Lemmings

The classic game Lemmings was researched as part of a study exploring how games with prosocial content increased players positive social behaviour in real life. Prosocial games require players to help other characters to complete the game.

To test this idea the research team looked at four video games which were either prosocial, neutral or aggressive. The prosocial games chosen were Lemmings and City Crisis, the neutral game was Tetris and the aggressive game was Lamers. Participants were ased to play one of the four games for ten minutes. After playing the game they completed a validated scale to measure positive and negative emotions. They also completed a brief questionnaire about their experience playing the game, including how exciting the game was, how frustrating it was and how prosocial or antisocial it was. The research team also conducted four experiments to asses how participants would react in a situation where another person needed help. In one experiment a member of the research team split pencils on the floor, and the participants had the option to help pick them up or not.

The research team found that playing a prosocial video game like Lemmings did foster positive social behaviour, relative to playing a neutral or antisocial game. In the pencil experiment 67% of participants who played Lemmings or City Crisis helped pick up pencils, where as only 33% of the Tetris players did and only 28% of the Lamers players did.