Gamer rage-Children’s perspective on issues impacting losing one’s temper while playing digital games

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Contents lists available atScienceDirect

International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction

journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/ijcci

Research paper

Gamer rage—Children’s perspective on issues impacting losing one’s temper while playing digital games

Juho Kahila

^a^,^∗

, Jaana Viljaranta

^b

, Sanni Kahila

^a

, Satu Piispa-Hakala

^a

, Henriikka Vartiainen

^a

aSchool of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

bSchool of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 22 November 2021 Received in revised form 15 June 2022 Accepted 21 June 2022

Available online 23 June 2022 Keywords:

Gamer rage Aggression Digital games Video games Emotions Rage quitting Self-regulation

a b s t r a c t

Previous research on children’s digital games-related aggressive behavior has been conducted from an adult perspective, but children’s voices are missing. This study contributes to filling this gap by exploring how children explain the reasons for their gamer rage, what background factors they recognize as influencing gamer rage, and how they explain the manifestation of their gamer rage. The data were assembled from semi-structured interviews (N=20) and essays (N=31) and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results reveal that children consider in-game failures, other players’ actions, technical problems, and out-of-game interruptions as the main reasons for their gamer rage. The choice of game, the gaming environment, and daily life troubles were recognized as background factors for gamer rage. Gamer rage was manifested by verbal and physical expressions and by quitting. The results contribute to our understanding of children’s perspectives on gamer rage.

1. Introduction

Gamer rage, that is, rage induced by digital games, has become entertainment (Kahila et al.,2021a). Rage caused by digital games has been the subject of humor and self-irony in web series such as Angry Video Game Nerd (Cinemassacre,2006). In recent years, numerous gamer rage compilation videos on YouTube present gamers shouting, swearing, and smashing their gaming equipment in a rage. Many of these videos (Gaming Compilations, 2017;Top Kek,2020) have had millions of views. However, there have also been concerns about the effects of digital games on the aggressive behavior of children and young people, and some studies have linked gaming to aggressive thoughts, physical fights, and hampered school performance, for instance (Dill & Anderson, 2000;Gentile, Lynch, Linder, & Walsh,2004).

Reasons for digital game-related aggressive behaviors have often been linked to violent content (Anderson & Bushman,2001;

Anderson et al., 2010; Gentile et al., 2004). The debate on the effects of violent content has been receiving a great deal of media attention for decades (Markey, Markey, & French,2015), but no consensus among researchers has been reached (Elson

& Ferguson,2014;Ferguson,2013;Quandt et al.,2015). Besides

∗ Correspondence to: University of Eastern Finland (UEF), School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education, P.O. Box 111, FI-80101 Joensuu, Finland.

E-mail address: juho.kahila@uef.fi(J. Kahila).

violent content, the effect of other game characteristics on game- related aggression has been studied, such as competitiveness and the action’s fast pace (Adachi & Willoughby,2011; Willoughby, Adachi, & Good,2012) as well as different game genres (Dickmeis

& Roe,2019;Ohno,2021). Moreover, the effect of the outcome of the game on aggression has been studied (Breuer, Scharkow,

& Quandt, 2015). In general, gaming can be seen as a context in which many kinds of emotional reactions take place (Granic, Lobel, & Engels,2014;Hemenover & Bowman,2018;Ritterfeld, 2009). On one hand, it provides positive feelings, such as enjoy- ment and pleasure (McGonigal,2011), but on the other hand, it essentially involves exposing players to failure and the frustration caused thereby (Juul,2013). To manage and respond adaptively to the feelings that arise through gaming, children need skills to regulate their emotions and behavior, and these skills (or lack of them) may play an important role in digital game-related aggression. Of note, this need for self-regulation is not limited to digital gaming but applies to other gaming contexts, too. For example, in poker, a loss of control can impact decision making and lead to financial losses (Moreau, Delieuvin, Chabrol, & Chauchard, 2017), and in youth sports, self-discipline is an essential core value (Goldstein & Iso-Ahola,2006).

Children are active players of digital games (Kinnunen, Lilja,

& Mäyrä,2018), and aggressive behaviors linked to digital games are often discussed specifically concerning them. Despite this, the research on digital game-related aggression has thus far been

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2022.100513

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approached from an adult perspective. The child’s voice is missing; however, by asking children directly, one can learn a lot about their gaming (Brus,2013;Buckingham,2008;Kahila, Val- tonen, Tedre, Mäkitalo, & Saarikoski,2020). Moreover, the major- ity of the existing research on aggressive behaviors and digital games is conducted in laboratory settings (Markey et al.,2015) although monitored gaming situations under the guidance of others hardly correspond to authentic gaming contexts (Egenfeldt- Nielsen, Smith, & Tosca, 2015). This study contributes to these gaps in knowledge and provides a new vein of information by exploring children’s stories of their gamer rage in authentic gaming situations. The data consist of children’s interviews (N=20) and essays (N=31) analyzed using qualitative content analysis.

