Aggression expression among League of Legends and Fortnite players - a brief report

Our primary goal was to determine and compare the anger expression strategies used by players of the two most popular online games, League of Legends and Fortnite Battle Royale, as well as those used by non-gamers.

The study sample was comprised of 450 subjects, of whom 338 were males and 112 females. The sample was further divided into four groups: 1. Non-gamers; 2. League of Legends gamers; 3. Fortnite gamers; and 4. League of Legends and Fortnite gamers. Anger attributes were measured using the validated Hungarian version of the 20-item Anger Expression Scale (Oláh 1987; Spielberger, 1985). Multinomial Logistic Regression was used to analyze the role of age and gender of the subjects to predict whether subjects were non-gamers or gamers. Subjects were further assessed by employing the Anger Expression Scale, which determines Anger-In (turning anger inwards or suppressing anger) and Anger-Out (expressing anger outwardly) profiles of individuals. The Anger-In and Anger-Out variables were added to the model.

Compared to League of Legends gamers, Fortnite gamers had a more passive (Anger-In) anger expression strategy. Fortnite and League of Legends gamers possessed a more passive anger expression strategy relative to nongamers.

Further research is needed to determine whether the games themselves have a determining influence on the gamers anger expression strategy, or whether the gamers personality and anger expression strategy predisposed them to choose one game over the other.