Who are the calmest gamers?

Video games have been shown to be particularly good tools for mood control, with 89% of players saying they help them relax. With many games attracting a loyal fanbase, creative and interactive video games can encourage a calm environment and community for those joining.

Interested to find out which video games have the calmest fanbase, TheSlotBuzz.com analysed the percentage of Reddit gaming comments containing swear words to see which video game generates the least anger from players. 

Not too surprisingly, Minecraft led the way by far. Legend of Zelda and Pokemom came in at a distant second and third. Startlingly, Grand Theft Auto made the top ten. 

The video games with the calmest fanbase

#1:Minecraft has been found as the video game with the calmest gamers with only 1.55% of Reddit comments including swearing. It has become one of the most successful video games ever and with the games constant changes such as the upcoming 1.20 update, it’s easy to see why many enjoy playing in this three dimensional world. But with no required goals to accomplish and a vast land to express your creativity in many different ways, it’s no surprise Minecraft reportedly has such a calm fanbase.

#2: Zelda comes in second place with 3.38% of Reddit comments featuring swear words. First released in 1986, the game series has earned its reputation as one of the greatest video game series of all time with its mix of puzzles, action/adventure gameplay and battle mode. Research has found that games within this genre result in a lower cardiovascular stress response rather than fighting or violent games. There are now a total of 45 Zelda games and a new edition will be released this May called ‘The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.’

#3: Pokemon is the third video game that gets us the least frustrated, with only 3.57% of comments containing swearing. The gaming series releases its core games in generations, each with different characters and storylines, and it has since become one of the highest grossing media franchises of all time. In March 2022, it was found that the series had sold over 440 million units worldwide and this number is set to rise as more games get released.

TheSlotBuzz.com spoke to some gaming fans about why and how they find playing video games beneficial to their wellbeing.

Andreea, 27, said: “Since a very young age I found immersing myself in video games as a way to relax and detach from day to day stress, just like how our grandparents would use books, video games are a great way to transmute yourself to new worlds. 

“When I feel like relaxing, I particularly enjoy games like Minecraft and Stardew Valley. You get to set our own goals for what you want to achieve in those worlds without having crazy visual stimuli like you would in shooter games. Plus, they say gardening and DIY in general are great for regulating your emotions. These games allow you to do exactly that.”

Another avid user said: “Stress and anxiety may make you paranoid and see goals as unachievable, but puzzle games, open world games or life simulation like The Sims enables you to experience things with your own controlled pace: I always turn to games that is soothing and therapeutic – it may act as an distraction from real life but in a good, positive and helpful way.”

Methodology: 

1: TheSlotBuzz.com conducted an analysis of over 19,000 posts and over 138,000 comments on 20 gaming subreddits to identify games with the most foul-mouthed users. The Reddit scraper built for this research utilised both the Pushshift and PRAW APIs. 

2: A seed list of the most popular games with subreddits available were acquired from multiple authoritative sources.

3: For each subreddit, comments on up to 1000 of the most recent posts were scraped. A maximum of 50 top level comments were collected per post. The resulting dataset consisted of over 138,000 comments.

4: A list of swear words including variations and common adaptations accounting for the semantics of redditors were collected. A binary assignment was subsequently performed to label comments containing any of the defined keywords.

5: An aggregation performed by game resulted in a dataset detailing the sample size of posts and submissions analysed, together with the percentage of comments containing profanity.