The effects of social exergames on mental wellbeing and how game designers can enhance them

Amanda Barreto Cavalcanti

doi:10.25907/00487

In 2015, around 2.1 million Australians suffered from high or very high levels of psychological distress, including several types of mental disorders (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2015). Wellbeing can protect people from future mental disorders and, when dealing with such disorders, a gender-specific approach is recommended by specialists (Mission Australia & Black Dog Institute, 2017). This thesis describes two studies that looked at the effect of video games that combine exercise and social interaction as an option to increase wellbeing. Study 1 investigated how dance games affect wellbeing and how future versions of Just Dance could be improved to heighten intrinsic motivation. Twenty-nine female first-year university students (aged 17–24 years) were recruited, randomly assigned to one of four different groups with the following play conditions: playing alone, playing with someone else performing the same dance steps, playing with someone else performing complementary dance steps, playing with 3 other people. They came to the laboratory once a week for three weeks, playing 30 minutes of Just Dance each time. A week later they were interviewed about their experiences. Before each session, participants answered the Mental Health Continuum Short Form (MHC-SF) (Keyes, 2009) questionnaire to have their wellbeing of the previous 30 days assessed. After each gameplay session, participants answered a Dance Experience Inventory, based on the Dance Motivation Inventory (Maraz, Király, Urbán, Griffiths, & Demetrovics, 2015), to assess their experience playing Just Dance. Mixed design analysis of variance and analysis of variance-type statistics (Noguchi, Gel, Brunner, & Konietschke, 2012) could not be run because there were not enough participants in each of the groups. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was conducted based on the interview responses in two phases. The first phase followed a theoretical approach and used the Mental Health Continuum framework (Keyes, 2005) and the motivational model of video game engagement (Przybylski et al., 2010) as starting points to answer the research questions. The second phase followed an inductive approach to look for other interesting themes emerging from the interviews that were not necessarily related to the research questions. In the context of the study, participants expressed positive effects of Just Dance towards positive affect, positive relationships, personal growth, social integration and social contribution. Participants also expressed negative effects of Just Dance towards self-acceptance and social acceptance. There are also recommendations about improvements Ubisoft can make to future versions of Just Dance to better satisfy player needs and thus increase their enjoyment, immersion and future engagement. Additionally, barriers to wellbeing were identified. Study 2 looked at how Pokémon GO affected player wellbeing and social anxiety. Since release in 2016, media articles have suggested benefits of playing Pokémon GO for people suffering from mental disorders (Conditt, 2016; Melville-Smith, 2016; Saifi, 2016). In order to contribute to the knowledge about this topic with academic rigour, this study investigates the influence of Pokémon GO on social anxiety within a Brazilian population. Online surveys were conducted one month apart, asking a Brazilian population about their social anxiety symptoms and their play of Pokémon GO. The surveys included the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale and the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF). We used mixed methods to analyse the data, by employing thematic analysis and a non-parametric mixed design ANOVA-type statistic (K. Noguchi et al., 2012). Results show participants who played Pokémon GO and then stopped had a significant decrease in their social anxiety measurements, whereas participants who never played the game and participants who continued to play throughout the entire study did not. Playing Pokémon GO harmoniously (i.e. with moderate frequency and not interfering with the other aspects of the player’s life) was correlated with a decrease in social anxiety symptoms. No significant results were found regarding the MHC-SF. Participants reported leaving the house more, engaging in positive interactions, experiencing an increase in physical activity, experiencing an increase in positive affect and feeling stress relief. Some participants decided to stop playing Pokémon GO. The reasons they reported were: the game appeal faded, technical limitations, Brazilian violence and the excessive resources demanded by the game. Findings from studies 1 and 2 informed the development of recommendations for game designers in the use of physical activity and social interactions in games to promote improved mental wellbeing. These include benefits from developing games with more opportunities for social connection (relatedness), choices that can alter how the game proceeds (autonomy), and interesting opportunities to increase skills and derive confidence (competence).

The effects of social exergames on mental wellbeing and how game designers can enhance them

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