scholarly journals Families Playing Animal Crossing Together: Coping With Video Games During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 155541202110561
Author(s):  
Katy E. Pearce ◽  
Jason C. Yip ◽  
Jin Ha Lee ◽  
Jesse J. Martinez ◽  
Travis W. Windleharth ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Family Coping ◽  
Communal Coping ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
Related Stress

The COVID-19 pandemic was stressful for everyone, particularly for families who had to supervise and support children, facilitate remote schooling, and manage work and home life. We consider how families coped with pandemic-related stress using the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Combining a family coping framework with theorizing about media as a coping tool, this interview study of 27 families (33 parents and 37 children) found that parents and children individual coped with pandemic-related stress with media. Parents engaged in protective buffering of their children with media, taking on individual responsibility to cope with a collective problem. Families engaged in communal coping, whereby media helped the family cope with a collective problem, taking on shared ownership and responsibility. We provide evidence for video games as coping tools, but with the novel consideration of family coping with media.

scholarly journals New Social Horizons: Anxiety, Isolation, and Animal Crossing During the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna E. Lewis ◽  
Mia Trojovsky ◽  
Molly M. Jameson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Simulation Game ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
Emotional Outcomes ◽  
Social Gaming ◽  
The Impact

Increased participation in activities has been associated with improved positive mental health outcomes. However, there is much debate regarding the net effects of video games on individuals. Typified as a socially isolating activity, many games inherently contain socialization within the environment with game-generated characters or other players. Coinciding with the time of the initial pandemic/quarantine period was the release of a popular socializing and life simulation game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons. We investigated whether participation in this game was related to emotional outcomes associated with pandemics (e.g., loneliness and anxiety). The relationship between deleterious mental health and social gaming, amid a time of enforced reduction in socializing, would allow us to isolate the impact of the introduction of a social video game on improving the quality of life for players of this game. Participants (n = 1053) were asked about their time spent playing video games via an online survey, their socialization in game play, loneliness, and anxiety. We predicted that participants with higher levels of social interaction within the game would report less loneliness and anxiety. Utilizing multiple linear regression analyses, the research found that increased gaming and related activities were predictive of higher anxiety and somewhat related to increased loneliness. However, increased visits to another island were associated with lower levels of loneliness. As such, players may be utilizing gaming as a coping mechanism for anxiety. This research may inform generalized research regarding the influence that social games may have on feelings of loneliness and anxiety.

Mathematics Detective: Talk Isn't Cheap

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 260-288
Author(s):  
Candide Walton ◽  
Tamela Hanebrink
Keyword(s):  
Video Game ◽  
Cell Phones ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Family

The Richardson family is shopping. Lacy has found the perfect dress for a dance, and Kyle has located a video game. However, they have a problem. Neither of them has any money, nor do they know exactly which store their parents are in. The solution? Cell phones for everyone. Currently, only the parents have cell phones. If every member of the Richardson family, a family of four, had cell phones, then the children could contact their parents. Later, the family decides that, in general, cell phones for all will be beneficial for parents and children.

scholarly journals Video Games & the Novel

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 150 (01) ◽  
pp. 178-187
Author(s):  
Eric Hayot
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Video Game ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Video Game Industry ◽  
World Today ◽  
Game Industry

In the last sixty years, the video game industry has grown from quite literally nothing to a behemoth larger than the film or television industries. This enormous change in the shape of cultural production has failed to make much of an impact on the study of culture more generally, partly because video games seem so much less culturally important than novels. No one has ever imagined the Great American Video Game. But video games have more in common with novels than you might think, and vice versa. Anyone trying to understand the combination of neoliberal individualism and righteous murderousness that characterizes our world today will do well to pay them some attention.

