[HN Gopher] Games' affordance of childlike wonder and reduced bu...
___________________________________________________________________
Games' affordance of childlike wonder and reduced burnout risk in
young adults
Author : azalemeth
Score : 129 points
Date : 2025-12-24 13:43 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (games.jmir.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (games.jmir.org)
| christophilus wrote:
| I'm skeptical of most studies, these days, but I'll gladly
| reference this one as a justification for slacking off.
| peacebeard wrote:
| Some studies are better than others, and headlines / secondary
| sources don't do enough to comment on this, but looking the
| source and having an opinion about their methodology, sample
| size, etc. can help a lot.
| sktrdie wrote:
| What about Call of Duty?
| fwipsy wrote:
| For me at least, competitive shooters are addictive, put me in
| an overstimulated reward-driven mindset that seeps into every
| aspect of life, affecting attention span, enjoyment, mood, and
| sleep. If there's childlike wonder in there it's not worth it
| for me.
|
| Quit planetside 2 in high school after about 1000 hours.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Preach. It might start innocent, but give it a couple of days
| and I turn into a maniac.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Nice play of words. :-)
| jebarker wrote:
| I just bought a Switch 2 having not really played games much for
| decades. I'm finding that occasional breaks for "mindless" gaming
| noticeably relaxes my always on, work obsessed brain. The
| challenge is overcoming the feeling that it's an unproductive use
| of time and I should be reading, coding, exercising etc. But in
| balance I think it's just the break my mind needs right now.
| fwipsy wrote:
| I do this too, but it bothers me a little bit to think that my
| mind needs to be doing something all the time in order to feel
| relaxed. Video games are fun but the ones I play are not really
| that restful; ditto web browsing. I've been exploring breathing
| exercises, mindfulness, journaling, just listening to music by
| itself more but it's tough not to just get bored with it. Maybe
| that means I need to do it more.
| jebarker wrote:
| FWIW I've had a meditation practice for over a decade and do
| use things like box breathing and journaling too. But
| sometimes my brain just needs stimulation and this has never
| gone away. I've learned that the thing I need to avoid is
| engaging with my monkey mind in spiraling thoughts, so video
| games are ideal as they require enough attention to prevent
| me getting distracted but I can also zone out and just play.
| goalieca wrote:
| People can be snobby about reading to the point of being too
| judgmental. Don't feel guilty about your free time. There isn't
| a hierarchy of pastimes with one better than another.
| dugidugout wrote:
| I hear this more and more as I age. This isn't what original
| comment was doing, but when discussing recent readings or
| hobbies with my friends or community I often must prod for
| the actual object of their pass-time or sit through a winded
| preface devaluing their enjoyment. It saddens me that people
| can so easily betray their own experiences.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I find that the feeling for me isn't about unproductive time
| but rather unfulfilling time.
|
| A game can be fulfilling in some ways. Maybe it's a really good
| game. Or it's a way to socialize with friends or family.
|
| It can also turn into a compulsion. That's why I avoid solo
| queue competitive multiplayer gaming. I try to only queue up
| with a friend, else I should go do something else.
| dqv wrote:
| Tangential. I spent _a long time_ thinking that entertaining
| myself was a waste of time and that I should just focus on
| "productivity". This was dumb. Reading fiction, playing games,
| leisure, etc. is necessary. Not only as a way to relax, but also
| to be imaginative and creative, which are necessary components to
| being productive.
|
| For a long time, social media slop kind of filled the void of
| leisure, but didn't really feed into my imagination. It's wild
| how I can read through a few pages of a novel and spend the next
| hour just thinking about the scene coming into existence, the
| real-world references that play into the story, and the
| implications of the events that are unfolding. In that same time,
| had I been on social media, I would have seen like 100 short
| clips that barely feed the imagination.
|
| I really enjoy "wasting time" thinking about and reading stories
| or playing games or whatever else, it really adds dimension to my
| life. I know that wise people have probably brought this up
| before (like I'm pretty sure a YouTube video has been recommended
| to me with the title of "I am BEGGING you to read fiction", which
| I did not watch, but took as a sort of "please come back from
| your coma, we miss you" message), but it just didn't click for me
| until I really felt creatively empty.
| putzdown wrote:
| This is an area that could really use good research, but this
| study looks badly designed and completely dismissible. I hope
| it's true that video game playing has some mental health
| benefits, and I wouldn't be surprised. You're not going to
| determine whether it does by asking a bunch of people how they
| feel about Mario and Yoshi.
| lynguist wrote:
| There's a certain culture that prefers "efficiency", punishes
| non-productivity, and every little slack, even enjoyment of life
| must be "earned". In that culture these video games that are pure
| playfulness (but it doesn't just have to be video games, it could
| be poetry, whatever, just something with no productivity!) are
| the antidote.
|
| I'm happy I wasn't born into this culture. (I've seen and heard
| absurd, almost comical examples of this from my colleagues, like
| justifying not replacing a black and white TV in the 1990s...
| From my point of view they're ascetics, but from their point of
| view they're normal.)
| wiseowise wrote:
| A "certain culture" is an euphemism for bad economy, I assume?
| rightbyte wrote:
| When I was a kid the general setup seemed to be the poorer
| the kid the more toys and higher weekly allowance it had. To
| compensate I guess.
|
| Obviously not very poor but relatively poor.
