is just too much. So we moved on to Super Mario 3D World. Eventually, I did beat Champion's Road, but once again, it was just a chore. I think the burnout reduction mostly comes from the ability to play in general. In my case, these games have become obligations for me.
crims0n 10mo ago
Yoshi’s Island still holds up, and I think it remains a contender for one of the best platformers of all time. Recently replayed with the little ones and they were completely captivated.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

vasco 10mo ago

> Over the course of 3 weeks, exploratory, in-depth interviews were conducted with 41 participants (women: n=19, 46.3%; men: n=21, 51.2%; preferred not to disclose sex: n=1, 2.4%; mean age 22.51, SD 1.52 years). All interviewees were full-time students (confirmed by their student IDs) and had experience playing a Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi game (screening questions by the RAs included the name of the specific Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi games respondents had played and which console they used to play the game, eg, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, or Nintendo Switch 2). Interviews were conducted in a university cafeteria and lasted between 25 and 40 minutes. All interviewees were reassured of the anonymity of their responses and were informed that their participation would help inform academic research. At the end of the interview, each interviewee was given a chance to ask any questions they may have had. Some tiktok videos have deeper research than this.

headmelted 10mo ago

The fact this study even exists is a sign of something having gone very wrong IMHO. The notion of tracking if time spent on anything helps “prevent burnout” speaks volumes to how we view ourselves as consumables. The whole culture we have emphasises trading working the best years of your life just so you can (maybe) rest for a little while at the end of your life when your health is failing, which has always been really sad to me.

fwipsy 10mo ago
I agree, but hard work is nothing new. Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it. I'm uncertain how to think about burnout in this context. Did they have burnout and were forced to work through it? Were they better at pacing themselves? Maybe the type of work (mental rather than physical labor) or circumstances (working for a corporation) today are more conducive to burnout?
- jetrink 10mo ago
  > Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it. Recent anthropological and archaeological research is challenging the traditional view that ancient lives were "nasty, brutish, and short." Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day and frequently took time off for festivals or to travel long distances to visit friends and family. And unlike today, work usually had a more flexible rhythm where short periods of hard work were separated by long periods of light work and rest.
  - dugidugout 10mo ago
    Can you provide the specific research you are referring to?
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      I don’t know what research they saw, but the claim was mainstreamed by the popular book “Sapiens”. The author romanticized past life and made claims that life was leisurely until agriculture came along and made us all miserable as we toiled working the soil. Before that we supposedly relaxed all day as our food was easy to catch and we didn’t have to build anything because we were always on the move. There are some very obvious problems with that statement that will be easily spotted by anyone who has ever done any hunting or camping.

Insanity 10mo ago

I’ll share this with my partner. But as I’ve told her before: “games aren’t meant to be relaxing to me, it’s to compete!” I do wonder how these results would translate to more competitive games like CS. FWIW, I used to game competitively (in tournaments) more than a decade ago. Now I _technically_ play just casually, such as “The Finals”. But I only play the ranked mode with friends who used to be in my competitive team. Some days when we play it’s just chatting and good fun (we’ve known eachother for almost 2 decades), but other days we get “in the zone” and it’s not truly relaxing.

crims0n 10mo ago
As I age, it gets harder to enjoy competitive games. I just can’t keep up with people who play 6 hours a day and are in their peak twitch-reflex years.
- dugidugout 10mo ago
  I see this sentiment and rationalization a lot but I don't understand it. Age aside, presently, are you saying you cannot meet a threshold you would label competitive? Competitive games are almost always played on a spectrum? I would argue your placement in the spectrum should curate the ground for competition if the player base is large enough (and ladder system coherent). Now with my framing understood, how does age fit in? I can buy that as you age you have less time to put into a game and potentially weaker reflexes (I'm not going to pretend to know the science here), but this should simply inform your placement on the ladder? I don't think it has anything to do with "people who play 6 hours a day and are in their peak twitch-reflex years" unless you mean your enjoyment is derived from overcoming this archetype.
  - wiseowise 10mo ago
    Competitiveness implies desire to win. There’s no fun if you constantly lose, and you’ll always lose against a kid who spends half of their living day making sure they’re better than you in the game.

throwfaraway135 10mo ago

If someone was wondering if this is statistically significant after reading the first line in the method and seeing 41 interviews, then the answer is probably yes, as the final results are based on a study with 336 full-time university students. > The final sample consisted of 336 full-time university students (women: 19/41, 46.3%; men: 21/41, 51.2%; prefer not to disclose sex: 1/41, 2.4%; mean age 22.51, SD 1.52)."