The transgenerational transmission of refugee trauma: family functioning and children’s psychosocial adjustment

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina Thorup Dalgaard ◽  
Edith Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Family Functioning ◽  
Role Reversal ◽  
Family Coping ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Transgenerational Transmission ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
The Family ◽  
Pile Up ◽  
Transmission Of Trauma ◽  
Transgenerational Transmission Of Trauma

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of family functioning in the transgenerational transmission of trauma in a sample of 30 refugee families with traumatized parents and children without a history of direct trauma exposure from the Middle East. Design/methodology/approach Based on qualitative analyses of interview material, families were evaluated using theoretically derived dimensions of family functioning and placed in descriptive categories according to family cohesion, family flexibility, family roles, family coping, stressor pile-up, and marital problems. The association between these descriptive categories of family functioning and the child’s mental health as measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was explored using point-biserial correlations, correlations, and multiple regression analyses. Findings In all, 22 percent of the variance in children’s SDQ scores could be predicted by whether or not the family experienced a pile-up of stressors and whether or not the family was characterized by role reversal between parents and children. Furthermore, a statically significant association was established between a total measure of adaptive family functioning and lower scores on the SDQ. Originality/value These findings suggest that the transgenerational transmission of trauma may be associated with family functioning and have implications for interventions at several levels.

Frustration and Violence in Mobile Video Games

2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-70
Author(s):  
Petr Květon ◽  
Martin Jelínek
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Self Determination Theory ◽  
Psychological Needs ◽  
Basic Psychological Needs ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Mobile Video ◽  
Violent Content ◽  
Before And After

Abstract. This study tests two competing hypotheses, one based on the general aggression model (GAM), the other on the self-determination theory (SDT). GAM suggests that the crucial factor in video games leading to increased aggressiveness is their violent content; SDT contends that gaming is associated with aggression because of the frustration of basic psychological needs. We used a 2×2 between-subject experimental design with a sample of 128 undergraduates. We assigned each participant randomly to one experimental condition defined by a particular video game, using four mobile video games differing in the degree of violence and in the level of their frustration-invoking gameplay. Aggressiveness was measured using the implicit association test (IAT), administered before and after the playing of a video game. We found no evidence of an association between implicit aggressiveness and violent content or frustrating gameplay.

SISTEM SOSIAL ALA NIKLASH LUHMAN DALAM NOVEL SEPERTIGA MALAM DI MANHATTAN KARYA ARUMI E

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Anton Wahyudi
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
System Approach ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Original Culture ◽  
The Family ◽  
Data Source ◽  
Social System Approach ◽  
Fictional Story

The novel Sepertiga Malam di Manhattan by Arumi E is very interesting to study. This novel is a novel about the struggle of a family to get happiness. This novel is the Arumi E's 27th newest novel. The struggle in this novel is to make the family happy, expecting for the baby. Before writing the novel, Arumi E did a research in the places written in the novel to achieve a very interesting fictional story and most of this story was taken from the traveling results so it was so interesting. The objective of this research is to describe (1) the Autopoetic System in the novel Sepertiga MalamdiManhattan by Arumi E. (2) The differentiation system in the Novel Sepertiga Malamdi Manhattan by Arumi E.The research method used is in the form of a descriptive qualitative method that uses a social system approach. The method used by the researcher is the dialectical method. The data source used in this research is the novel Sepertiga Malamdi Manhattan by Arumi E, published by Gramedia publisher in 2018. The data collection in this study uses the steps of reading the novel. To collect data, the researcher use any instrument.There are two results of the study: (1) The autopoetic system in the novel Sepertiga MalamdiManhattan by Arumi E. is concerning to some characters who have their own beliefs or rules in their lives who do not want to follow the rules of others, they are more confident in their own way to success and purpose of life. (2) The system of differentiation in the novel Sepertiga Malamdi Manhattan by Arumi E. is covering the handling of changes in the environment, the characters are able to adapt to the new environment, which has a different culture from the original culture. This shows evidence of the system autopoetic and differentiation in the novel Sepertiga MalamdiManhattan by Arumi E.