The aim of the study was to outline children’s main perceived reasons for their gamer rage and the influencing background factors. Further, this study explores how children express their gamer rage. We posed the following research questions:

1. How do children explain the main reasons for their gamer rage?

2. What background factors do children recognize as influencing their gamer rage?

3. How is children’s gamer rage manifested, as described in their own words?

2. Previous studies on digital game-related aggression The effects of digital games’ violent content on aggression has been a popular theme in the media for decades (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2015). A large proportion of digital games contain some form of violence (Markey et al.,2015), and some studies have found violence to be a significant contributor to aggression (Dill

& Anderson, 2000; Gentile et al., 2004). Meta-analyses by An- derson and colleagues (Anderson & Bushman, 2001; Anderson et al.,2010) reported a causal relationship between violent content and aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect. However, the methodology of these studies has been criticized (Ferguson,2013; Przybylski & Weinstein,2019;Sauer, Drummond, Nova, & Brewer, 2015), and several recent studies (Kneer, Elson, & Knapp,2016;Markey et al.,2015;Przybylski

& Weinstein, 2019) and re-analyses of previous data (Hilgard, Engelhardt, & Rouder, 2010) have not found a significant link between violent content and aggressive behavior.

Besides violent content, the effects of other game characteristics on aggression have been studied. Adachi and Willoughby (2011) found games’ competitiveness, difficulty, and fast pace to affect aggression. Dickmeis and Roe(2019) studied the effect of game genres on aggression and found that genres containing both competitiveness and violence, such as online shooters, positively relate to physical aggression. Game genres with less violence and competitiveness were not found to predict physical aggression. A recent study found a weak link between the battle royale game genre and aggressive thoughts. The same study found time spent on gaming to associate with aggressive feelings (Ohno, 2021).

Additionally, young people who play digital games less have been found to control their anger better than those who spend a lot of time on digital gaming (Demirok et al.,2012).

Game events and outcome effect on aggression has also been studied. Although failure and loss are an essential part of gaming (Juul,2013), losing frustrates players and increases post-game aggression (Breuer et al.,2015). Losing to one’s friend is sometimes particularly frustrating (Kaye & Bryce, 2012). Moreover, one’s own in-game failures, especially when repeated or happen- ing at a critical moment, are a source of gamer rage (Kahila et al., 2021a). According to Przybylski, Deci, Rigby, and Ryan (2014), negative in-game experiences such as frequent failures frustrate

players’ competence satisfaction and are often the reason for game-related aggression. However, it is not only dissatisfaction with one’s incompetence but that of teammates as well as technical problems hampering the gaming experience are also reasons for gamer rage (Kahila et al.,2021a).

Gaming is most often in one way or another a social activity.

Even single-player games often include indirect social compo- nents such as scoreboards. Also, gaming often takes place in the presence of others, and gaming experiences are discussed face to face or on social media (Kaye,2021;Stenros, Paavilainen,

& Mäyrä,2009). The social context in which games are played has been identified as a contributing factor to game-related aggression (Velez, Mahood, Ewoldsen, & Moyer-Gusé,2014). Social reasons such as the use of offensive words and overall poor social dynamics in the gaming community have been found to contribute to gamer rage (Kaye & Bryce,2012). These behaviors are often referred to as toxic behavior and are considered to be a serious problem in game cultures (Kowert,2020;Türkay, For- mosa, Adinolf, Cuthbert, & Altizer,2020). In addition to in-game social reasons, out-of-game reasons such as interruptions from other occupants in the room have been found to cause rage (Kaye

& Bryce,2012). Social reasons have also been found to affect players’ ‘‘rage quit’’ threshold (Weber,2020), referring to quitting the game prematurely because of ‘‘sudden, high-intensity negative emotional experiences in response to feeling overwhelmed by competitors’’ (Przybylski et al.,2014).Weber(2020) divides rage quitting into micro quitting, meaning quitting the current game session, and macro quitting, referring to quitting the game for good. Weber found that in esports, social ties with other players reduce the likelihood of rage quit. However, in this study, we have explored the topic in the context of children’s gaming rather than esports, intending to provide the missing children’s perspective on the reasons for and manifestations of gamer rage.

3. Methods

3.1. Participants and procedure

The participants in this study were sixth-grade and ninth- grade students from three schools in Eastern Finland. The data consist of material from essays and semi-structured interviews.

