How do you feel: Emotions exhibited while Playing Computer Games and their Relationship with Gaming Behaviors

TL;DR

This study explores the emotions gamers exhibit during play and how these emotions relate to their gaming behaviors, revealing that increased gaming duration correlates with higher anxiety and stress.

Contribution

It provides empirical data on emotional responses of gamers and their partial relationship with gaming frequency and duration, highlighting the complexity of emotional experiences.

Findings

Gamers often experience both positive and negative emotions.

Increased gaming frequency is associated with higher anxiety.

Longer gaming duration correlates with increased stress.

Abstract

This descriptive study utilized a validated questionnaire to determine the emotions exhibited by computer gamers in cyber caf\'es. It was revealed that most of the gamers were young, male, single, as well as high school and vocational students who belonged to middle-income families. Most of them had computer access at home but only a few had Internet access at home. Gamers tended to play games in cyber caf\'es at least three times a week, usually in the evening, for at least two hours per visit. They also reported that they played games frequently. Majority of the gamers were fond of playing DOTA, League of Legends, and CABAL and they had been playing games for at least two years. It was disclosed that they exhibited both positive and negative emotions while playing games. It was shown that gamers were inclined to be more anxious to be defeated in a game as gaming became frequent and length of years in playing games increased. They also had the tendency to become more stressed when length of years of playing games increased. On the other hand, other gaming behaviors were not significantly related to other emotions. Thus, the null hypothesis stating that gaming behaviors of the respondents are not significantly related to the emotions exhibited while playing the computer games is partially rejected. Therefore, not all emotions exhibited while playing computer games could be attributed to their gaming behaviors. It is recommended that other emotions such as anger, frustration, boredom, amusement, etc. be included in future research.