When Representative Al Green of Texas started shouting and waving his cane around during Donald Trump's address to Congress last month, pundits described the Democrat as causing a disruption, pulling a stunt, or peacefully protesting. In the wilds of online alternative media, another term was being used: malding. Mald is a blend of mad and bald. It's video-gamer slang for getting so angry after suffering a loss that you pull your hair out. I learned the word by watching Twitch, the streaming platform that is famous for turning video games into a spectator sport'and that has, of late, become an important forum for political commentary. One of the most popular Twitch streamers right now is a 35-year-old World of Warcraft expert who goes by the name Asmongold and primarily streams under the handle zackrawrr. On the day after Trump's congressional address, Asmongold kicked off his stream by telling his viewers he was excited to finish playing the new game Monster Hunter Wilds'and to sort through the fallout from Trump's speech....
In the final episode of Season 1 of The Last of Us, the most emotionally wrenching zombie-apocalypse TV show ever made, a loner named Joel stalks through a hospital, his face as emotionless as the Terminator's, killing everyone in his way. He is trying to save a young woman named Ellie, who holds the secret to curing the zombie plague, but to make that antidote, she has to die, and Joel would rather let his species go extinct than lose her. I recently asked the actor who plays Joel, Pedro Pascal, how he found a way to justify his character's rampage. He responded: 'I understand why he did it, but I can't justify it.' The Last of Us is based on a video game of the same name, and the second season of the series premieres this week. Before The Last of Us, I had never been a serious gamer, for the same reason I don't do cocaine: I'm an ADHD-addled depressive with escape fantasies, and if I tried it, I might never come back. So, outside of Mario Kart races with my kids, I abstained. But on one of the uncountable empty days of the early coronavirus pandemic, I put down $300 to buy a Playstation 4, which came prepackaged with The Last of Us. The game booted up and showed me an open window, its curtain blowing in a light breeze. I was told to 'Press Any Button.' I did....
The research ' which was done from December 2020 to March 2022 ' found that even just owning a game console increased life satisfaction and reduced psychological distress. The results were published today in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings are a first step towards demonstrating a causal link between gaming and mental-health benefits, says Andrew Przybylski, a psychologist who studies how video games influence players' mental health at the University of Oxford, UK. 'The study provides a worked example that games researchers all around the world should follow closely,' he says. But he adds that conducting the experiment during the pandemic could have amplified the mental-health benefits of gaming because people's mental health was generally poorer at that time and there were fewer opportunities to engage in other activities. The effect on well-being will need to be tested outside that situation, he says. Although studies have explored the effects of gaming on addiction, well-being, cognitive function and aggression, the results have been mixed2,3. Most of this research has relied on observational data, which cannot be used to tease apart cause and effect, says study co-author Hiroyuki Egami, a behavioural scientist at Nihon University in Tokyo. Many video-gaming studies are also done in controlled laboratory settings, making it difficult to assess the mental-health effects of gaming in daily life, adds Egami....
They started with fliers. The group of World of Warcraft developers at Activision Blizzard, determined to unionize, were testing the waters after Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition. Microsoft had pledged to honor a labor neutrality agreement, active 60 days after the deal's close, that would allow workers to explore collective bargaining without fear. Even with that agreement on their side, developers were still nervous about even showing interest in a union, says Paul Cox, a senior quest designer who served on the union's organizing committee. 'Prior to [the agreement], we had a lot of people who were like, 'I'm interested, but I'm really worried about retaliation. I am terrified about getting my name put anywhere.'' he adds. That fear wasn't unfounded. Prior to Microsoft's acquisition, when they were still under Activision Blizzard's leadership, unionized quality assurance workers at a studio in Albany, New York, accused management of engaging in union busting tactics. According to one QA tester WIRED spoke to at the time, management was hostile to their efforts, pulling employees into 'spontaneous meetings' and 'spread[ing] misleading or false information about unions and the unionization process' in a company Slack channel....
