Playing for a Better Future: How Animal Avatars Influence the Attitude of Players

Digital games allow us to adopt the avatar's perspective and experience the (virtual) world from another point of view. The positive effects of such role swaps are well-documented in contexts such as combating racial or ethnic biases. Our work expands this research direction by considering animal avatars: We hypothesize that playing as an animal can improve our attitude towards wildlife and nature. In particular, this manuscript contributes a first systematic study on the effects of animal avatars on players' implicit attitudes towards animals. Our study (N = 78) employs two commercial games featuring different animal avatars, Endling - Extinction is Forever and Bee Simulator, and compares the results of implicit association tests administered before and after gameplay. Our findings confirm significant positive effects of the games on players' implicit associations with foxes and bees. Together with several interesting insights regarding player-avatar relationships and avatar identification, our work paves the groundwork for games contributing positively to societal change.