The essay data were gathered as a part of a larger research pro- gram on children’s metagame activities (Kahila et al.,2021b). Data collection took place over two 45-minute class periods. In the first period, participants discussed in small groups and created lists of any digital game-related activities they could think of in addition to playing the game proper. After that, the lists were presented to others, and in the last task of the first period each participant wrote their personal list of activities in which they have taken part in relation to digital games.

At the beginning of the second period, the participants were able to complete their lists, after which they were instructed to write an essay about their digital game-related activities. Of the 142 children’s essays, 31 discussed digital game-related rage experiences. The authors of these 31 essays comprised 22 sixth graders (9 girls and 13 boys) and nine ninth graders (6 girls and 3 boys). Using these 31 essays as data, a preliminary study on children’s gamer rage experiences was conducted (Kahila et al., 2021b). The current study extends that preliminary study with new interview data and widens the scope of the study to include the influence of background factors on gamer rage.

In this study, semi-structured interviews served as the primary data source, and as some of the essays provided additional insights into the phenomenon under study, 31 essays dealing with gamer rage were used as complementary data. Moreover, the essays were used for the selection of the participants to be interviewed. In all, 20 participants were invited to be interviewed, 12

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of whom were sixth graders (girls=4; boys=8) and eight (girls

=4; boys=4) were ninth graders. All interviewees were active players of digital games. Most participants played games on more than one device, but there were also purely mobile gamers and PC players among the participants. Fortnite was a particularly popular game among the interviewees. The interviews were voluntary, and all those invited to be interviewed agreed to the interviews.

Written permission and informed consent were acquired from the participants’ guardians. The interviews were conducted in spring 2019 during school days as one-on-one sessions with the interviewer. The interviews covered several themes related to children’s metagame activities (Kahila et al., 2021b). Regarding gamer rage, questions were asked about in-game situations for which participants have raged and the perceived influence of out- of-game events on gamer rage. The questions also addressed the influence of different game genres and game features and participants’ attitudes toward gamer rage. Additionally, participants were asked about the manifestations of their rage and how they have coped with it. Follow-up questions were asked concerning responses. All the data were collected by the first author.

3.2. Data analysis

As stated, the data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison,2011). Before the analysis, all the data were transcribed into a textual form, participants were given pseudonyms, and the data were read through several times for the authors to familiarize themselves with them. Atlas.ti qualitative data analysis software was used for coding. The analysis was carried out one research question at a time but following the same procedure. The approach to coding was conventional and followed the description byHsieh and Shannon(2005).

First, data segments meaningful to the research question were marked and given descriptive names. After initial coding, the content and names of the codes were revised, and codes with similar content or meaning were merged. Finally, the codes were sorted into categories by analyzing the similarities and differences between them. For the first research question, regarding the main reasons for rage, the following four categories were formed: in-game failures, other players’ actions, technical problems, and out-of-game interruptions. The analysis of the second research question, regarding background factors for rage, yielded three categories of choice of game, gaming environment, and daily life troubles. The analysis of the third research question, about children’s ways of expressing rage, produced the following three categories: verbal expressions, physical expressions, and quitting.

Collaboration and discussions between researchers strengthen the trustworthiness of qualitative research (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020; Shenton, 2004). Therefore, to increase the trustworthiness of the analysis, each step was carried out in collaboration between two researchers. Differences and similarities in the content and naming of the codes and categories and their interpretations were negotiated between the researchers until agreement was reached. Finally, the whole research group par- ticipated in the discussion, and the final naming of the codes and categories were decided through a joint discussion. For increased transparency, the results provide verbatim quotes from the data (Yardley,2008).

4. Main reasons for rage

The results revealed several perceived reasons for gamer rage.

The main reasons the children gave that directly trigger rage were divided into four categories of in-game failures, other players’

actions, technical problems, and out-of-game interruptions.

4.1. In-game failures

One’s own in-game failures were often mentioned as a reason for rage. ‘‘Dying’’ (i.e. losing) in the game, losing to other players in multiplayer games, and noticing one’s own mistakes were explained as causes of the rage. Repeated failures were often perceived as particularly enraging. Sixth-grade female Amelie explained the situations in which she experienced rage as follows:

‘‘if I die all the time, it’s pretty annoying and. . . of course anger then comes’’. In-game failures were perceived as annoying. Repeated failures and playing for long periods without experiencing success sometimes turned annoyance into anger and rage.

Besides repeated failures, also failing at the final moment was often perceived as being enraging. Failures after a long, well- played game, dying while playing against the last opponent in battle royale games, or dying at the very end of a level were explained as causing rage. Also, the failure of carefully and long- crafted plans and tactics enraged participants. Ninth-grade male Elias described situations in which he might get furious:‘‘I mean tactics, and when it doesn’t work, then you get furious, if you have thought about it for a long time and you are like, this is the way I want to do this and then it fails’’.When success is near, or a lot of time has been invested in planning and implementing tactics, failure is particularly disappointing, and rage is unleashed.

