PowerWash Simulator, the wet and wild sim from FuturLab, is heading to University of Oxford as part of a unique open online data resource in video game studies.
When we announce some news for PowerWash Simulator, it’s usually a trip to Croft Manor or a scrubbing down in Bikini Bottom. This time, its for something a little more than a traditional DLC pack. The developer behind this hugely popular clean up sim has teamed up with University of Oxford and Tilburg University to create a huge online resource full of details on thee way we play.
The two scholarly institutions have been slurping up data from fully opted-in participants using a special version of FuturLab’s popular video game, since August 2022. The resulting dataset is now the largest data set on this topic in the world. Over 11,000 players from 39 countries worldwide make up a completely transparent data set that is now online and accessible to all. This means that boffin types prepared to do the analysis can learn immense amounts about how we play and the impact it has on us as a population.
First author, Dr Matti Vuorre, Assistant Professor, Tilburg University explains: “Despite widespread worries about the impacts of games on the mental health and wellbeing of players, there is little empirical evidence to support or refute these concerns. We set out to address those concerns by collaborating with FuturLab to collect real-time in-play data about how people feel when they are gaming, and not sometime after as is usually done in video game research. Together we have created a fully transparent online resource of gaming data, which as far as we are aware is the largest repository of its kind in the world.”
Full analysis of the study has yet to be published and peer reviewed but will follow in the coming months, looking in more depth at how video game play affects players’ well-being.
Of course, the data set is focused on PowerWash Simulator. A title where players clean areas, objects, and vehicles in the fictional town of Muckingham. This first person clean em up is generally considered to be on the calming side of the shelf, so let’s wait and see what concrete evidence gets wrung out of this. For now, we’re back to some high pressure adventures in PowerWash Simulator.
