Maniac Mansion or Wing Commander? The attenuating influence of video game adoption on stress signals in times of forced isolation

• Fine-tuned transfomer model used to capture strong-stress signals in Tweets. • Diff-in-Diff analysis of more than 100,000 Tweets from 190 new video gamers. • New gamers display lower strong-stress signals during the Covid-19 pandemic. • Attenuation effect significantly stronger than other pastime activities. • Online gaming reduces loneliness, which leads to lower strong stress signals. As suggested by the two games in our title, video gaming research has long debated whether gaming positively ( Wing Commander ) or negatively ( Maniac Mansion ) affects a player’s mental health. We add to this stream of research by investigating how video gaming during the Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on strong stress signals. We follow a multi-method approach and first compare strong stress signals in a set of more than 100,000 Tweets originating from more than 190 Twitter users that either solely follow game accounts or other entertainment accounts covering a period of nine months each before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Our results show that video game players show significantly lower levels of high-stress signal increase during the pandemic than the non-gamer group. Further relying on a set of scenario experiments we demonstrate that playing video games online helps to reduce the feeling of loneliness and leads to stress signal attenuation. To allow game developers to get a better understanding of which elements do help with decreasing stress signals, we further control for contingencies such as video game characteristics. Our granular analysis demonstrates that the stress signal attenuation observed in gamers is closely linked to a game’s capacity to foster social interactions. Our findings offer initial insights for game developers, suggesting that designing games with a focus on social interaction could help new gamers with attenuating stress signals in times of forced isolation.