University of Oxford and FuturLab form gaming wellbeing partnership

The University of Oxford's Internet Institute has partnered with Brighton-based game developer FuturLab to study the wellbeing of gamers playing PowerWash Simulator.

FuturLab has released a new ‘Research Edition’ of the game, which will give researchers the ability to monitor players who have opted-in and contact them in-game to ask quick questions about their experience.

The team conducting the research have previous experience looking at the link between video games and mental wellbeing, having conducted similar studies on players in Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons and EA’s Plants Vs Zombies: Battle for Neighbourville.

In their study, titled “Video game play is positively correlated with well-being”, they state: “Contrary to many fears that excessive play time will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a small positive relation between game play and affective well-being.”