| sublinear wrote:
| It can also be argued that when a culture seeks escapism it's
| because things are bad.
|
| In other words, there's no correlation.
| dingi wrote:
| Precisely. The 'hustle' culture and the fetishization of hyper-
| efficiency act as a catalyst for a wide range of systemic
| societal problems. I'm glad that I'm not part of that sphere.
| sublinear wrote:
| Interesting take. I'm in my 30s and not sure I've ever known
| that kind of culture, yet I do understand the sentiment against
| heavy media consumption (which most video games fall under).
|
| Video games, TV, and movies put me in a situation where I must
| gamble several hours of my time to digest them. That kind of
| time investment cannot be isolated from the rest of a day.
| Media has a tendency to set my mood regardless if I liked it.
| Most fandoms are radioactive as well. I'm pretty sure what I'm
| saying is the majority opinion, so it shouldn't be a surprise
| that so many people shrug their shoulders and strongly avoid
| both that media and its fans. It doesn't help that there are no
| shortcuts around this either because if honest critics ever
| existed they definitely don't now.
|
| The result is that many have a very high bar, and even when
| it's met they still don't want to sink more than about an hour
| into it at a time. It's less about efficiency and more about
| having better things to do.
| acbart wrote:
| It took me a surprisingly long time to find the actual games: -
| Super Mario Bros Wonder - Yoshi's Crafted World - Yoshi's Woolly
| World
|
| So relatively modern games. I initially assumed that they were
| using the original Super Mario Bros game and Yoshi's Island - my
| millennial bias, I suppose. But I wonder if this result would
| replicate with a game like Yoshi's Island or Yoshi 64. Older
| graphics, in different ways. But I suspect that the fanciful
| aesthetic would still win out.
| bena wrote:
| Wonder for _reducing_ burnout risk?
|
| I don't know, maybe it's because my experience with Wonder was
| unique, to a degree.
|
| My autistic stepson has the game. Loves Mario. Will gladly get
| into any game, whether it is an RPG like the Paper Mario or
| Mario & Luigi series, platformers like the core Mario games, or
| the action/adventure Luigi's Mansion. _However_ there are parts
| and levels he knows he cannot do.
|
| He also loves schedules. Monday is the "free" day, but every
| other day of the week has a planned activity. He's gotten
| better at being flexible, but he still likes the regularity.
|
| And that's where I come in. I'm the "hard level" guy. And the
| last level of Mario Wonder, The Final-Final Test Badge
| Marathon, was just miserable. Eventually, I had to just tell
| him that if he wants to play another game, we'll just have to
| give this one up. The last section where you have to play blind
| is just too much.
|
| So we moved on to Super Mario 3D World. Eventually, I did beat
| Champion's Road, but once again, it was just a chore.
|
| I think the burnout reduction mostly comes from the ability to
| play in general. In my case, these games have become
| obligations for me.
| crims0n wrote:
| Yoshi's Island still holds up, and I think it remains a
| contender for one of the best platformers of all time. Recently
| replayed with the little ones and they were completely
| captivated.
| vasco wrote:
| > Over the course of 3 weeks, exploratory, in-depth interviews
| were conducted with 41 participants (women: n=19, 46.3%; men:
| n=21, 51.2%; preferred not to disclose sex: n=1, 2.4%; mean age
| 22.51, SD 1.52 years). All interviewees were full-time students
| (confirmed by their student IDs) and had experience playing a
| Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi game (screening questions by the RAs
| included the name of the specific Super Mario Bros. or Yoshi
| games respondents had played and which console they used to play
| the game, eg, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, or Nintendo Switch 2).
| Interviews were conducted in a university cafeteria and lasted
| between 25 and 40 minutes. All interviewees were reassured of the
| anonymity of their responses and were informed that their
| participation would help inform academic research. At the end of
| the interview, each interviewee was given a chance to ask any
| questions they may have had.
|
| Some tiktok videos have deeper research than this.
| headmelted wrote:
| The fact this study even exists is a sign of something having
| gone very wrong IMHO.
|
| The notion of tracking if time spent on _anything_ helps "prevent
| burnout" speaks volumes to how we view ourselves as consumables.
|
| The whole culture we have emphasises trading working the best
| years of your life just so you can (maybe) rest for a little
| while at the end of your life when your health is failing, which
| has always been really sad to me.
| fwipsy wrote:
| I agree, but hard work is nothing new. Did the average person
| throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it.
| I'm uncertain how to think about burnout in this context. Did
| they have burnout and were forced to work through it? Were they
| better at pacing themselves? Maybe the type of work (mental
| rather than physical labor) or circumstances (working for a
| corporation) today are more conducive to burnout?
| jetrink wrote:
| > Did the average person throughout history have more leisure
| than we do? I doubt it.
|
| Recent anthropological and archaeological research is
| challenging the traditional view that ancient lives were
| "nasty, brutish, and short." Instead, it appears that many
| ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day and
| frequently took time off for festivals or to travel long
| distances to visit friends and family. And unlike today, work
| usually had a more flexible rhythm where short periods of
| hard work were separated by long periods of light work and
| rest.
| dugidugout wrote:
| Can you provide the specific research you are referring to?
