Are digital games perceived as fun or danger? Supporting and suppressing different game-related concepts

Violent digital game play has repeatedly been discussed to be strongly related to aggression and emotional
instability. Thus, digital game players have to defend against these prejudices through emphasizing positive
game-related concepts such as achievement, social interaction, and immersion. We experimentally investigated
which positive- and negative-concept players and nonplayers activate when being primed with digital games.
Participants were either exposed to violent or nonviolent game content and were required to work on a lexical
decision task. Results showed that response latencies for the concept aggression and emotional instability were
faster than for neutral concepts (not associated with digital games), but slower than for the positive concepts
sociality and competition. Both players and nonplayers felt the need to defend against prejudices and emphasized
positive concepts. Neither their own gaming experience nor the game content influenced the results. Being
a part of the net generation is sufficient to suppress negative game-related concepts and to support positive
game-related concepts to protect digital games as common leisure activity among peers.