Gaming Activities During the Covid-19 Pandemic Era: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The Covid-19 outbreak, which has been declared a pandemic since March 2020, has been causing problems worldwide. As a result, many countries have implemented lockdown policies to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus. In addition, time spent on gaming activity has increased by 52% since video game engagement was thought to be essential in improving players’ vitality, reducing psychological suffering, and helping combat stress. This literature review was conducted as a systematic literature review based on the 15 primary studies between 2020 and March 2022. Analysis of the selected primary studies revealed that the authors conducted studies of gaming activities in the Covid-19 pandemic era for four reasons: to determine the factors of play intention, factors of purchase intention, factors of gaming disorder, and to investigate the impact of the gaming activities itself. Physical health issues, family interactions, social interactions, fear of missing out, psychological distress, and time and location flexibility are the six determinants for people to continue to play video games. Meanwhile, the expectation of performance and effort were the factors that influenced purchase intention in mobile games. And from these determinant factors, it seemed that psychological distress and fear of missing out were the causes of someone experiencing a gaming disorder. As for the method employed, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was the most extensively used statistical tool in conducting quantitative research. Six of the eleven quantitative research in the primary studies utilized SEM, and the others employed other statistical tools. Although, in the selected primary studies, we also have four studies conducted qualitative research using interviews and open-ended surveys. Ten different countries were identified as the origin country of the respondents for the primary studies, with Finland and the United States as the most research object. However, we also found three studies that did not specifically mention the origin countries of the respondents.