| Aurornis wrote:
| I don't know what research they saw, but the claim was
| mainstreamed by the popular book "Sapiens". The author
| romanticized past life and made claims that life was
| leisurely until agriculture came along and made us all
| miserable as we toiled working the soil. Before that we
| supposedly relaxed all day as our food was easy to catch
| and we didn't have to build anything because we were
| always on the move. There are some very obvious problems
| with that statement that will be easily spotted by anyone
| who has ever done any hunting or camping.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less
| than eight hours per day
|
| This statement is technically correct if you let the word
| "many" do the heavy lifting and ignore the people doing the
| work (slaves, etc)
|
| Claiming that average life in the past was easier is just
| false, though. If it was easier to shelter, feed, and
| clothe yourself in the past then those methods wouldn't
| have disappeared. You'd be able to do them now if you
| wanted to. Easier than before, in fact, because you can
| walk to the store and buy some wood instead of chopping
| down trees by hand and letting them dry for a few seasons
| before building, and so on.
| acheron wrote:
| This is ridiculous of course. Read Bret Deveraux's recent
| series about peasant life.
| EGG_CREAM wrote:
| I don't have any citations, but I don't think that "work" was
| at all similar to what we do now. Early hominid work would
| have involved many different tasks throughout the day, such
| as tracking, hunting, cleaning, gathering, building,
| repairing, traveling, etc, right? Compare that to "do this
| one task 8-16 hours in a row," and it does seem like a mode
| of work we would be particularly ill suited for. Orrrr maybe
| I'm wrong, I'm using general knowledge and inductive
| reasoning, so I would not be suprised to learn I'm off base
| here.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| > Did the average person throughout history have more leisure
| than we do?
|
| Unambiguously yes. This is well documented and impossible to
| ignore.
|
| Marshal Sahlins described it best in Stone Age Economics but
| reading Graeber will get you there or Levi Strauss if you're
| into the whole structural anthropology thing
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm not sure how environmental factors play into this either.
| As a Gen-Xer, it often feels like the current late teens and
| early 20-somethings all have a crippling level of "anxiety"
| over what should be relatively simple human interaction, and
| this started well before COVID solidified this influence.
| Does this in general have an outsized effect on burnout?
|
| I've felt true burnout twice in my life, the first time was
| after several years without any vacation time taken and about
| 3 months of 60-80 hour weeks. I literally hit a wall and
| couldn't even open a project in front of the computer, I was
| in a haze and not safe to even do anything. My brain was
| like, "nope!" More recently, a couple years ago it's been a
| larger state of dissolution about my career without a clear
| alternative so much as something that I would consider a
| disablement.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| It's not about leisure time. It's about the meaning of work.
| In the past, effects of your work were very direct - carry
| shitload of stone from one place to another together with
| your cousin, build a house for you and your family. Nowadays
| it's all very abstract - have a useless Teams meeting with
| people you don't care about so that you can do press buttons
| that maybe change some metrics you don't even understand.
| What was the last time you felt "I'm happy I built this"?
| lbrito wrote:
| >Did the average person throughout history have more leisure
| than we do?
|
| Yes. In the middle ages (and presumably in any agrarian
| society) people would work intensely for a few weeks and have
| the most of the year free.
| soared wrote:
| A recent HN thread I cannot seem to find discussed the idea
| that currently in the US work is the default state, and leisure
| exists to refuel for work. At other times in history, leisure
| was the default state and work existed to enable leisure. This
| context affects everything in life - IE a microwave frozen meal
| is excellent in the work viewpoint (time value ratio), but if
| you enjoy cooking it's horrible in the leisure viewpoint.
| Insanity wrote:
| My girlfriend and I were talking about this the other day. We
| both have full time jobs and can only cook "real meal" in the
| weekend now that WFH ended.
|
| It sucks, I enjoy cooking and want to eat at least somewhat
| health conscious...
| bombcar wrote:
| Brutal comment because I'm a random Internet AI:
|
| You can adjust what "real meal" means for you so that
| cooking at home is possible. The hardest part is finding
| time together if schedules don't line up.
|
| For two weeks write down what you do with your time, and
| then evaluate it afterwards and decide if it was the best
| use.
| Insanity wrote:
| Lol, fair enough, but I think this is a workaround rather
| than a solution.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > We both have full time jobs and can only cook "real meal"
| in the weekend now that WFH ended.
|
| Do you have extra long hours and/or an extreme long (1
| hour) commute?
|
| It's common in my social circles for parents to work 8-5 or
| 9-6 and still cook weekday meals that are healthy. With
| some meal and grocery planning it's not that hard, unless
| you of course have on of those 90+ minute commutes and a
| job that keeps you in office until 8PM.
|
| Unless your definition of "real meal" is something more
| than I'm thinking of, like something that requires hours of
| prep.
|
| > It sucks, I enjoy cooking and want to eat at least
| somewhat health conscious...
|
| There are a lot of healthy meal planning (ahead of time
| prep) or quick and easy recipes out there. It's pretty easy
| to prepare a healthy meal with steamed vegetables and a
| warmed protein in 10 minutes. We can even make an entire
| healthy meal in 30 minutes start to finish after doing it
| for years.
| Insanity wrote:
| More traditional "French" cuisine is not typically ready
| in 10-30 minutes when starting from scratch (or I'm just
| incredibly slow).
|
| Cooking a full meal would at least take me an hour end-
| to-end. As a sibling comment mentioned, it's more that
| when I finally get home (6:30 -7pm), I rarely have the
| energy to put in that kind of time.