Aurornis 10mo ago
> as the final results are based on a study with 336 full-time university students. The final results were from a survey, not a study where they trialed Super Mario games on students and followed their progress. Also did you notice that the numbers in your quote don’t even agree? In parentheses the numbers are out of 41, not 336. This is not a serious paper.
- throwfaraway135 10mo ago
  > Also did you notice that the numbers in your quote don’t even agree? In parentheses the numbers are out of 41, not 336. I agree that it's at least sloppy. > The final results were from a survey, not a study where they trialed Super Mario games on students and followed their progress. afaik a study can consist of one single survey > This is not a serious paper. Maybe, maybe not, my only point was about the sample size which was surprising if you read only the top part.
  - gs17 10mo ago
    > afaik a study can consist of one single survey It definitely can (and they had interviews too), although there's a lot of limitations with their methodology they don't address in the paper.
gs17 10mo ago
It's "statistically significant", but it doesn't really say what the title says and they draw a lot of causal conclusions that don't really follow the data IMO. The main result is really that happiness and burnout risk were negatively correlated (what a surprise, people burning out aren't happy?), although the caveat is that's only shown in Mario-playing college students.

Aurornis 10mo ago

I wouldn’t put much weight into this paper. This is a self-reported survey paper. They gave people surveys with a lot of questions and then tried to find correlations in the data (aka p-hacking). Even the surveys had leading questions like “affordance of childlike wonder” from the game: > Second, quantitative data were collected in a cross-sectional survey (N=336) of players of Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi to examine the games’ affordance of childlike wonder, overall happiness in life, and burnout risk. There are even glaring numerical errors in the abstract that should have been caught by anyone doing any level of review or proofreading: > First, qualitative data were collected through 41 exploratory, in-depth interviews (women: n=19, 46.3%; men: n=21, 51.2%; prefer not to disclose sex: n=11, 2.4%; That n=11 is supposed to be n=1, if you didn’t catch it. It also doesn’t explain why the n=41 survey group separate from the 300+ survey group asked about burnout. So I know this will generate a lot of discussion about burnout, but this is not the kind of paper to draw conclusions from. Everything about it, from the self-reported survey format to the idea itself, looks like someone started with a highly specific idea (Super Mario reduces burnout) and wanted to p-hack their way to putting it in a paper.

mrandish 10mo ago
> This is a self-reported survey paper. Thank you for this post! The headline claim struck me as one that would be difficult to evidence with any scientific rigor. Reading the abstract furthered this feeling but I couldn't be bothered to read the methodology, so thanks for doing it. > Everything about it, from the self-reported survey format to the idea itself, looks like someone started with a highly specific idea (Super Mario reduces burnout) and wanted to p-hack their way to putting it in a paper. Indeed. Even the idea that individuals can reliably self-diagnose "burn-out" in an objective way is highly dubious.

cons0le 10mo ago

This seems like a pretty loosey goosey study. How do you realistically quantify someone's "overall happiness in life" and "burnout risk" into 1 number ? I'm not sure how they did the control group, but I would be curious about the difference between 15 minutes playing Mario, and just getting a 15 minute break. I think any significant time away from work/studying could reduce burnout risk

gs17 10mo ago
> How do you realistically quantify someone's "overall happiness in life" and "burnout risk" into 1 number ? There's existing survey methodologies for these, and then they added a Mario-specific set of questions (IMO these questions were poorly designed, they expected people to be able to accurately report how much Mario games specifically change their childlike wonder, which even if true, kind of changes the conclusion they should be able to make). > I'm not sure how they did the control group It's not that kind of study. They didn't sit half the participants down with Mario and half took a nap, it's interviews and surveys. Their only "control" was showing it didn't correlate with gender.