Unexpected failureswere also explained as a reason for rage.

In single-player games, dying as a result of a careless mistake in a level that had been going well previously or failing when easy in-game rewards were available were explained as sources of rage. In multiplayer games, losing to a presumably weaker player was often experienced as especially infuriating. Sixth-grade male Ethan explains:

If I die because of some newbie who is not a great player and who has just started playing the game, I’ve been playing for like over a year and I shouldn’t lose like that. So, I usually hit my fist on the table or throw the controller straight at the wall.

Participants were often aware of their opponents’ rankings and gaming experience in multiplayer games, and failures and successes were assessed in relation to opponents’ assumed skill level. Unexpected failures and losses made children doubt their own competence and caused rage.

Childrencomparedtheir in-game performance to that of their peers. A couple of participants explained that the success of friends when they themselves failed enraged them. Ninth-grade female Stella explained the reasons for her rage: ‘‘If you see that your friend nails it and you lose, like you both tried and only he scores. . .’’. Successes and failures were seen in relation to those of peers. A friend’s successes at the time of one’s own failure sometimes increased the frustration, unleashing rage.

In addition to being upset about a peer’s success at the moment of one’s own failure, causing a loss to one’s own team was a reason given for rage. Sixth-grade male Tony, a player of Critical Ops, a team-based first-person shooter, explained the following about his reasons for gamer rage:

If you like have an important game that you should win and if you don’t you drop out, so then. And if your teammate is playing poorly, no I mean well, and your own game is poor, you start to get annoyed cause you are going to lose as a team because of you.

When gaming was taken seriously, stakes were high, and teammates played well, one’s own in-game failures were taken heavily. Feelings of guilt and responsibility for the consequences of one’s own poor gameplay for the whole team were infuriating.

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4.2. Other players’ actions

The actions of other players were also perceived as enraging.

Incompetent teammates in team-based games were a common source of rage. Failures of teammates, a lack of teamwork, team damage, and even communication difficulties caused by lack of common language were perceived as enraging. Additionally, matchmaking was often seen as unfair. Sixth-grade male Lucas explained his reasons for gamer rage as follows:‘‘It always feels like the other team, like their players are gods in that game and your own team is just a bunch of newbies. So that’s always pretty frustrating then’’.Teams were often perceived as unfair and teammates as incompetent compared to the opponent’s players, who, at the time of the defeat, were sometimes perceived as almost unbeatable. The incompetence of teammates was seen as a reason for defeat and a factor leading to a decline of one’s own chances of in-game success.

Besides incompetent teammates, cheating opponents were also sometimes noted as a source of rage. Sixth grade male Lennie explained the reasons for his outrage as follows:‘‘It has been a little annoying if someone has hacks. He has just gotten everything with hacks’’. The unfair advantage of the opponents, gained by cheats and hacks, irritated and provoked rage in the children.

4.3. Technical problems

Technical problems infuriated the children. In fast-paced multiplayer games, a high-speed internet connection is important for success, and playing with a poor internet connection was perceived as a cause of rage. Sixth-grade male Lucas talked about his reasons for rage as follows: ‘‘Well sometimes it might also be that my internet connection is bad and lagging. So if I die in game because my ping is like six hundred or something [sighs]

so then you get very quickly very upset’’. A poorly functioning internet connection, especially a poor response time (ping), gives an advantage to opponents in fast-paced games. This advantage given to opponents, and the losses and failures caused by it, were perceived as enraging. However, a poor internet connection was not the only technical problem pointed to as producing rage.

Participants also reported rage due to technical problems in slow-paced games such as The Sims, in which a fast internet connection does not play a big role. Inoperable gamesoftware and hardware were also explained as reasons for rage. The technical problems were usually not the fault of the user; however, in a couple of cases, the problems were due to the gamer’s care- lessness with the equipment. Ninth-grader (female) avid mobile gamer Emilia explained: ‘‘Like if you are just completing the game and then the battery dies. It really is the worst feeling ever’’.Games’

hardware and software enable gaming but also set limits on gaming. Technical problems, even when due to one’s own negligence, can ruin or cancel the game session, causing frustration and rage.

4.4. Out-of-game interruptions

Sometimes the reason for rage stemmed from the out-of-game environment.Interruptionsat a critical moment caused rage. A few children explained having had outbursts of rage when their parents ordered them to quit a game session during important in-game events or when a game was progressing well. Reported interruptions were related to doing homework or housework, but mealtimes also sometimes occurred at an inappropriate time for the game. Sixth-grade female Katarina explained as follows:

If you are in the endgame and then it irritates you a quite a lot if you have to go to eat and then you cannot finish the match and there are only a few other players left for the game.