|
| So I end up making a quick pasta or other such dish that
| is ready in 30 minutes.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > More traditional "French" cuisine is not typically
| ready in 10-30 minutes when starting from scratch
|
| I was responding to the part of your comment about not
| being able to eat healthy.
|
| Cooking traditional French cuisine on weeknights is not
| the only way to have a healthy meal. Eating homemade
| French cuisine every weeknight would be a luxury for
| working class standards just about anywhere.
| RyanOD wrote:
| How many hours does your job and commute require?
|
| I'd genuinely like to understand a job that is so time
| consuming that a person wouldn't be able to cook dinner.
| That doesn't seem ok to me.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Not op, the job is so soul and mentally draining that you
| "can't afford" cooking.
| Insanity wrote:
| I should have clarified it, but you hit the nail on the
| head. I arrive home with little energy after a day in the
| office.
|
| By the time I'm home it's at least 6:30pm, usually a bit
| later. If I would work until 6:30 but from home instead
| of the office, I'd probably still be up for cooking.
|
| Although you also need to get gym time in, family time,
| chores and other stuff...
| lentil_soup wrote:
| I have the same, my commute is a 10min walk, I have no
| dependants and make a good salary and I find it
| impossible to cook, I'm just depleted after work. If I
| add exercise and some social interaction then my time is
| spent recovering energy... It's probably a sign of burn
| out or of a bad job
| eru wrote:
| Have you considered cooking before work?
| hnthrowaway121 wrote:
| Super normal. Let's say at the simplest, you take 30 mins
| to get ready to leave from waking up, 30 mins from front
| door to sitting at your desk, 30 mins to get to bed and
| sleep that's 2 hours of your 24 just kinda handling the
| bare functional minumum. Sleep for 8 and now you are left
| with 12 hours. Work plus breaks at work is probably 8-10
| at the best.
|
| So OK, 3-5 hours left over for everything else, assuming
| perfect execution on the other parts. Do you have family
| or pets that need something? Do you have dishes and
| laundry and trash days and bills to pay? Do you want to
| watch TV, play a game, do any kind of hobby or leaning?
| Are you sick? Do you have friendships? Are you tired from
| work being physically or mentally demanding? Do you need
| to exercise?
|
| All of those things need to be handled in the same few
| "outside work" hours each day.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > that's 2 hours of your 24 just kinda handling the bare
| functional minumum. Sleep for 8 and now you are left with
| 12 hours.
|
| 24 - 2 - 8 leaves you with 14 hours, not 12 hours.
|
| Sounds pedantic, but 2 hours is a lot in the context of
| your argument that we only have a few hours per day to do
| anything.
|
| This conversation gets repeated ad nauseum on social
| media, yet in the real world it's common for people to
| operate fine on normal weekly work schedules. Back when I
| was still reading Reddit there was an endless stream of
| posts like this complaining that there was no time left
| to do anything after work. Every time when the OP was
| asked where their time was going, it revealed one of two
| things: Either they were taking way too long to go
| through the basic motions of life (e.g 2 hour morning
| routines and 2 hour dinner prep every day with a 1 hour
| bedtime ritual) or they realized they actually had a lot
| of time but it was just disappearing somewhere and they
| couldn't figure it out. That latter one could almost
| always be traced to spending too much time on phones or
| in front of TV.
| jebarker wrote:
| > At other times in history, leisure was the default state
| and work existed to enable leisure.
|
| What times/places are you thinking of when you write this?
| Saline9515 wrote:
| At which time exactly was leisure "the default state"? The
| only way to have this is by having a slave-like class while
| the idle elite could enjoy "leisure", or live in very low
| density, caloric rich environment, which doesn't last long or
| ends up with wars (and being enslaved by the neighboring
| tribe, if you are from subsaharian Africa).
| Aurornis wrote:
| > At other times in history, leisure was the default state
| and work existed to enable leisure
|
| It wasn't that long ago that a lot of hard work was necessary
| to even survive through the winter each year.
|
| What times in history had leisure as the default state? When
| was life so much easier than it is right now? Where were all
| the food, shelter, clothing, and entertainment materials
| coming from during this time and why was it so much more
| efficient than today?
| eru wrote:
| > It wasn't that long ago that a lot of hard work was
| necessary to even survive through the winter each year.
|
| Well, not all parts of the world have winters.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Every time this topic of historical leisure time comes up
| and people start bringing up problems with the theory,
| the goalposts start moving as fast as the conversation.
| Are we now only talking about people who didn't live in
| areas with winters? Because those areas have different
| sets of problems including entirely different sets of
| insects, diseases, and predators that aren't controlled
| by annual winters, among other things.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I think there is a growing online mix up of "leisure" time in
| the past. 99% of people were farmers, farming season is 3-4mo
| a year. That doesn't mean they had 9mo to do whatever they
| wanted. The time off was technically not their job but they
| were doing work on other survival tasks. If you consider re-
| roofing your shelter leisure time then yeah past people had
| more leisure time.
|
| We have much more non-survival leisure time now.
| RobRivera wrote:
| The WHOLE US!?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > The fact this study even exists is a sign of something having
| gone very wrong IMHO.
|
| I agree, but for different reasons: The paper is an example of
| someone sending out surveys to collect self-reports and then
| writing a paper title as if they had performed a study. They
| did not. They just surveyed some college students and drew
| conclusions by running statistical analyses on the data until
| they got something that seemed significant.