djaouen 10mo ago

From experience, my childhood hobby of playing video games, such as Final Fantasy VII, influenced my view of reading other, non-video-game material, such as novels, short stories, and non-fiction. I don't know how many fewer books I would have read in my life had I not played those games when I was younger!

pdpi 10mo ago

"Childlike wonder" is an interesting turn of phrase here, that reminds me of one specific game — Outer Wilds. The way I like to describe Outer Wilds is that you're exploring the star system in your grandma's back garden, escaping a blackhole just in time for dinner. Everything about the game seems designed to elicit that response. The in-world technology is absolute jank, with wooden spaceships and patched-over spacesuits. Both groups of aliens in the game (the Hearthians and the Nomai) are intensely curious and driven by wanderlust. The story's stakes are simultaneously enormous and none at all, like a child playing make-believe. Playing it genuinely gets me feeling like a child, and that's something truly special.

gatkinso 10mo ago
One of my favorites as well. A folk space exploration sim. I did find a few of the puzzles a bit too difficult though.

zenethian 10mo ago

Is anyone else really bothered by the title of this? Super Mario Bros is a specific game, but what are “Yoshi” games? Feels like the none of the researchers had ever played video games before.

gs17 10mo ago
There's a "Yoshi" series now, but they specifically mean Yoshi’s Crafted World and Yoshi’s Woolly World.

throwaway743 10mo ago

I'd assume Katamari has the same effect. Felt a sense of joy I haven't felt in a while, when playing the latest one after having not played a Katamari game since around 08.

kevinfiol 10mo ago

Might have just been nostalgia, but I've played video games since I was a child, and largely took a extended break from Nintendo titles when I became an almost-exclusive PC gamer in the late 2000s. I finally played Mario Odyssey for the first time last year, and I instantly felt like a kid in 1997 again, and my mood was elevated with excitement for playing this game -- it was clear a ton of love was poured into the level design and game mechanics. It was the best gaming experience I've had in my adult life.

rightbyte 10mo ago
> I finally played Mario Odyssey I have no words for how good that game is. It is both fresh and nostalgic at the same time. And the hat thing is done perfectly. Like, the more hats the bosses have the better they are, duh, of course. Dark(er) side of the moon gets really challanging for adults too. It would be so easy for Nintendo to just spam Mario games but they don't.
loloquwowndueo 10mo ago
Wait until you play Super Mario Wonder!
- npodbielski 10mo ago
  I do not know... Oddysey felt better. Wonder is rushing you. Always. In odyssey you can just explore some city a bit and there is no pressure. No timer, no nagging. You can just sit on the bench.
  - loloquwowndueo 10mo ago
    Odyssey gives me motion sickness and headaches :(
    - npodbielski 10mo ago
      That is really sad mate. It is really great game. I hope you will be able enjoy it someday.

grugagag 10mo ago

I’ve been cooling off my brain after work on my way home on the bus by playing video games and it is very effective. Time flies and they move you in a completely different mental space. Initially I got Miyoo mini for my kid and installed a lot of Pico-8 games. Quickly I decided to get another one for myself and it’s been quite some therapy for the past year. By the way, I’m in my mid 40s and haven’t been playing games for a really long time, since the 80s or the 90s. I highly recommend Pico-8 games. I find the games very creative and novel and yet quite simple and to the point. I recently got into making a few myself, of course with the help of LLMs.

dartharva 10mo ago

Sounds like very hot selection bias - "people who like doing specific stuff to relax actually relax when doing specific stuff". Pick subjects who aren't used to video games and then let us see.

piperdob 9mo ago

Dennis from JMIR Publications here. Just wanted to jump in and confirm that this was indeed a typo (it should have been n=1). We've corrected the article and appreciate the sharp eyes here for catching it. We definitely agree that this should have been caught during the proofing stage and we apologize for the error.