ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the problem of human loneliness in the modern world is more relevant than ever. Restrictions on movement and quarantines have become an obstacle to direct communication. The threat of infection has become a factor in the spread of the "loneliness pandemic”. Communication between people through high-speed communication technologies has become the most appropriate way to maintain working and other relations. The status of online communication has changed. Online communication has become a complementary one. Through the development of high-speed communications, a person has created virtual reality, which has become an alternative to a natural one. Online communication is virtual communication, not surreal. Online communication allows a person to compensate for the negative consequences of their loneliness in conditions of limitation or impossibility of offline communications. The authors of the article analyze the possibilities of compensatory communication in the online format. The essence of compensatory communication lies in the fact that it allows a person to overcome loneliness, form new social skills, and realize opportunities for self-development. The philosophical view of communication is revealed based on the antinomic approach. The antinomic approach presents communication as unity and separation at the same time. The authors argue that communication is a prerequisite for a full-fledged human being. Online communications allow communication to overcome various restrictions, such as border closures, isolation, quarantine. An important type of online communication is the communication of gamers in the virtual universes of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). EVE Online is an example of such a game. Gamers engage in real interaction in the virtual world of the game. The virtual worlds of games become proving grounds for the development and preservation of social skills. EVE Online's audience is people who came to the virtual world for real communication. Joint gaming activities compensate for the communication gap between gamers. They have a joint existential experience, so communication of interests transforms into overcompensation. Establishing trusting relationships contributes to gamers' de-anonymization. Partnerships and friendships that started online go beyond the virtual world of the game into the real world. The authors of the article conclude that loneliness can be overcome to a large extent with the help of online communications, provided that such communications are authentic. © 2022 Tomsk State Pedagogical University. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
E-sports and online games represent an entertainment industry that before the 2020 year was characterized by an incredible development. The COVID19 emergency has further accelerated the global process of diffusion of e-sports and online games, consecrating it as the leading economic industry in the entertainment and technology sector. This paper presents a study that is part of the URBAN GAMERS LAB project (in progress), that describes the role of conscientiousness and toxic behaviors. The study involves 227 professional e-gamers aged between 15 and 34 y.o. This project it is part of an interdisciplinary project that involves a municipality in the Emilia-Romagna region, schools' teachers, and researchers from University of Bologna: departments of psychology, architecture, and engineering. The main objective of the study is to investigate the relationship between the conscientiousness (measured by variables such as responsibility, traditionalism, orderliness, industriousness, virtue, self-control) and disturbing toxic behaviors (Mediocritizing, Sabotaging, Hostage Holding, Flaming), played by e-gamers during different phases of the online game League of Legends (LoL). Preliminary results show that for conscientiousness, there are no significant correlations with age but there is a significant correlation with gender and be part of an e-sports team. The latter is negative correlated with gender, positive correlated with been playing League of Legends and play ranked games. This aspect is positive correlated with age and been playing League of Legends. Regarding toxic behaviors, age does not seem to play an important role, that is, no correlations have been found between age and toxic behaviors. While there is a negative correlation with sabotaging and Hostage Holding and a positive correlation with flaming. Considering instead, how long they have been playing LoL, being more experienced negatively correlates with sabotaging, played with teammates who showed little mastery and positive correlated with being a victim of flaming in chat during a game Turning on been part of an eSports team, results show that this aspect positive correlates with being a victim of flaming in chat during a game and decided to mute the chat because of it. Finally, playing ranked games negatively correlates with sabotaging, and positively correlates with being a victim of flaming in chat during a game and decided to mute your chat because of it. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Anxiety and Depression are among the extremely crucial mental health issues. Every year, millions of individuals suffer from depression and anxiety, yet only a small percentage of them receive timely treatment. Throughout the last few decades, the evolution of machine learning methods has considerably aided in the development of technologies that assist clinicians in predicting various sorts of mental illnesses. As the Covid-19 pandemic rapidly spreads over the world, the global gaming industry is booming. Youth is increasingly focused on digital games due to lockdown and social distancing policies. This work presents a system for predicting if a player suffers from psychological illnesses such as anxiety and depression by combining game and player information with a selfesteem measure. The game and player's data has been gathered from two questionnaires namely, GAD and SWL, and multiple state-of-the-art simulations have been conducted. Four different machine learning classifiers were tested using 10-fold cross-validation approach on data set of internet gamers. Among the four algorithms, Decision Tree classifier showed the best accuracy for all predicted parameters. For GAD and SWL questionnaires, decision tree obtains accuracy of 100% and 84.71% respectively. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there is a significant increase in online gaming and other online activities, such as watching eSports and live streaming. This happened because the government require people to stay at home. Electricity used can be categorized as the scope 2 carbon emissions that have a negative impact to our environment. If there are more people do gaming activities, the carbon emissions produced will also be higher. Previous study shown that game spending affects the durations of gaming activities. This paper uses a qualitative research method by interviewing 18 respondents consisting of 17 gamers and 1 eSport expert. It is shown that during pandemic, the duration of playing video games increase significantly, this is also followed by an increase in their spending on in-game purchases and subscriptions. This can lead to the production of higher carbon emissions. Surprisingly, it was discovered that the electricity consumption of one server building is equal to the consumption of JABABEKA. This is considered as a big problem because gaming companies don't disclose concrete activities to reduce carbon emissions and tend to hands-off their wastes to other party. On the other hand, gamers tend to have low awareness about this issue. We suggest that gamers should be more aware about this issue and reduce their gaming activities, gaming related industries could do CSR by doing reforestation to help remove carbon dioxide, and government should expand the use of renewable energy to generate electricity. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The game development industry is among the leading industries globally, and in 2020, gaming emerged as a popular entertainment activity upon the COVID-19 outbreak. Thus, competition among gaming companies is high. Hence, they try to adopt new technologies often. Gaming brings multiple feelings for the gamer. At times, the conditions may get even worse from the game's end where the gamer may end up venting out his rage and annoyance. Hence, there is a massive possibility for the gamer to switch to another game which may result in the company to lose its customers. In that scenario, this system can monitor the emotional states of the gamer while playing and manipulate the gaming environment, sound environment, enemy behavior, and gamer mechanism according to the emotional state of the gamer. The sensor-based emotion tracking system identifies the gamer's emotional state using facial emotions, detected through a webcam and heart rate, detected through sensors. The development was carried out through the machine learning models, open cv, Arduino techniques, and reactive programming. The emotional state and facial emotions that will be tracked will count to an accuracy of above 95%. Through that, the target will be to make the gamer satisfied by building appreciation for the services given and by improving the gamer's gaming experience and retain the gamer with the game provider. © 2021 IEEE.