|
| It appears to have worked, though, as I've seen it shared
| across the internet by assuming it's a robust proof of
| something.
|
| This paper is very bad. The numbers in the abstract don't even
| add up, which any reviewer should have caught. To be honest
| this feels like an undergraduate level assignment where
| students are asking to give a survey and do some statistical
| analyses. The students usually pick a topic close to their own
| life (like Super Mario Games) and then come up with some result
| by playing with their survey numbers until they find something.
| LeoWattenberg wrote:
| > They just surveyed some college students and drew
| conclusions by running statistical analyses on the data until
| they got something that seemed significant.
|
| Is this just cynicism or based on anything? From reading the
| methods section it doesn't appear this is what happened
| Aurornis wrote:
| From the paper:
|
| > Methods:
|
| > We used a mixed methods approach. First, qualitative data
| were collected through 41 exploratory, in-depth interviews
| (women: n=19, 46.3%; men: n=21, 51.2%; prefer not to
| disclose sex: n=11, 2.4%; mean age 22.51, SD 1.52 years)
| with university students who had experience playing Super
| Mario Bros. or Yoshi. Second, quantitative data were
| collected in a cross-sectional survey...
|
| So interviews with a biased sample (students with
| experience playing the game) and then a survey.
|
| Also, try adding up those n= numbers. They don't sum to 41.
| The abstract can't even get basic math or proofreading
| right.
|
| If the body of the paper describes something different than
| the abstract, that's another problem
|
| EDIT: Yes, I know the n=11 was supposed to be an n=1.
| Having a glaring and easily caught error in the _abstract_
| is not a good signal for the quality of a paper. This is on
| the level of an undergraduate paper-writing exercise, not a
| scientific study as people are assuming.
| smallerize wrote:
| It looks like "prefer not to disclose sex" was typoed and
| should be 1 instead of 11.
| nebezb wrote:
| Seems like n=11 should have been n=1. Use 19, 21, and 1
| as a numerator of /41 and you end up with all the same
| percentages written in the abstract. A typo that should
| have been caught, but surely nothing more than that and
| certainly not substantive enough to qualify the claim
| below:
|
| > This paper is very bad. The numbers in the abstract
| don't even add up, which any reviewer should have caught.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > A typo that should have been caught, but surely nothing
| more than that and certainly not substantive enough to
| qualify the claim below:
|
| Such an obvious error should have been caught by the
| authors proofreading their own work, to be honest. Any
| reviewer would also catch it when evaluating the quality
| of the sample size.
|
| I find it strange that people are bending over backward
| to defend this paper and its obvious flaws and
| limitations.
| gs17 wrote:
| It does seem to be cynicism, they're convinced the authors
| "gave people surveys with a lot of questions and then tried
| to find correlations in the data", but nothing indicates
| they did more than the 9 questions (plus one more for sex
| as a control) the paper includes, and restricted it to only
| Mario/Yoshi players. Ten questions is pretty short.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > and restricted it to only Mario/Yoshi players.
|
| Do you not see the problem with drawing conclusions from
| a sample set that pre-selects for Mario/Yoshi players?
|
| How do you think they're determining that playing
| Mario/Yoshi prevents burnout if they only surveyed
| Mario/Yoshi players?
|
| I really don't understand all of the push to support this
| paper and disregard critiques as cynicism. The paper is
| not a serious study, or even a well written paper. Is it
| a contrarian reflex to deny any observations about a
| paper that don't feel positive or agreeable enough?
| gs17 wrote:
| I've critiqued it plenty in other comments, including
| that exact issue. However, that doesn't mean they "gave
| people surveys with a lot of questions" to p-hack, it
| seems like a study designed (albeit not well designed) to
| test one specific hypothesis. I see no reason to question
| that they did the methods as described in the paper,
| which were designed to test this very specific thing
| (they didn't even test "childlike wonder" in general,
| just self-reported Mario-induced childlike wonder), but
| their conclusions aren't supported by their data. If they
| were p-hacking as you accuse them of, why not have more
| questions? Why not survey non-Mario players too so
| there's a new variable to create significant results out
| of a null?
| ThePollingStone wrote:
| This study reminds me of the types of projects I did when I
| took statistical psychology classes in undergrad. I was
| hoping to see data taken directly after participants had
| actually played the games in a controlled environment. Also,
| why focus on just Nintendo games?
|
| Judging by the authors' affiliations and Nintendo-approved
| rhetoric, this does appear to be a shill.
| andai wrote:
| Especially since we're about to give birth to an entire species
| which is better suited to the task!
| darepublic wrote:
| This is the problem of evil right. Those human tribes who just
| chilled out after meeting the bare requirements of survival
| died off because some greedy assholes outcompeted them.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I'm only a casual follower of ancient human evolution and
| anthropology, but this doesn't mesh with my impression. Lots
| of human groups have been able to relax in relatively
| hospitable environments, over long spans of time.
| mothballed wrote:
| They were overwhelmingly overpowered by those who took
| advantage of the fact they didn't have black powder,
| rifles, or western ships.
|
| A few who managed to evade this past WWII took advantage of
| the fact everyone was desperate to freeze things in place
| to avoid nuclear war, those are the fortunate few who are
| locked into place for the indefinite future.
