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Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Playing Animal Crossing daily can benefit mental well-being

Using the data of 6500 anonymous players, videogames have shown to benefit mental health to a degree.

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In a major study by the University of Oxford, researchers has found playing games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Plants vs Zombies daily can benefit your mental health. They have been working with both EA and Nintendo to get data on 6500 anonymous players, and it showed that those who did spend more time with these two games expressed more satisfaction with their mental well-being.

The study lands in the following conclusions:

"Contrary to many fears that excessive game time will lead to addiction and poor mental health, we found a small positive relation between gameplay and well-being."

"Overall, our findings suggest that regulating video games, on the basis of time, might not bring the benefits many might expect, though the correlational nature of the data limits that conclusion."

The professor who led the study, Andrew Przybylski, does however point out that playing Animal Crossing isn't necessarily making you happier by itself:

"If you play Animal Crossing for four hours a day, every single day, you're likely to say you feel significantly happier than someone who doesn't.

That doesn't mean Animal Crossing by itself makes you happy."

It is nice to see studies being made about the well being of video games, instead of all the baseless accusations we are used to see towards gaming in general. What do you think about these results?

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Thanks Games Industry

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