We officially have proof that video games are good for your mood – well, at least one in particular. An Oxford University study showed that playing the eponymous game Powerwash Simulator (PWS) showed a small improvement in the moods of more than 70% of its participants.
Independent researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute collaborated with UK-based game studio FuturLab to measure this by developing a custom edition of its popular title in 2022, which included a few tweaks to survey players' moods. By gathering data from 8,695 players across 67,328 play sessions, they recorded an 'affective uplift' during play among 72% of participants, with the bulk of it occurring during the first 15 minutes.
According to the developer, PWS racked up 12 million players as of April this year, and I'm one of them. It's a great way to decompress – you get to pick up a power washer, spray down a building or vehicle or some other large object that needs cleaning, and simply soak in the satisfying feeling of blasting away all sorts of muck. It's not competitive, and is particularly enjoyable alongside music, podcasts, or audiobooks.
The Research Edition of PWS cooked up by FuturLab recorded game play events, game status records, participant demographics, and players' responses to psychological survey items. The lattermost appeared in the game through dialog from characters integrated into the title. If you already owned PWS, you could snag a copy of the Research Edition for free, and earn bonus in-game items for participating in the study.
Measuring moods
The researchers aimed to answer three key questions with this study:
- To what extent does mood change from immediately before playing the game to during play?
- How heterogeneous are these changes in the population of similar players?
- How do changes in mood develop over the course of a gaming session?
Using what's called a Visual Analogue Scale that players could easily self-report their state with, they found that PWS is linked with a small improvement in mood during the first several minutes of play.
It recorded as a larger positive mood shift than you'd typically see when watching TV, reading, and shopping – but less than the shifts associated with listening to music, eating, taking a walk, or having sex.
So no, it's not the ultimate panacea for when you're feeling blue. Rather, the research team believes games like PWS might help folks who experience persistently low moods, and prove effective in stabilizing noxious moods rather than enhancing neutral ones.
Should we all play video games more often?
Over the last few years, games have been found to help with mental health challenges. Most recently, we heard about Tetris helping to reduce PTSD flashbacks.
That said, the researchers point out that it won't make sense to extrapolate from their findings that all kinds of games can boost your mood – largely because this study wasn't set up that way.
"This study was not an experiment, nor did we employ methods required for rigorous causal inference from observational data, and therefore our results regarding the causal effects of video game play on mood are tentative at best," the team notes in the study paper. "Without a control condition, we have nothing to compare our results to: we cannot say if the changes in mood observed during PWS play would have occurred with other games, non-game activities, or indeed no activity at all. "
Still, I'm happy to find a good reason to aim my virtual power washer at a grimy old mansion – and it's nice to finally have data to back it up.