|
| Of course there's also the heart of Africa, with no great
| navigable waterways or geography to trade to europe, north
| america, or asia, no one gives much a shit what they do.
|
| ------------- re due to throttling -------
|
| >I don't think happened because of evolutionary pressure on
| tribes as the previous poster claimed.
|
| Not a necessary precondition, it can happen through
| cultural pressure (also something passed down by the
| generations in tribes). I don't recall previous poster
| requiring it happen through gene expression.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't think happened because of evolutionary pressure
| on tribes as the previous poster claimed. Certainly
| that's not clear from the evidence. The human genotype
| was pretty well set by the time all that was happening,
| which means whatever evolutionary basis exists for "the
| problem of evil" had already acted, including on all the
| people living easy (or at least manageable) subsistence
| lifestyles for centuries previously.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Of course there's also the heart of Africa, with no
| great navigable waterways or geography to trade to
| europe, north america, or asia, no one gives much a shit
| what they do.
|
| If this is your standard for a relaxing "chilled out"
| lifestyle then I'm afraid you'd be deeply disappointed if
| you saw the realities of living like this. In many places
| simply maintaining a consistent supply of food and
| drinkable water is nearly a full time job, and that's
| with the various contentions of aid coming in.
| mothballed wrote:
| >If this is your standard for a relaxing "chilled out"
| lifestyle then I'm afraid you'd be deeply disappointed if
| you saw the realities of living like this.
|
| Not my standard, the standard presented by the previous
| poster, where getting food/water/shelter is "chilling"
| and doing that plus conquering etc is the "less chill"
| version.
|
| I wasn't explaining why the heart of Africa is "chilled
| out." I was explaining why at least the initial waves of
| people with guns who spent an inordinate amount of their
| "chill time" scheming on how to conquer others, didn't
| bother much with inner central Africa, thus even _if_
| they were chilling they were a bit safer from western
| ships and guns.
|
| I don't think I ever made the claim all of the heart of
| africa is just chillin. I'm explaining why there is the
| potential people in some places could focus more on just
| eating and sheltering and watering and not as much time
| fighting against people who spend time on gunpowder and
| ships. All else equal it should cost less time to eat and
| shelter than to do that plus other things, and by the
| standards here, that was the "chill" that was relative to
| doing all that _plus_ worrying about conquering.
|
| >>Those human tribes who just chilled out after meeting
| the bare requirements of survival died off because some
| greedy assholes outcompeted them
|
| >If this is your standard for a relaxing "chilled out"
| lifestyle then I'm afraid you'd be deeply disappointed if
| you saw the realities of living like this.
|
| What you've done is redefined chilling out, from what the
| OG poster had it at (basically food + shelter), and
| instead you're arguing against _someone else_ that their
| original definition we were already working on is wrong.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Those human tribes who just chilled out after meeting the
| bare requirements of survival died off because some greedy
| assholes outcompeted them.
|
| The idea of tribes just "chilling out" to survive is a modern
| anachronism projected on a romanticized past. We're so
| disconnected from the realities of clothing, feeding and
| sheltering ourselves without modern amenities that it's hard
| to imagine what pre-industrial like was like. Thinking that
| "chilling out" was a viable path to survival is a symptom of
| that disconnectedness.
| mothballed wrote:
| If you look at a tiger, for instance, they sleep 16 hours a
| day (or a closer animal, take a look at the night monkey).
| I realize a human isn't as powerful or have the same needs
| as a tiger, but I don't see why a (pre-historic) humans
| have to work that much harder than a tiger merely to eat
| and reproduce and live long enough that enough survive to
| do that. A human can work smarter than a tiger, after
| all... surely we can "chill" as many hours a day as the
| tiger can.
| jMyles wrote:
| ...I don't view myself as a consumable. I enjoy accomplishing.
| I do not enjoy burnout. I'm interested in ways to prevent it.
| It's really that simple.
|
| I don't particularly find this survey compelling, but I also
| don't want to be judged as some vampiric capitalist just
| because I'd like to have more work bandwidth.
| eru wrote:
| > The whole culture we have emphasises trading working the best
| years of your life just so you can (maybe) rest for a little
| while at the end of your life when your health is failing,
| which has always been really sad to me.
|
| Have you considered getting a job you like better?
|
| You can also take sabbaticals. Or retire early.
| lbrito wrote:
| Unrealistic for most working people with families.
| Insanity wrote:
| I'll share this with my partner.
|
| But as I've told her before: "games aren't meant to be relaxing
| to me, it's to compete!"
|
| I do wonder how these results would translate to more competitive
| games like CS.
|
| FWIW, I used to game competitively (in tournaments) more than a
| decade ago. Now I _technically_ play just casually, such as "The
| Finals". But I only play the ranked mode with friends who used to
| be in my competitive team.
|
| Some days when we play it's just chatting and good fun (we've
| known eachother for almost 2 decades), but other days we get "in
| the zone" and it's not truly relaxing.
| crims0n wrote:
| As I age, it gets harder to enjoy competitive games. I just
| can't keep up with people who play 6 hours a day and are in
| their peak twitch-reflex years.
| dugidugout wrote:
| I see this sentiment and rationalization a lot but I don't
| understand it.
