JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

COVID-19 has led governments across the world to enact a variety of containment and closure policies. Significant attention has been directed towards the idea that these public health measures may have unanticipated negative side-effects. One proposed effect relates to video games. A nascent evidence base suggests that individuals played video games for longer and in a more disordered manner during lockdowns, and school closures in specific. These increases are commonly framed as a potential health concern in relation to disordered gaming. However, the evidence base regarding changes to gaming during the COVID-19 pandemic is based on self-report, and is thus susceptible to bias. It is therefore unclear what the true consequences of lockdowns were for gaming behaviour across the world.

Objective:

The primary objective of this study is to estimate whether any specific lockdown policy led to meaningful increases in the amount of time that individuals spent playing video games

Methods:

Rather than rely on self-report, we instead utilise over 251 billion hours of raw gameplay telemetry data from 184 separate countries to assess the behavioural correlates of COVID-related policy decisions. A multilevel model estimated the impact of varying enforcement levels of eight containment and closure policies on the amount of time that individual users spend in-games. Similar models estimate the impact of policy on overall playtime and number of users within a country.

Results:

No lockdown policy can explain substantial variance in playtime per gamer. School closures are uniquely associated with meaningful increases in both total playtime within a country (r2=0.048). However, this is associated with increases in the number of unique individuals playing games (r2=0.057) rather than increases in playtime per gamer (r2<0.001).

Conclusions:

Previous work using self-report data has suggested that important increases in heavy gaming may occur during pandemics due to containment and closure (‘lockdown’) procedures. This study contrasts with the prior evidence base, and finds no evidence of such a relationship. It suggests that significant further work is needed before increases in disordered or heavy gaming are taken into account when planning public health policy for pandemic preparedness.