Video Gaming And Wellbeing: A Systematic Review And Research Agenda

Video games, as an immersive and interactive technology-based leisure activity, have become a dominant form of entertainment and socialising (Tsiotsou & Boukis, 2022). The proliferation of the internet has opened up more opportunities for those who enjoy playing video games; one can participate in gaming communities online, watch video game live streaming (VGLS), and take part in eSports competitions (Cabeza-Ramírez et al., 2022). The increasingly widespread popularity of video gaming has raised a notable question about its potential implications for wellbeing, which has attracted increasing attention from scholars (e.g., Abbasi et al., 2023; Hollebeek et al., 2022). Despite the progress of video gaming research, existing results are fragmented, and no systematic study has synthesised the literature considering the myriad video gaming activities and wellbeing. Following the systematic review guidelines provided by Tranfield et al. (2003), we endeavour to do this to identify research gaps requiring further exploration. The review identified two broad video gaming activities, namely video game playing (behaviours of general players as well as amateur and professional eSports players) and video game community (VGC) engagement (involvement in different types of social media-based VGCs, including traditional VGC like in Discord and VGLS communities like Twitch). Under the theme related to video game playing and wellbeing, seven sub-themes emerged based on users’ experiences and behaviours: presence in the virtual world, escapism, challenges, microtransactions in video games, social interaction, gaming time and problematic gaming behaviours, and passion for playing games. Despite some contradictory findings, the results indicated positive associations between video game playing (e.g., presence, escapism, challenges, and social interaction) and wellbeing (e.g., Herodotou et al., 2014; Lee & Chen, 2023; Nebel & Ninaus, 2022), but also negative effects of excessive playing (e.g., Shen & Williams, 2011). Few studies explored the impacts of microtransactions on wellbeing; interestingly, the results contradicted initial assumptions and it did not harm players’ wellbeing (Etchells et al., 2022; Petrovskaya & Zendle, 2023). Given above, further studies still need to explore the outcomes of microtransaction behaviours. Additionally, most studies focused on the male population. Given the important roles of individual differences (e.g., personality and gender) on playing outcomes (Carras et al., 2017), future research should focus on all mainstream users while considering these differences. For the second theme of video game communities and wellbeing, two sub-themes are identified based on types of community channel: traditional VGC and psychosocial wellbeing, and VGLS and wellbeing. The social and utilitarian motivations as well as outcomes of VGC engagement were concluded (e.g., Bowman et al., 2022; Lin et al., 2019). However, the dark sides are overlooked. Moreover, emerging VGLS provide more interactive experiences (e.g., subscription interaction, sending virtual gifts, and reward) (Cabeza-Ramírez et al., 2022; Li et al., 2020), yet few studies have explored their outcomes on wellbeing. Based on the above, future research should broaden their focus on VGC engagement experiences by including emerging interactive features of VGLS. Furthermore, future research should consider the influences of wellbeing perceived by VGCs on further gaming behaviours.