|
| Age aside, presently, are you saying you cannot meet a
| threshold you would label competitive? Competitive games are
| almost always played on a spectrum? I would argue your
| placement in the spectrum should curate the ground for
| competition if the player base is large enough (and ladder
| system coherent).
|
| Now with my framing understood, how does age fit in? I can
| buy that as you age you have less time to put into a game and
| potentially weaker reflexes (I'm not going to pretend to know
| the science here), but this should simply inform your
| placement on the ladder?
|
| I don't think it has anything to do with "people who play 6
| hours a day and are in their peak twitch-reflex years" unless
| you mean your enjoyment is derived from overcoming this
| archetype.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Competitiveness implies desire to win. There's no fun if
| you constantly lose, and you'll always lose against a kid
| who spends half of their living day making sure they're
| better than you in the game.
| dugidugout wrote:
| "There's no fun if you constantly lose, and you'll always
| lose against a kid who spends half of their living day
| making sure they're better than you in the game" is true,
| but hardly reality for the reasons I provided.
|
| While I appreciate you leaving the value of
| competitiveness in the air... on the other hand, by
| defining it so purely, you've essentially resigned
| yourself from participating.
|
| I'm curious what games have molded this perspective.
| Insanity wrote:
| I'm by no means great at games anymore. But in these casually
| competitive games, you get matched against people in similar
| rank.
|
| For anyone playing The Finals, I'm hovering around 30-40k
| ELO. Definitely mid-tier.
|
| I play about 4h a week fwiw.
| throwfaraway135 wrote:
| If someone was wondering if this is statistically significant
| after reading the first line in the method and seeing 41
| interviews, then the answer is probably yes, as the final results
| are based on a study with 336 full-time university students.
|
| > The final sample consisted of 336 full-time university students
| (women: 19/41, 46.3%; men: 21/41, 51.2%; prefer not to disclose
| sex: 1/41, 2.4%; mean age 22.51, SD 1.52)."
| Aurornis wrote:
| > as the final results are based on a study with 336 full-time
| university students.
|
| The final results were from a _survey_ , not a study where they
| trialed Super Mario games on students and followed their
| progress.
|
| Also did you notice that the numbers in your quote don't even
| agree? In parentheses the numbers are out of 41, not 336.
|
| This is not a serious paper.
| throwfaraway135 wrote:
| > Also did you notice that the numbers in your quote don't
| even agree? In parentheses the numbers are out of 41, not
| 336.
|
| I agree that it's at least sloppy.
|
| > The final results were from a survey, not a study where
| they trialed Super Mario games on students and followed their
| progress.
|
| afaik a study can consist of one single survey
|
| > This is not a serious paper.
|
| Maybe, maybe not, my only point was about the sample size
| which was surprising if you read only the top part.
| gs17 wrote:
| > afaik a study can consist of one single survey
|
| It definitely can (and they had interviews too), although
| there's a lot of limitations with their methodology they
| don't address in the paper.
| gs17 wrote:
| It's "statistically significant", but it doesn't really say
| what the title says and they draw a lot of causal conclusions
| that don't really follow the data IMO. The main result is
| really that happiness and burnout risk were negatively
| correlated (what a surprise, people burning out aren't happy?),
| although the caveat is that's only shown in Mario-playing
| college students.
| Aurornis wrote:
| I wouldn't put much weight into this paper. This is a self-
| reported survey paper. They gave people surveys with a lot of
| questions and then tried to find correlations in the data (aka
| p-hacking).
|
| Even the surveys had leading questions like "affordance of
| childlike wonder" from the game:
|
| > Second, quantitative data were collected in a cross-sectional
| survey (N=336) of players of Super Mario Bros. and Yoshi to
| examine the games' affordance of childlike wonder, overall
| happiness in life, and burnout risk.
|
| There are even glaring numerical errors in the abstract that
| should have been caught by anyone doing any level of review or
| proofreading:
|
| > First, qualitative data were collected through 41 exploratory,
| in-depth interviews (women: n=19, 46.3%; men: n=21, 51.2%; prefer
| not to disclose sex: n=11, 2.4%;
|
| That n=11 is supposed to be n=1, if you didn't catch it. It also
| doesn't explain why the n=41 survey group separate from the 300+
| survey group asked about burnout.
|
| So I know this will generate a lot of discussion about burnout,
| but this is not the kind of paper to draw conclusions from.
| Everything about it, from the self-reported survey format to the
| idea itself, looks like someone started with a highly specific
| idea (Super Mario reduces burnout) and wanted to p-hack their way
| to putting it in a paper.
| mrandish wrote:
| > This is a self-reported survey paper.
|
| Thank you for this post! The headline claim struck me as one
| that would be difficult to evidence with any scientific rigor.
| Reading the abstract furthered this feeling but I couldn't be
| bothered to read the methodology, so thanks for doing it.
|
| > Everything about it, from the self-reported survey format to
| the idea itself, looks like someone started with a highly
| specific idea (Super Mario reduces burnout) and wanted to
| p-hack their way to putting it in a paper.
|
| Indeed. Even the idea that individuals can reliably self-
| diagnose "burn-out" in an objective way is highly dubious.
| cons0le wrote:
| This seems like a pretty loosey goosey study. How do you
| realistically quantify someone's "overall happiness in life" and
| "burnout risk" into 1 number ?
|
| I'm not sure how they did the control group, but I would be
| curious about the difference between 15 minutes playing Mario,
| and just getting a 15 minute break.
