"Humanities-based" approaches emphasise how games generate meanings and reflect or subvert wider social and cultural discourses.
As a young field, it gathers scholars from different disciplines that had been broadly studying games, such as psychology, anthropology, economy, education, and sociology.
The purpose of this study was to examine whether or not playing violent video games led to an increase in aggressive behaviors.
However, it has been pointed out, and even stressed, by psychologist Jonathan Freedman that this research was very limited and even problematic since overly strong claims were made and the authors themselves seemed extremely biased in their writings.
More recent studies, such as the one performed by Christopher J. Ferguson at Texas A&M International University have come to drastically different conclusions.
[8] Over the past 15 years, a large number of meta-studies have been applied to this issue, each coming to its own conclusion, resulting in little consensus in the ludology community.
Anderson and Dill seem to believe that it may be due to the frustration of playing video games that could in turn result in violent, aggressive behaviour.
More sociologically-informed research has sought to move away from simplistic ideas of gaming as either 'negative' or 'positive', but rather seeking to understand its role and location in the complexities of everyday life.
The ludological perspective says that games are not like these other mediums due to the fact that a player is actively taking part in the experience and should therefore be understood on their own terms.
Juul claims that the most significant difference between the two is that in a narrative, events "have to" follow each other, whereas in a game the player has control over what happens.
[22] Kokonis noted that "endorsing [Frasca's] constructivist spirit we will have to agree that the so-called Narratology vs. Ludology Dilemma is a false one and that this debate will have to be resolved, as it is of no help to the cause of establishing Computer Games Study as an autonomous and independent academic field.
[26] Researchers such as Sarah Mosberg Iversen have argued that most of the academic work on games and ageing has been informed by notions of economical productivity,[27] while Bob De Schutter and Vero Vanden Abeele have suggested a game design approach that is not focused on age-related decline but instead is rooted in the positive aspects of older age.
Markets based on digital information can be fully tracked as they are used by players, and thus real problems in the economy, such as inflation, deflation and even recession.
These games allow the economists to be omniscient, they can find every piece of information they need to study the economy, while in the real world they have to work with presumptions.
Former Finance Minister of Greece and Valve's in-house economist Yanis Varoufakis studied EVE Online as a measure for the Greek economic recovery and argued that video game communities such as Neopets and Fortnite give economists a venue for experimenting and simulating the economies of the future.
[30][31] Edward Castronova has studied virtual economies within a variety of games including Everquest and World of Warcraft.
Some theories claim that video games in fact help improve cognitive abilities rather than impede their development.
This happens as the player is immersed in an unendingly changing environment where they are required to constantly think and problem solve while playing in order to do well in the game.
[35] The ability of hand-eye coordination is also improved thanks in part to video games, due to the need to operate the controller and view the screen displaying the content all at the same time.
[40] However, more recent and wider ranging research has sought to understand not just gaming cultures, but in turn, how video games provide important insights into the modern nature of digital and participatory culture, patterns of consumption and identity formation, later modernity and contemporary political rationalities.