Buried Narratives: Exhuming the Mother's Story in Oliver Twist

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-266
Author(s):  
Michelle L. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Maternal Inheritance ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Poor Law ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
First Time ◽  
Critical Consideration

Initially, Oliver Twist (1839) might seem representative of the archetypal male social plot, following an orphan and finding him a place by discovering the father and settling the boy within his inheritance. But Agnes Fleming haunts this narrative, undoing its neat, linear transmission. This reconsideration of maternal inheritance and plot in the novel occurs against the backdrop of legal and social change. I extend the critical consideration of the novel's relationship to the New Poor Law by thinking about its reflection on the bastardy clauses. And here, of course, is where the mother enters. Under the bastardy clauses, the responsibility for economic maintenance of bastard children was, for the first time, legally assigned to the mother, relieving the father of any and all obligation. Oliver Twist manages to critique the bastardy clauses for their release of the father, while simultaneously embracing the placement of the mother at the head of the family line. Both Oliver and the novel thus suggest that it is the mother's story that matters, her name through which we find our own. And by containing both plots – that of the father and the mother – Oliver Twist reveals the violence implicit in traditional modes of inheritance in the novel and under the law.

Only problem gamblers spend less money when loot boxes are removed from a game: A before and after study of Heroes of the Storm

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Zendle
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Problem Gambling ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Real World ◽  
Complex Pattern ◽  
Problem Gamblers ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Gambling Severity ◽  
Reliable Correlation ◽  
Before And After Study

Loot boxes are items in video games that may be paid for with real-world money, but which contain randomised contents. There is a reliable correlation between loot box spending and problem gambling severity: The more money gamers spend on loot boxes, the more severe their problem gambling tends to be. However, it is unclear whether this link represents a case in which loot box spending causes problem gambling; a case in which the gambling-like nature of loot boxes cause problem gamblers to spend more money; or whether it simply represents a case in which there is a general dysregulation in in-game spending amongst problem gamblers, nonspecific to loot boxes.The multiplayer video game Heroes of the Storm recently removed loot boxes. In order to better understand links between loot boxes and problem gambling, we conducted an analysis of players of Heroes of the Storm (n=112) both before and after the removal of loot boxes.There were a complex pattern of results. In general, when loot boxes were removed from Heroes of the Storm, problem gamblers appeared to spend significantly less money in-game in contrast to other groups. These results suggest that the presence of loot boxes in a game may lead to problem gamblers spending more money in-game. It therefore seems possible that links between loot box spending and problem gambling are not due to a general dysregulation in in-game spending amongst problem gamblers, but rather are to do with specific features of loot boxes themselves.

Gambling-like video game practices: A cross-sectional study of links with problem gambling and disordered gaming

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Zendle
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Problem Gambling ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Video Gaming ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Streaming Services ◽  
Clinically Significant

A variety of practices have recently emerged which are related to both video games and gambling. Most prominent of these are loot boxes. However, a broad range of other activities have recently emerged which are also related to both gambling and video games: esports betting, real-money video gaming, token wagering, social casino play, and watching videos of both loot box opening and gambling on game streaming services like Twitch.Whilst a nascent body of research has established the robust existence of a relationship between loot box spending and both problem gambling and disordered gaming, little research exists which examines whether similar links may exist for the diverse practices outlined above. Furthermore, no research has thus far attempted to estimate the prevalence of these activities.A large-scale survey of a representative sample of UK adults (n=1081) was therefore conducted in order to investigate these issues. Engagement in all measured forms of gambling-like video game practices were significantly associated with both problem gambling and disordered gaming. An aggregate measure of engagement was associated with both these outcomes to a clinically significant degree (r=0.23 and r=0.43). Engagement in gambling-like video game practices appeared widespread, with a 95% confidence interval estimating that 16.3% – 20.9% of the population engaged in these activities at least once in the last year. Engagement in these practices was highly inter-correlated: Individuals who engaged in one practice were likely to engage in several more.Overall, these results suggest that the potential effects of the blurring of lines between video games and gambling should not primarily be understood to be due to the presence of loot boxes in video games. They suggest the existence of a convergent ecosystem of gambling-like video game practices, whose causal relationships with problem gambling and disordered gaming are currently unclear but must urgently be investigated.

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