Bibliographic details and abstracts are available to all. Downloads of full-text dissertations are restricted to University of Portsmouth members who must login. MPhils may be accessed by all.

Abstract

With the Covid-19 pandemic putting the whole world on stand still, confining people in their homes and closing down the non essential economy. Human habits changed and new people were pulled into the gaming world to have a sense of social interactions, which has been taken away from them due to the ‘stay at home’ restrictions in place, to stop the spread of covid. With games being used as a new form of social activity with friends and family the industry gained many new consumers. This study will focus on the sustainability of the new gamers that shifted the social habits to online gaming due to the isolation period. The hypothesis going forward to prove in this research is ‘that online multiplayer games will become a normal and more open social activity to more people due to either obtaining the joy for games to pass the time or the social aspect to online gaming, this is because of the isolation period during the pandemic’.
The literature review will look into the effects covid has had on the gaming industry, changes in human habits during the lockdown/restrictions, the social aspect to humans and further research into the types of games the community played during lockdown and whether there is a link between the types of games played and the social connection to online gaming.
The secondary research analysis was carried out through a community survey, 
which portrayed the significant number of participants turning to games from all ages and showing the many other habits that were conducted in the lockdowns to pass the time. The data provided proves that gaming had a big impact on the community during lockdown and kept the human nature of socialising alive through the online gaming world .The result of the hypothesis was considered null due to the world still being in the covid-19 pandemic and to reach an alternative hypothesis further data will have to be carried out after the pandemic ends and allow the community to adjust to the normality of pre covid, to further analyse and reach a conclusive conclusion.

Course: Computer Games Enterprise - BSc (Hons) - C1672

Date Deposited: 2022-02-18

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis13839.html