|
| I think any significant time away from work/studying could reduce
| burnout risk
| gs17 wrote:
| > How do you realistically quantify someone's "overall
| happiness in life" and "burnout risk" into 1 number ?
|
| There's existing survey methodologies for these, and then they
| added a Mario-specific set of questions (IMO these questions
| were poorly designed, they expected people to be able to
| accurately report how much Mario games specifically change
| their childlike wonder, which even if true, kind of changes the
| conclusion they should be able to make).
|
| > I'm not sure how they did the control group
|
| It's not that kind of study. They didn't sit half the
| participants down with Mario and half took a nap, it's
| interviews and surveys. Their only "control" was showing it
| didn't correlate with gender.
| djaouen wrote:
| From experience, my childhood hobby of playing video games, such
| as Final Fantasy VII, influenced my view of reading other, non-
| video-game material, such as novels, short stories, and non-
| fiction. I don't know how many fewer books I would have read in
| my life had I not played those games when I was younger!
| pdpi wrote:
| "Childlike wonder" is an interesting turn of phrase here, that
| reminds me of one specific game -- Outer Wilds. The way I like to
| describe Outer Wilds is that you're exploring the star system in
| your grandma's back garden, escaping a blackhole just in time for
| dinner.
|
| Everything about the game seems designed to elicit that response.
| The in-world technology is absolute jank, with wooden spaceships
| and patched-over spacesuits. Both groups of aliens in the game
| (the Hearthians and the Nomai) are intensely curious and driven
| by wanderlust. The story's stakes are simultaneously enormous and
| none at all, like a child playing make-believe.
|
| Playing it genuinely gets me feeling like a child, and that's
| something truly special.
| gatkinso wrote:
| One of my favorites as well. A folk space exploration sim. I
| did find a few of the puzzles a bit too difficult though.
| zenethian wrote:
| Is anyone else really bothered by the title of this? Super Mario
| Bros is a specific game, but what are "Yoshi" games? Feels like
| the none of the researchers had ever played video games before.
| gs17 wrote:
| There's a "Yoshi" series now, but they specifically mean
| Yoshi's Crafted World and Yoshi's Woolly World.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| I'd assume Katamari has the same effect. Felt a sense of joy I
| haven't felt in a while, when playing the latest one after having
| not played a Katamari game since around 08.
| kevinfiol wrote:
| Might have just been nostalgia, but I've played video games since
| I was a child, and largely took a extended break from Nintendo
| titles when I became an almost-exclusive PC gamer in the late
| 2000s.
|
| I finally played Mario Odyssey for the first time last year, and
| I instantly felt like a kid in 1997 again, and my mood was
| elevated with excitement for playing this game -- it was clear a
| ton of love was poured into the level design and game mechanics.
| It was the best gaming experience I've had in my adult life.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > I finally played Mario Odyssey
|
| I have no words for how good that game is. It is both fresh and
| nostalgic at the same time. And the hat thing is done
| perfectly. Like, the more hats the bosses have the better they
| are, duh, of course.
|
| Dark(er) side of the moon gets really challanging for adults
| too.
|
| It would be so easy for Nintendo to just spam Mario games but
| they don't.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Wait until you play Super Mario Wonder!
| npodbielski wrote:
| I do not know... Oddysey felt better. Wonder is rushing you.
| Always. In odyssey you can just explore some city a bit and
| there is no pressure. No timer, no nagging. You can just sit
| on the bench.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Odyssey gives me motion sickness and headaches :(
| SilverElfin wrote:
| My experience has been the opposite. For both "hardcore" PC
| games and "simpler" games like Mario, as an adult it's not only
| hard to find time but once I do, games feel like an exhausting
| chore. I go in anticipating relaxation but can't get it.
| Sometimes even just getting to the menu screen brings this
| feeling of dread. I'm not sure how to go back to the feeling of
| being a kid.
| npodbielski wrote:
| I think those games are not the problem. If you feel dread...
| I mean if you would felt boredom or be annoyed that you will
| be spending time in a useless activity... But dread? Maybe
| you should talk to some friend or the family?
| lbrito wrote:
| Same, it feels like more work. In the old days you would
| punch the cartidrige in and get started. The controllers
| themselves had half a dozen buttons. Nowadays if I spend more
| than a few months without playing ill forget the commands,
| and I don't have the mental energy or time to spend
| relearning before being able to actually enjoy the game. I
| paused zelda for 2.5yrs and couldn't pick it up again. Just
| too much relearning
| biophysboy wrote:
| Totally relate to this. The movement in Mario 64 still holds
| up, 30 years later. When I picked up Odyssey, the first thing I
| did was figure out how much I could push the limits of the
| character physics, just like I did when I was 8.
| grugagag wrote:
| I've been cooling off my brain after work on my way home on the
| bus by playing video games and it is very effective. Time flies
| and they move you in a completely different mental space.
| Initially I got Miyoo mini for my kid and installed a lot of
| Pico-8 games. Quickly I decided to get another one for myself and
| it's been quite some therapy for the past year. By the way, I'm
| in my mid 40s and haven't been playing games for a really long
| time, since the 80s or the 90s. I highly recommend Pico-8 games.
| I find the games very creative and novel and yet quite simple and
| to the point. I recently got into making a few myself, of course
| with the help of LLMs.
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