A new scientific study has found significant effects of open-world gaming on people’s quality of life and emotional well-being. It also shows that playing games in tandem with watching nostalgia-inducing movies like Studio Ghibli’s films can have an even bigger effect, indicating that different types of media can interact with each other.
Writing in the journal JMIR Serious Games, which focuses on games studies research, a team of scientists presents evidence that playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild can have a range of positive outcomes. Testing with a sample of postgraduate students–a community famous for its high levels of anxiety, dissatisfaction, and burnout–the authors show that playing Breath of the Wild on its own can help spark a sense of purpose and meaning. Further, this game helped people feel more calm, more adventurous, and more skillful in their lives outside of the game context.
Investigating potential interactions between games and watching film, the authors also instruct a subset of participants to play Breath of the Wild and watch a clip from Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbor Totoro or Kiki’s Delivery Service in close succession. Theorizing that the film clips spark a positive sense of nostalgia among participants, the authors find an even stronger effect on overall happiness and life purpose among this subset.