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By unpacking different forms of Internet and massively multiplayer online game (MMO) use, the present study adopts a nuanced approach to examine the connections between online activities and psychosocial well-being. It combined self-reported survey data with unobtrusive behavioral data from server logs of a large virtual world, EverQuest II. Over 5,000 players were surveyed about how they use the Internet, their specific activities in the virtual world, and their psychosocial well-being. In-game communication networks were also constructed and analyzed.The results showed support for both time displacement and social augmentation effects for various activities. Whether Internet and MMO use were associated with negative or positive outcomes was largely dependent on the purposes, contexts, and individual characteristics of users. The results suggest that Internet use and game play have significant nuances and should not be considered as monolithic sources of effects.

This study applies theories of computer-mediated communication and human-computer interaction to the study of transactive memory systems (TMS; how small groups coordinate expertise, for which communication is the central mechanism) in video game teams. A large-scale survey ( N = 18,627) of players from the small group video game League of Legends (LoL) combined with server-side data provided by Riot Games (the creators of LoL) was conducted to look at the relationship between TMS and win/loss outcome as well as the role of team size and past team member acquaintanceship on the formation of TMS, using social presence as a mediator. Results found that TMS was highly predictive of the likelihood of a team winning a game, and that while past team member acquaintanceship predicted TMS, team size did not. Furthermore, only two dimensions of social presence, copresence and perceived comprehension, were related to TMS. These two dimensions fully mediated the relationship between past team member acquaintanceship and TMS.

This study examined how self-presentation on social media influences the way people view themselves. It also examined whether that varies with sites using two temporal features: posts which have a short life (ephemeral) and those which live indefinitely (permanent). Drawing on both the notion of public commitment and self-symbolizing, our experiment provided a critical test of two rival theory-driven hypotheses—one suggesting a greater internalization of presented self on permanent rather than ephemeral social media and the other suggesting the opposite pattern. Supporting the self-symbolizing perspective, those who publicly presented themselves on ephemeral social media internalized their portrayed personality. Also, such a difference in internalization between the two conditions was triggered by an introverted self-presentation. Results suggest that ephemerality enhances self-symbolizing efforts and the subsequent internalization by affording nonstrategic self-presentation and reducing impression management concerns. Implications for understanding self-concept change in social media contexts are discussed.

The present research addresses the stereotype that women and girls lack the ability to succeed compared to men and boys in video games. Previous lab-based research has found that playing spatial-action video games potentially reduces the gender gap in spatial-thinking skills, while previous field studies of less spatially oriented online games have found that the perceived gender-performance gap actually results from the amount of previous gameplay time, which is confounded with gender. Extending both lines of research, the present field study examines player performance in a spatial-action game, the vehicle-based shooter World of Tanks. Results from 3,280 players suggest that women appear to accrue fewer experience points per match than men, signaling lower performance ability, but that when the amount of previous gameplay time is statistically controlled, this gender difference is negated. These results lend support to the claim that playing video games—even spatial-action games—diminishes the gender-performance gap, which is potentially useful for promoting gender equity in STEM fields.

This study proposes a structural approach to examining online bridging and bonding social capital in a large virtual world. It tests the effects of individual players' network brokerage and closure on their task performance and trust of other players. Bridging social capital is operationalized as brokerage, the extent to which one is tied to disconnected others, and bonding social capital as closure, the extent to which one is embedded in a densely connected group. Social networks were constructed from behavioral server logs of EverQuest II, a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Results provided strong support for the structural model, demonstrating that players' network brokerage positively predicted their task performance in the game and players embedded in closed networks were more likely to trust each other.

This study employs an experiment to test assessments of music composed by artificial intelligence. We examined the influence of (a) met or unmet expectations about artificial intelligence (AI)-composed music, (b) whether the music is better or worse than expected, and (c) the genre of the evaluation of music using a 2 (expectancy violation vs confirmation) × 2 (positive vs negative evaluation) × 2 (electronic dance music vs classical) design. The relationship between the belief about creative AI and the music evaluation was also analyzed. Participants ( n = 299) in an online survey listened to a randomly assigned music piece. The acceptance of creative AI was found to have a positive relationship with the assessment of AI-composed music. A two-way interaction between the expectancy violation and its valence, and a three-way interaction between the expectancy violation, its valence, and the genre of music were found. Implications for Expectancy Violation Theory and AI applications are discussed.

A large-scale content analysis of characters in video games was employed to answer questions about their representations of gender, race and age in comparison to the US population. The sample included 150 games from a year across nine platforms, with the results weighted according to game sales. This innovation enabled the results to be analyzed in proportion to the games that were actually played by the public, and thus allowed the first statements able to be generalized about the content of popular video games. The results show a systematic over-representation of males, white and adults and a systematic under-representation of females, Hispanics, Native Americans, children and the elderly. Overall, the results are similar to those found in television research. The implications for identity, cognitive models, cultivation and game research are discussed.

The need satisfaction and psychological benefits derived from gameplay are generally understudied for older video game players. This study connects the Self-Determination Theory, Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development, and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory to understand players' in-game behaviors and their corresponding need satisfaction from a developmental perspective. Survey data from 1213 randomly sampled World of Tanks players were combined with their behavioral data to investigate how players' behaviors and their corresponding need satisfaction differ or converge across age. Age and in-game behaviors were tested as moderators for the relationship between perceived need satisfaction and psychological well-being. The results showed that despite underperforming and having fewer in-game connections, older players reported no significant difference in their perceived competence and relatedness than younger players. Perceived competence and relatedness contributed to psychological well-being for both older and younger players, although it carried more weight for the younger. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

This article proposes an empirical test of whether aggregate economic behavior maps from the real to the virtual. Transaction data from a large commercial virtual world — the first such data set provided to outside researchers — is used to calculate metrics for production, consumption and money supply based on real-world definitions. Movements in these metrics over time were examined for consistency with common theories of macroeconomic change. The results indicated that virtual economic behavior follows real-world patterns. Moreover, a natural experiment occurred, in that a new version of the virtual world with the same rules came online during the study. The new world's macroeconomic aggregates quickly grew to be nearly exact replicas of those of the existing worlds, suggesting that `Code is Law': macroeconomic outcomes in a virtual world may be explained largely by design structure.