The interruption of the game session by everyday activities irritated and caused rage. In addition to losing the progress already achieved, interruptions broke the player’s immersion and caused the loss of a good gaming mood or flow state.

5. Background factors

In addition to the main reasons for gamer rage, the results revealed several factors that were not identified as directly trig- gering rage but were perceived as predisposing a gamer to rage.

These background factors were divided into three categories, including choice of game, gaming environment, and daily life troubles.

5.1. Choice of game

Choice of game was explained as having an influence on rage.

Particularly,game characteristicssuch as game difficulty, slow learning curve, fast pace, competitiveness, and human opponents were perceived as factors leading to rage. Rage was often reported in competitive fast-paced multiplayer games. The knowledge that the opponent is a real person – in the words of ninth-grade male Mikael,‘‘you get humiliated by other playe r’’ – was a common explanation for the rage in multiplayer games. However, rage was also reported in slow-paced games, and a couple of participants reported single-player games, such as old platform games and Lego games, as being especially enraging for them.

Also, game characteristics were not the only factor associated with choice of game perceived as influencing rage. Seriously taken gamesplayed regularly were perceived as causing gamer rage more often than less frequently played games. Rarely played, casual, and less maddening games were also sometimes chosen when participants wanted to take it easy and avoid rage.

However, playing infuriating games could not always be avoided.

Sixth-grade female Katarina explained as follows:

If my little brother tells me to play it (brother’s favorite game) so that we can then play some game I like. And I don’t really enjoy playing it and then I might get mad at my little brother for some little things in that game.

Sometimes the game played was the result of negotiation and compromise. Playinga game chosen by othersand not preferred by oneself was experienced as increasing susceptibility to rage.

5.2. Gaming environment

Children also perceived the gaming environment as a background factor regarding their outrage. A toxic gaming community was felt to increase susceptibility to gamer rage.Toxic behavior occurred in single-player games by siblings or friends following the game; however, toxic behaviors such as bullying, naming, and slandering also occurred by unknown players in multiplayer games chat. Sixth-grader Lucas described the following:‘‘Well, it sometimes affects you if the other team is like very toxic, it gets under your skin. And also, if someone in your own team says in the chat that our team sucks, it irritates too’’.Toxic behavior via chat was received from both opponents and from teammates.

However, toxicity was sometimes discussed in a dismissive tone by participants. A sixth-grade female, Amelie, explained the effect of cyberbullying on rage as follows: ‘‘You get a little angry if they start like bullying you or something, but it doesn’t bother me that much’’.Although toxic behavior encountered in games was perceived as disruptive, it was explained as a minor factor in causing rage.

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Toxicity was not the only factor in the gaming environment that increased susceptibility to rage. A noisy gaming environ- mentalso contributed. Other people in the room speaking, either addressed to the player or to someone else, as well as move- ments and other sounds, interfered with the gaming and caused annoyance. Ninth-grade female Daniella explained the following:

So, if I am alone in my room and playing and there is no distraction from outside, of course it’s not that irritating because there is just the game whatsoever. But if there is for instance a friend of mine and she tries to talk to me while I am playing, I might put the game away and say ‘‘Shut up. I’m playing’’ [gives a laugh] So that way distraction from outside affects.

A noisy gaming environment is not ideal for concentration.

Various out-of-game stimuli disrupted concentration and were perceived to increase the chances for rage.

5.3. Daily life troubles

Troubles in daily life were experienced by some to increase the chances for gamer rage. Upsetting events at school, quarrels with friends, other interpersonal problems, or otherwise simplya bad daywere widely recognized as affecting the chances of rage.

Sixth-grade male Lucas explained:‘‘Sometimes it can affect if it has already been a bad day and you are like already very irritated when you start playing. If you have had a bad day or something’’. The threshold to rage was perceived as being lower after an already bad day, and irritation accumulated over the course of a day could sometimes emerge when game events did not flow. In addition to a lower threshold for rage, a couple of children also explained that after a bad day, their rage was more severe.

In addition to a bad day, children identified that neglect of physical needslowered their threshold for gamer rage. Hunger, thirst, and fatigue were perceived as affecting rage, and several participants recognized that after a long gaming session without food, drink, or rest, rage was easier to trigger. Ninth-grade male Benjamin explained the following:

Well, I don’t usually get angry easily anyway, but if I have been awake for a long time and haven’t slept, and it’s late, and the game doesn’t go well with friends, and then we have lost a game, then it might annoy more. . . but not often.

Forgetting to take care of one’s physical needs was com- monly identified as a background factor for rage by children.

