Impact of Online Games on French and Computer Education Students in Nigerian Universities

Abstract

This study investigated the interdisciplinary impact of online mobile gaming on undergraduate students enrolled in French and Computer Education programs within Nigerian universities. While higher education in Nigeria undergoes a structural transformation to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, mobile online games such as Call of Duty Mobile (CODM), PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), and EA Sports FC Mobile have evolved into highly organized, dominant subcultures within university hostels. The phenomenon was examined in five thematic operational sections, each of which is broken down into operational sub-sections. The study assesses the effect of specific games architectures as auxiliary cognitive catalysts, which increase visual-spatial reasoning, real-time algorithmic problem solving, and technological familiarity, while simultaneously creating harsh academic friction through time-sink dynamics, sleep deprivation and cognitive fatigue. The analysis also situates these habits in the specific infrastructural and economic setting of public universities in Nigeria, including unstable power supply, high costs of internet data, among other factors. The study suggests that online gaming is not merely a distraction, but a powerful behavioural amplifier, and concludes with practical institutional structures such as the formalisation of the gamification of curricula, or the creation of institutionalised alliances between campus and tech-esports teams, to channel competitive energies toward useful engineering skills.