{"id":220655,"date":"2025-08-22T04:04:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T09:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/effects-of-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-and-studio-ghibli-films-on-young-peoples-sense-of-exploration-calm-mastery-and-skill-purpose-and-meaning-and-overall-happiness-in-life"},"modified":"2025-08-22T04:04:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T09:04:04","slug":"effects-of-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-and-studio-ghibli-films-on-young-peoples-sense-of-exploration-calm-mastery-and-skill-purpose-and-meaning-and-overall-happiness-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/08\/effects-of-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-and-studio-ghibli-films-on-young-peoples-sense-of-exploration-calm-mastery-and-skill-purpose-and-meaning-and-overall-happiness-in-life","title":{"rendered":"Effects of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Studio Ghibli Films on Young People\u2019s Sense of Exploration, Calm, Mastery and Skill, Purpose and Meaning, and Overall Happiness in Life: Exploratory Randomized Controlled Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/effects-of-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-and-studio-ghibli-films-on-young-peoples-sense-of-exploration-calm-mastery-and-skill-purpose-and-meaning-and-overall-happiness-in-life2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Background: Young people feel increasingly anxious and sad nowadays. Engaging with works of art and entertainment, such as playing open-world games or watching Studio Ghibli films, can be more than just a pastime. However, the extent to which, if at all, open-world games and feelings of nostalgia affect overall happiness in life remains unclear.<\/p>\n<p>Objective: This study aimed to examine the extent to which open-world games, such as <i>The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild<\/i>, and nostalgia evoked by Studio Ghibli films, such as Hayao Miyazaki\u2019s <i>My Neighbor Totoro<\/i> or <i>Kiki\u2019s Delivery Service<\/i>, affect postgraduate students\u2019 sense of exploration, calm, mastery and skill, purpose and meaning, and, ultimately, happiness in life.<\/p>\n<p>Methods: A controlled laboratory experiment was conducted using a 2 (playing an open-world game vs no open-world game) \u00d7 2 (nostalgia vs no nostalgia) between-subject design. Study participants (N=518) were randomly assigned to the study\u2019s 4 conditions and answered a brief questionnaire, examining their sense of exploration, calm, mastery and skill, purpose and meaning, and, ultimately, happiness in life. As part of the study, we conducted univariate analysis and bootstrapping-based moderated mediation analysis with 5,000 resamples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Background: Young people feel increasingly anxious and sad nowadays. Engaging with works of art and entertainment, such as playing open-world games or watching Studio Ghibli films, can be more than just a pastime. However, the extent to which, if at all, open-world games and feelings of nostalgia affect overall happiness in life remains unclear. Objective: [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1509],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}