Creating Good Lives Through Computer Games

In this chapter we take a broad approach to exploring how videogames can lead to improvements in wellbeing. We examine the impact of videogames on the psychological, social, and physical components of wellbeing. The emergence of videogames as a mainstream pastime has motivated our investigation. Research has shown that videogames can generally be expected to positively influence a player's mood and emotion. Experiences of autonomy, relatedness, competence, and flow during videogame play can all be seen to lead to improved psychological wellbeing. Commercial videogames have also been shown to lead to improvements in cognitive skills. Games designed to have a specific benefit have shown improvements in psychological wellbeing, education, engagement, physical wellbeing, and rehabilitation. Videogame play has been shown to positively impact social wellbeing across user populations, including people with intellectual disabilities. Games support development of real life friendships and provide new ways to create and maintain social connections. The rich and full social networks formed as part of massively multiplayer online gaming typify these benefits. Our focus in this chapter is on the positive influences of videogames and present evidence of the positive impact of videogames on the psychological, physical and social components of wellbeing. We do not explore research on contexts in which negative impacts are possible. Clearly, balanced engagement with age‐appropriate videogames is a key prerequisite for any of the wellbeing benefits. Although there is a great deal of evidence for the actual and potential positive impacts of videogames on wellbeing, there are many unanswered questions regarding the context in which there is likely to be an impact. We conclude the chapter by outlining the key questions for future research.