Hello, my name is Erica Kleinman I'm a Ph.D. student in computational media
at the University of California Santa Cruz studying under Dr. Magy Seif El-Nasr and I'm
here to present a paper we worked on with Sarah Chojnacki at Northeastern University
on how people used games to cope with quarantine.
So, I doubt I need to remind anybody but due to
COVID 19 we've been living in various states of quarantine for about a year
and this has led to surges in mental health issues but has also led to a surge in video gameplay.
And a great deal of existing work has shown that games can help people cope with unpleasant or
stressful situations but for obvious reasons, this has never been explored in a quarantine context.
So that led us to our research question which was:
How have people used games to cope with the COVID 19 quarantine?
To answer this question we chose a two-step qualitative methodology.
In the first step, we conducted a thematic analysis of approximately 2000 Twitter posts.
This resulted in 12 themes that were then used to author a 12 question open answer survey.
This survey was distributed on Facebook and it received 130 responses.
We performed a thematic analysis of these responses and the result
was 15 themes organized into four categories.
The first category contains five themes related to
how people used games to maintain mental well-being, which are listed on the slide.
The italicized themes or those that we found were not present or only partially present in
previous work and you can see an example quote that this category applies to on the right
where this participant speaks about how they were using games to handle
their anxiety and depression which were worse because of the quarantine.
Some of the interesting findings in this theme category include people
feeling a connection through games that allowed them to stave off loneliness
not only because they played with other people but also because they felt a strong
interpersonal connection with non-player characters even in single-player games.
The second category contains five themes related to how people used games to connect with others.
Again the italicized theme is one that was not entirely present in previous
work and on the right we have an example quote from this category where the participant talks
about using games to feel like they're still a part of their brother and sister's lives
even if they can't be there in person.
Some interesting findings in this category were the importance that participants placed on using
games to remain a part of loved ones lives as illustrated by the example quote but also that
a great deal of people also discussed using games to connect with people who were not necessarily
family or close friends, such as co-workers and classmates, just to feel a connection with them.
We also found that some participants who had picked up or increased their
gaming during quarantine had turned to social media to find people to
play with since they were not part of an established group already.
The third category contains three themes related to how people used games to substitute reality
all of which we did not see in previous work.
On the right is an example where the participant discusses how they built their summer camp
in Animal Crossing since they couldn't be there in person because of the quarantine.
So this category is interesting because there is a history of events and recreations being
done in-game, most notably funerals are held in MMOs when a known player passes away.
But what is different is that all of these themes emerged from a prominent response pattern
indicating that these substitutions were happening not because of any kind
of established in-game community, which often informed the previous examples of such events,
but because it was impossible to access or realize real-world versions of any of this.
The final category contains two themes, which are related to how people used quarantine as
an opportunity to create games, both in the sense that they were learning game
design and also in the sense that they were gamifying everyday activities like chores.
On the right is an example where the participant discusses using their extra
free time to learn how to make games and these themes are a bit different
from the rest as they're not strictly about how people are using games but it
was interesting to see that people were using quarantine as an opportunity to create games.
We note several contributions and implications of this work.
First, the study confirms that the findings of previous work persist
even in a context of something as extreme as a quarantine.
Second, we note the discovery of new behaviors such as people using
games as a surrogate or substitute for reality
that we believe may be unique to the extreme isolation brought on by quarantine.
Third, we argue that this presents a foundation for understanding the impact of games on
isolation-related stress which paves the way for many avenues of future work especially since
isolation-related stress even to these extremes can occur outside of a quarantine context.
Finally, we argue that this provides insight into the value of games in human lives
which can be used to motivate a great deal of future work.
That concludes our presentation and we can now take any questions thank you