During our 2019 ARCADE festival, we became aware anecdotally that many people consider gaming to be important to their mental health.

We also wanted to learn a bit about who attends our festival.

We asked social researcher Annie Wild and programmer Dr. Colin Combe to delve into these questions and create an interactive artwork for live display as people responded during the festival.

Digital Square - open source code for Digital Square

Download Dr. Combe’s free, open-source javascript for Digital Square

Survey Highlights

• 51% (from 99 responses) answered ‘Yes’ when asked “Have you ever struggled with feelings of isolation, low mood or worries?”, 27% said “No”, 4% selected “prefer not to say”.

• Asked “Have you ever used video games to help you get through tough times?”, 38% said “often”, 28% “sometimes”, 20% “very occasionally. Only 14% said “no, never”.

• Asked “Do you think video gaming has a mostly positive or negative effect on your mental health and wellbeing?”, 55% said ‘mostly positive’, while 26% said it had ‘A mix of both positive and negative effects’.

• 67% of respondents (from 50 responses) said that the social side of online gaming was “fairly” or “very” important to them

• 56% of respondents (from 115 responses) to the question “How often do you play video games, including games on your phone?”, 29% said “regularly” or “all the time”, 28% said “occasionally”.

• 73% of respondents (from 98 responses) played games online.

• In total, 131 people were surveyed over the three-day festival, although not everyone answered every question.

• 56% identified as Male, 35% as Female, 2% as ‘other’, 5% percent preferred not to say.

(PDF – 274kb)