Prolonged gaming, with hunger and potentially other factors, caused a player with typically good anger management skills to lose his temper. Some children explained that they exclusively rage when they are tired, fatigued, or hungry.

6. Children’s ways of expressing their rage

In addition to the main reasons and background factors for gamer rage, this study explored children’s ways of expressing their rage. The results revealed that children expressed their rage in verbal expressions, in physical expressions, and by quitting.

6.1. Verbal expressions

Verbal expressions were a common way the children expressed gamer rage. They explained that they cried, yelled, and cursed when they became enraged. Some participants explained that their verbal expressions of rage have been so loud that they were heard in their neighborhood, but others expressed their rage more cautiously. Sixth-grade male Anton explained as follows:

I don’t get that angry I mean if I get angry in game I don’t shout and rage all out. At least if my parents are at home. But more if I have played with my friends and like in the group chat.

Moreover, the social context contributed to the extent of the rage. A few participants explained that the presence of parents, for example, sometimes eased the outbursts, and verbal expressions were more regulated. In a group of friends, where more severe raging was socially acceptable, rage was unleashed more freely.

6.2. Physical expressions

Sometimes expressions of rage did not remain at the verbal stage but were also expressed physically. Phones, game controllers, headphones, keyboards, mice, and other movable items on hand were thrown, and game consoles and computers were sometimes kicked and beaten carelessly. Furniture also served as a target for the rage, and slamming the table was commonplace.

Sixth-grade male Joel explained the following: ‘‘I did smash the keyboard once, and well, maybe threw a chair’’.Immediately available items, such as gaming equipment, tables, and one’s game chair were often first to feel the rage when, for one reason or another, rage was unleashed.

The rage could also cause material damage. The children reported broken computers, phones, game controllers, keyboards, and mice because of their rage. Sometimes, when throwing phones or keyboards out of the window, the nature of the violence was such that it was either intended to break something, or at least the outcome was obvious. Sixth-grade male Max explained the consequences of his gamer rage as follows:

If I die to someone who is very bad player in Apex legend or Fortnite or Black Ops or some other game, I might have thrown the controller at the wall or smashed it on the table [gives a laugh]. But I don’t do that anymore because I broke my controller and I had to pay for it myself.

The children also faced the consequences of their outbursts.

Replacements often had to be paid for by the children themselves, and taking a break from gaming due broken equipment was a significant consequence. Realizing the consequences of momentary outbursts sometimes motivated children to practice self-control and avoid overly violent expressions of rage in the future.

Gaming equipment was often shared by the family, and having responsibility for shared equipment also curbed the rage. At- tempts were made to avoid material damage by ‘‘raging gently’’, for example, focusing the rage on soft objects such as a pillow or throwing game equipment onto beds and sofas. Also, sometimes destructive thoughts remained only at the level of thoughts. Sixth grade female Amelie said:‘‘Of course I break nothing even though I wanted to but luckily not. But I do have a lot of anger inside of me’’.

Some of the children recognized the desire to break something in the gust of the rage but were able to avoid destruction.

6.3. Quitting

In addition to verbal expressions and physical expressions, participants would simply quit gaming because of their rage.

Quitting due to rage often occurred in gusts of rage simultane- ously with verbal and physical expressions. Nevertheless, gaming was also quit more thoughtfully, as a precaution to avoid one’s own overreactions, such as saying stupid things or breaking gaming equipment. Playing in ‘‘tilt’’, that is, in an angry state of mind, was understood as a bad idea in terms of being successful in the game. Ninth-grade male Elias explained his actions when the

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Fig. 1. The reasons and manifestations of children’s gamer rage.

game started to annoy him too much:‘‘Well usually I quit playing and let it be for a while. And later I try again and usually it works then’’.Many of the children realized that gaming did not go well when they were enraged, and they decided to take a break from the game when it started to become too infuriating. Often, they went outdoors or otherwise into another physical environment, but sometimes they just switched to a less aggravating game. In addition to a spontaneous reaction, quitting was a way to distract oneself from an enraging gaming situation.

Usually, the children would ‘‘micro quit’’, that is, they would quit the current game session and just come back later. However, more final solutions were also reached. Sometimes, as a result of rage, playing a particular game was quit altogether. Ninth grade female Nina wrote about her gamer rage as follows:‘‘When irritated I’ve managed to break my gaming phone. Occasionally I’ve also uninstalled games because of irritation and boredom, many of them’’.Uninstalling the game was a sign that they were quitting the game, and the decision was final. However, such decisions did not always stick, and games removed in a flurry of rage were also reinstalled later. Ninth-grade female Belle wrote about an even more radical solution in her essay:‘‘Thousands of times I have lost my temper, and as a result, the digital device has almost broken. In the end, I decided to quit gaming altogether. It always felt easiest to get angry when it was about gaming’’.For gamers, gaming is often an important hobby and part of one’s identity. The decision to quit gaming altogether is a big decision, and sticking with that decision requires great self-discipline.

