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The Impact of Video Gaming on Players

Research Proposal

Student’s name

English Language Department, Nile University

ENGL201

Professor’s Name

January, 2022
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The Impact of Video Gaming on Players

1. Introduction

1.1 Rationale

Video gaming nowadays is becoming a prevalent hobby not only among children but

among adolescents too. It is currently considered more than just entertainment; some consider

gaming a professional sport, while others see it as a career. It is a very big and diversified

industry, and thus it has its own flaws and drawbacks that affect the players, as well as others

such as developers, artists, and all affiliated to the same industry. Within this research, seek to

assess how video gaming influences players, the existing literature on video gaming is mixed and

often focuses on either negative impacts or positive impacts only. Our aim in this paper is to

study the perceptions of the effects of video gaming, and study why it is an important article of

interest in our everyday life to understand whether video games deserve all the public reputation

and rumors they often get or not.

1.2 Research Question

How do NU undergraduate students perceive the the impacts of video gaming on them?

2. Literature Review Outline

I. Definition of gaming (Quwaider, Alabed & Duwairi, 2019)  

A. Key elements of video gaming (Rogers, 2016) 

B. Genres of gaming  

1. Action (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018) 

2. Adventure (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018)  

3. Open world-sandbox (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018)  

4. Strategy (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018)  

5. Role-playing (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018)  

6. Simulation (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018)  

C. Motivation to play video games (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018)   

D. Trends in video gaming (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018) 

II. Negative impacts of gaming  

A. Effects on brain and behavior, improvements in the cognitive function (Bavelier,

Green & Han, 2011)  

B.  Violent games impact on aggression, the good and the bad (Ferguson, 2007) 

C. Gaming effect on obesity of the player (Rogers, 2016) 

D. Video games have a negative influence on behavior and visuospatial

cognition (Ferguson, 2007) 

III. Positive impacts of gaming  

A. Video games in flourishing mental health (Quwaider, Alabed & Duwairi, 2019) 

B. Use of video games in education (Bavelier, Green & Han, 2011) 

C. How video games influence the behavior of players (Rogers, 2016) 

D. Integrating impactful video games into treatment (DeRosier & Thomas, 2018) 

IV. Conclusion 

A. Summary

B. Research gap

3. (Mini) Literature Review

1. Definition of video gaming

The simplest explanation for video games is that they are interactive software primarily

used for entertainment. According to Quwaider et. al. (2019), video games are like sports but

being played on a computer, it is more like a rough simulation of real life, which allows players

to access these environments virtually, 2D or 3D.

1.1 Key elements of video gaming

Key elements of video gaming can be considered as the main aspects that assure an

enjoyable, successful and unordinary video game experience for the players. According to

Rogers (2016), key elements of video games contribute to the effects of video games, so in our

paper, we will be discussing only three of them that were covered by Rogers (2016): rules,

interactivity, and feedback.

1.2 Genres of video gaming

With the ever-increasing number of video games and game developers, it is impossible to

count or list all the genres of video games. However, each video game represents one or more of

these genres. In our paper, we will be considering the most common 6 of them; action,

adventure, open world-sandbox, strategy, role-playing, and simulation, as explained by DeRosier

and Thomas (2018).

1.3 Motivation to play video games

In order to understand fully the different types and genres of video gaming, it is essential

to know what motivates players to play video games in the first place. As reported by DeRosier

and Thomas (2018), teens are motivated to play video games for their passion of defeating each

other; they love the feeling of victory and achieving a goal, they admire creating and controlling

their own character. DeRosier and Thomas (2018) concluded that players choose specific video

game genres according to their features that satisfy their basic psychological needs.
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2. Negative impacts of video gaming

Research has reached numerous negative impacts to videogaming, such as its effects on

cognition, levels of aggression, and weight gain, and behavior. Merzenich (2011) stated how

intensive exposure to video games could lead to ADHD-linked behaviors. Moreover, Freguesen

(2007) stated how video game violence could be related to different measures of aggression.

Obesity is another side effect to vieo gaming. Rogers (2016) stressed that through reporting how

when the players take a big portion of his or her time playing video games, this adds up to be in

the house all day or not being interested in participating in sports or any activities. This will

result in the player to gain weight depending on their playing hours routine. Excessive gaming

was also linked to behavior and visuospatial abilities. Fregueson (2007) stated, “violent video

game playing was associated with higher visuospatial cognition. It may be advisable to reframe

the violent video game debate about potential costs and benefits of this medium.”  

3. Positive impacts of video gaming  

Despite all those negative effects to videogaming, it was proven to have positive impact

on education, behavior and certain aspects of patient treatment. Quwaider et. al. (2019)

discovered that neurons in the human body cope with the effects that occur while playing video

games in the same way as they deal with the effects in the real world. It should be stated that

video games could have beneficial effects on players' attitudes, such as enhancing social skills,

mental skills, and problem-solving abilities. Moreover, Bavelier et. al. (2011) found behavioral

advantages to playing action games. For example, improvements in low-level vision, visual

attention, and speed of memory. Video games have played a part in education. As mentioned by

one of the interviewers stated by Rogers (2016), video games have taught him more about the
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Second World War than any history classes he has taken. This demonstrates that video games

can be an effective teaching tool.

4. Conclusion

Almost all studies have focused on the impact of video games on players' social and

mental health, either in good manner or in a bad manner. However, few studies have been made

on the influence of video games on Egyptian gamers, especially among young adults aged

between 18 to 26 years. Thus, our research will focus on the effect of video games on Nile

university students.

4. Methodology

Our research will adopt a quantitative research design to find patterns in the collected

data, and to reach conclusions about the relationships between video games and their advantages

and disadvantages. We will rely on convenience sampling of Egyptian NU students, aged 18-26.

We will share an online questionnaire with students of different majors of both genders. Our

questionnaire shall include 14 questions: 4 on demographic traits such age, gender, and major,

and core questions to address the main objective of our research. Questions will mainly consist

of yes/no and multiple-choice questions with the option of adding extra comments. We are

targeting a sample of 100 participants.

References

Bavelier, D. , Green, C. S., Han, D. H., Renshaw, P. F., Merzenich, M. M. & Gentile, D. A.

(2011, November 18). Brains on video games. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12, 763–

768. Retrieved from: https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3135

DeRosier, M.E., Thomas, J.M. (2018, March 2). Video Games and Their Impact on Teens’

Mental Health. Springer. Retrieved from:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-69638-6_17

Ferguson, C.J. (2007, October 4). The Good, The Bad and the Ugly: A Meta-analytic Review of

Positive and Negative Effects of Violent Video Games. Psychiatric Quarterly, 78, 309–

316. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-007-9056-9

Jones, C. M. , Scholes, L. , Johnson, D. , Katsikitis, M. & Carras, M. C. (2014, March 31).

Gaming well: links between video games and flourishing mental health. Frontiers in

Psychology. Retrieved from:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00260/full

Quwaider, M., Alabed, A. & Duwairi, R. (2019). The Impact of Video Games on the Players

Behaviors: A Survey. Procedia Computer Science, 151, 575-582. Retrieved from:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050919305393?via%3Dihub

Rogers, R. (2016, May 17). How Video Games Impact Players: The Pitfalls and Benefits of a

Gaming Society. Lexington Books. Retrieved from: https://books.google.com.eg/books?

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