A Lot of People Spent More Time Gaming During the Pandemic
A lot of people wound up with a lot of spare time during the COVID-19 crisis. As a result, they searched for various things with which to occupy themselves. Thanks to this, numerous entertainment companies saw an upswing in sales, with mobile gaming companies as well as other gaming companies being excellent examples. However, it is worth mentioning that gaming during the pandemic seemed to have had beneficial effects for people.
How Did Gaming Help During the Pandemic?
Here are some examples of how mobile gaming and other forms of gaming during the pandemic were beneficial:
Socialization
Socialization took a serious hit because of the COVID-19 crisis. After all, people were supposed to practice social distancing, meaning that they minimized the number of people with whom they had close contact. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this didn’t do good things for their mental and emotional well-being because humans are social animals that need social interaction. As such, a lot of people searched for ways to engage in social interaction without violating social distancing. One method was gaming during the pandemic. Simply put, multiplayer games provided a simple way for people to spend time with one another. It wasn’t quite as good as being in the same room together. However, it was still a step up from no social interaction whatsoever, meaning that it played a valuable role in helping people sustain good mental health.
Cognitive Stimulation
Speaking of which, people also need cognitive stimulation to do their best. Without it, it is very easy for people to become bored, which can have a surprisingly horrible effect on their happiness. Unfortunately, being forced to stay home meant that a lot of people lost their chief sources of cognitive stimulation. Even worse, social distancing meant that they had a difficult time seeking out cognitive stimulation by heading out. Mobile gaming and other forms of gaming provided an easy substitute, thus enabling people to keep their minds well-honed.
Less Stress and Less Anxiety
Stress and anxiety are notorious for having a corrosive effect on human well-being. After all, they shut down a person’s immune system, thus increasing their chances of getting a wide range of serious medical problems over time. On top of that, stress and anxiety can be self-strengthening because both of them make it more difficult for people to pull out of problematic patterns of behavior, thus causing them to become more and more burdened. Moreover, it should be mentioned that a lot of people already suffer from high levels of stress and anxiety, meaning that they didn’t need the extra hit that came from the COVID-19 crisis plus its attendant ills. Gaming provided a way for people to relieve some of that stress and anxiety, thus making them more capable of coping with circumstances. Better still, games come in a wide range of forms, meaning that they were sure to find something suitable for that purpose no matter what their personal preferences might be.
Sense of Agency
One of the more subtle but nonetheless unpleasant effects of the COVID-19 crisis was the sheer sense of helplessness that it instilled in people. After all, there was a serious limit to what normal people could do to help either themselves or other people, which is the kind of thing that leads to a slow and steady build-up of negative emotions. Under those circumstances, gaming was a way for people to exercise their sense of agency, thus helping them feel more confident as well as more in-control than otherwise possible. Moreover, it was easy because this was something that could be done through something as simple as completing missions in games.