7. Discussion

Most previous research on digital games related to aggressive behavior has been conducted from an adult perspective instead of letting children’s voices be heard. In this study, the approach to the topic was from the children’s perspective and explored how children themselves explain the reasons for their gamer rage, what background factors they recognize as influencing gamer rage, and how their gamer rage is manifested. The data used in this study were assembled from semi-structured interviews, with essays as a complementary data source. The results revealed that participants consider their in-game failures, other players’

actions, technical problems, and out-of-game interruptions as the main reasons for their gamer rage. The choice of game, the gaming environment, and daily life troubles were recognized as background factors attributing to rage. Gamer rage was manifested by verbal expressions, physical expressions, and by quitting.Fig. 1summarizes participants’ insights into the reasons and manifestations of their gamer rage.

For decades, there has been concern about the effect of digital games on the aggressive behavior of children and youths.

Gaming-related aggressive behavior has often been linked to some specific feature or characteristic of a game, such as violent content (Anderson et al.,2010;Gentile et al.,2004). Indeed, the results of the present study revealed that children perceived the game played as predisposing them to gamer rage. Competitive multiplayer games, such as the popular Fortnite, were often mentioned as games that could lead to rage, which coheres with previous studies relating aggression with game characteristics, such as those of online shooters (Dickmeis & Roe,2019; Ohno, 2021). However, although the impact of violent content in digital games on aggression has been extensively studied (Anderson et al., 2010), in the present study, the violent content did not emerge in children’s responses as a reason for rage. Instead, the irritability of a particular game was often linked with playing against human opponents and the game’s difficulty level. This result supports Adachi et al.’s (Adachi & Willoughby,2011) sug- gestion about the role of competitiveness in digital game-related aggressive behavior.

Social factors form an important context for playing, and the relevance of these can be seen in the findings revealing in- game failures as a common trigger for rage. Children’s stories of how they get furious when they ‘‘die’’ when playing against a presumably weaker opponent, when they cause a loss to their team due to their poor gameplay, or when a friend succeeds when they themselves fail indicate that children assess their game performance and competence in relation to other gamers.

This result concurs with and adds to the findings of Kaye and Bryce’s (2012) study finding losing to a friend to be particularly enraging. The present study also confirms their results of out-of- game interruptions. The results revealed that parents’ demands to do homework or come to eat, for example, sometimes triggered children’s gamer rage.

The role of other social factors was also evident in the present study. Resentment caused by out-of-game disputes could arise in game sessions, increasing the susceptibility to rage. Toxic behaviors, which are deep-rooted in game cultures (Kowert,2020), were also encountered in in-game social environments. However, toxic behaviors such as naming and bullying were often discussed as normal activities that one must tolerate. This result is parallel with the study byTürkay et al.(2020), whose results indicated that toxic behaviors are normalized in competitive game cultures and that gamers justify their own toxicity and accept toxicity directed to themselves because of it. This acceptance does not make it any less of a problem but rather emphasizes its severity.

It is important to understand that this kind of toxic behavior and its acceptance occur in gaming because it provides important information about factors that can trigger aggression in gaming.

Moreover, similar behavior also occurs in other competitive contexts. The normalization of toxic behavior has been identified as

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a problem, for example, in the context of youth sports, where an effort has been made to reshape this culture (Goldstein &

Iso-Ahola,2006).

While gamer rage can be entertaining on YouTube (Gaming Compilations,2017;Top Kek,2020), the findings of the present study indicated that it was not desired for oneself. Children recognized that playing in an angry state of mind can have several different negative consequences. They described the negative impact on their gaming performance of being in an angry state. In addition, they understood that in an emotionally overwhelmed situation, they may not be able to control their behavior, which might lead to breaking their keyboards, mice, or other mate- rials. Children actually reported many efforts to avoid gamer rage, such as by specific game choices or by taking proactive breaks when the gaming began to frustrate them too much. This result indicates that children are not passive recipients of media content, as is sometimes suggested. Rather, they are active agents, working on their gaming-related experiences, behaviors, and emotions, often making informed decisions regarding their gaming and gamer rage (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al.,2015).

Some previous research has considered gamers’ rage and aggressive behavior from the perspective of emotion regulation (Hemenover & Bowman,2018). As the findings of the present study indicated that gamer rage seems to be a multi- faceted phenomenon instead of something arising solely from the characteristics of a game, it could be useful to consider gamer rage from the perspective of emotion regulation or broader self-regulatory skills. These skills refer to a variety of complex processes by which people regulate their thoughts, emotions, impulses, and behavior (Vohs & Baumeister, 2004), and they could be seen as particularly important when children evaluate, manage, and respond to feelings and other stimuli that arise from gaming. Even though the focus of the present study was not on children’s self-regulatory skills, the children’s stories about gamer rage highlighted many aspects related to these skills, such as thoughts of what triggers an angry state of mind, the ways they manage their behavior in these situations, and the understanding that rage is actually an undesired outcome.

Gaming is often taken seriously, and it can be an important part of one’s identity (Ritterfeld,2009). Especially in team-based competitive games in which the action is fast-paced and collaboration is essential for success, overreactions occur. The results of the present study revealed that children sometimes expressed their rage violently. Taken together, these aspects highlight the importance of acquiring a better understanding of how children (whose socio-emotional and self-regulatory skills are still de- veloping) understand, evaluate, and regulate their emotions and behavior in (social) gaming situations. Overall, based on children’s thoughtful stories, it could be assumed that even though there are learning games that are specifically designed to practice self-regulation skills (Kahn, Ducharme, Rotenberg, & Gonzalez- Heydrich, 2013), these same skills could also be learned and practiced in entertainment games (Kahila et al.,2020).

Of importance from the present study was that children are able to verbalize their feelings and related processes relatively well. This is important not only in terms of the results of the present study but also regarding the data and methods used.

According toBrus(2013), children and young people can provide rich information regarding their gaming, and it is important to al- low for their perspectives on issues concerning their gaming. The results of the present study confirm children as a rich source of information on topics that interest and concern them.

As exploratory research, this study has limitations. The sam- ple size is relatively small, and the study design does not aim at generalization. Instead, the results provide information about participants’ experiences of the causes and manifestations of their

gaming-induced rage. Moreover, reporting one’s own experiences is a subjective approach, and this must be considered when evaluating the results of this study.

Nevertheless, the findings of this research provide nuanced information and children’s perspective on the discussion of digital game-related aggression. The study gives new insights into and tools for various professionals working with children, such as schoolteachers, game educators, and media educators also contributing to the field of game studies, by broadening our understanding of gamer rage. Additionally, the results identify questions in need of further investigation. The effect of various game characteristics on aggression has been previously studied (Adachi & Willoughby,2011; Dickmeis & Roe, 2019; Kneer et al.,2016), and this research provides some indication of children’s views on the topic. The results about perceived reasons for gamer rage can produce valuable perspectives and insights for designing games for children. For example, toxic behaviors by other players were perceived to increase the susceptibility of gamer rage. Hence, when making games for children, it is important to consider how much room would the planned game features leave for toxic behavior and how to minimize it by game design. Also other reasons for gamer rage, such as technical problems and repeated failures, should be considered in the game design process. However, further research and more detailed analysis is needed on children’s thoughts on the effect of different game characteristics on rage. Moreover, exploring children’s perceived development of their self-regulation skills in the context of gaming is also an interesting topic for future research.

Children’s stories about their gamer rage paint a multi-faceted picture of the reasons for their gamer rage. Instead of individual reasons, gamer rage is often the outcome of several in-game and out-of-game factors. In addition to in-game reasons such as one’s own poor in-game performance or other players’ actions, out-of- game interruptions and inoperable technology also trigger outrage. Susceptibility to rage was influenced by the social and physical gaming environment as well as children’s daily life events and their physical state. This wide variety of factors supports the argument that studies on digital game-related aggression conducted in a laboratory context are limited (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2015; Markey et al., 2015). Gaming does not happen in a vacuum. Thus, gaming-related phenomena such as gamer rage must be studied holistically, including considering the contextual factors around the game itself. Overall, the findings of this study highlight the importance of holistic and nuanced future research on gamer rage.

Selection and participation of children

The participants in this study were sixth-grader and ninth- grader students from three schools in Finland. The data consist of material from essays and semi-structured interviews. Essays were used for mapping potential participants for semi-structured interviews. However, 31 of the 142 essays dealing with gamer rage were also used as complementary data in the analysis. The 31 comprised 22 sixth graders, 9 girls, 13 boys, and 9 ninth graders, 6 girls, 3 boys.

Semi-structured interviews served as the primary data source.

Twenty participants were invited to be interviewed, twelve of whom were sixth graders (Girls=4; Boys=8) and eight (Girls= 4; Boys=4) were ninth graders. Interviews were voluntary (and participants had right to revoke their consent at any moment), and all those invited to be interviewed agreed to the interviews.

Written permission and informed consent were acquired also from the participants’ guardians.

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Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

The authors do not have permission to share data.

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