Addictive Behaviors, volume 134, article 107416, November 2022 (online 28 June 2022)
- 5,187 gamers
- Professional and aspiring esports players
- Online survey
- MANOVA and regression
- Open data (OSF)
Free full text: the authors' accepted manuscript, identical in content to the published article and shared under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please cite the published version.
- professional gamers
- esports
- gaming motives
- gaming disorder
- escapism
- Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire
- Gaming Disorder Test
- competitive gaming
- aspiring professional gamers
- disordered gaming
- problematic gaming
- gaming addiction
- ICD-11
- WHO framework
- video games
- MOGQ
- GDT
- interpersonal impairment hypothesis
- skill development motive
- competition motive
- coping motive
- online survey
- MANOVA
- Spearman correlations
- hierarchical regression
- open data
Professional gamers and gamers who want to turn professional play for much the same reasons, and both groups score higher than other gamers on every gaming motive except recreation. In a survey of 5,187 gamers, the escapism motive went with gaming disorder symptoms most strongly in all three groups, and aspiring professionals had the highest rate of disordered gaming.
Key findings
- Aspiring professionals play for the same reasons as professionals. In a survey of 5,187 gamers, professional gamers (n = 129) and non-professionals planning to turn professional (n = 646) had very similar levels of all seven gaming motives (Montag et al., 2022).
- Both score higher than other gamers on all motives but recreation. Gamers without esports ambitions (n = 4,412) scored lower on the social, escapism, competition, coping, skill development and fantasy motives; the largest gaps were for skill development (η² = .056) and social play (η² = .054), while recreation was similar across groups (η² = .002) (Montag et al., 2022).
- Escapism is the motive most tied to gaming disorder. In all three groups, gaming to escape everyday life correlated most strongly with Gaming Disorder Test scores (ρ = .40 to .44), and it was the strongest predictor in the regression (β = .41), ahead of competition (β = .19) and weekly gaming time (β = .23) (Montag et al., 2022).
- Aspiring professionals have the highest rate of disordered gaming. 8.8% of aspiring professionals met the disordered gaming threshold, compared with 5.9% of other non-professionals and 5.4% of professional gamers (χ² = 8.13, p < .05) (Montag et al., 2022).
At a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional online survey on the platform do-i-play-too-much.com, promoted by the esports company ESL Gaming, January 2020 to February 2022
- Participants
- 5,187 gamers aged 12 to 77 (mean 23.9, SD 8.4); 89% men. 129 professional gamers, 646 non-professionals planning to become professional and 4,412 non-professionals without such a plan
- Measures
- Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ; 27 items, seven motives: social, escapism, competition, coping, skill development, fantasy, recreation) and the Gaming Disorder Test (GDT; four items, WHO framework); weekly time spent gaming
- Analysis
- MANOVA with LSD contrasts, Spearman correlations by group, chi-square test of disordered gaming status and a stepwise hierarchical regression predicting GDT scores (IBM SPSS 26)
- Disordered gaming
- All four GDT items answered ‘often’ or ‘very often’
- Ethics
- College Research Ethics Committee, Nottingham Trent University (2018/95)
- Data
- Open data on the Open Science Framework (osf.io/ntyhr)
Figure 1. Gaming motives in the three gamer groups
How strongly each motive goes with gaming disorder
Tables
Table 1. Cronbach’s alpha for the investigated inventories in the three gamer groups
| Measure | NPGwoP (n = 4,412) | NPGwP (n = 646) | PG (n = 129) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gaming Disorder Test | 0.82 | 0.79 | 0.75 |
| Social motive | 0.82 | 0.81 | 0.82 |
| Escape motive | 0.89 | 0.88 | 0.90 |
| Competition motive | 0.85 | 0.82 | 0.81 |
| Coping motive | 0.77 | 0.78 | 0.79 |
| Skill motive | 0.89 | 0.85 | 0.83 |
| Fantasy motive | 0.85 | 0.82 | 0.80 |
| Recreational motive | 0.70 | 0.55 | 0.69 |
NPGwoP: non-professional gamer without a plan to become one; NPGwP: non-professional gamer with a plan to become a professional gamer; PG: professional gamer.
Table 2. Descriptive statistics of the investigated variables in the three gamer groups including the MANOVA results
| Variable | NPGwoP (n = 4,412) | NPGwP (n = 646) | PG (n = 129) | MANOVA* F(2, 5151) | p | η² |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gaming Disorder Test scores | 10.04 (3.76) | 11.42 (3.84) | 10.60 (3.89) | 37.17 | < .001 | 0.014 |
| Weekly time spent gaming | 25.40 (18.14) | 31.39 (20.72) | 33.85 (24.88) | 39.59 | < .001 | 0.015 |
| Age | 24.58 (8.49) | 20.17 (7.16) | 20.67 (6.32) | 90.43 | < .001 | 0.034 |
| Social motive | 9.31 (4.30) | 12.20 (4.60) | 12.41 (4.74) | 147.70 | < .001 | 0.054 |
| Escape motive | 10.19 (4.80) | 11.98 (5.19) | 11.49 (5.26) | 40.38 | < .001 | 0.015 |
| Competition motive | 10.28 (4.47) | 12.76 (4.46) | 12.85 (4.59) | 101.98 | < .001 | 0.038 |
| Coping motive | 10.95 (3.94) | 12.72 (4.21) | 12.17 (4.48) | 58.99 | < .001 | 0.022 |
| Skill motive | 10.43 (4.71) | 13.61 (4.47) | 13.80 (4.52) | 153.47 | < .001 | 0.056 |
| Fantasy motive | 9.55 (4.69) | 11.11 (4.88) | 11.38 (4.68) | 37.84 | < .001 | 0.014 |
| Recreational motive | 12.59 (2.54) | 12.89 (2.18) | 12.53 (2.57) | 3.88 | .02 | 0.002 |
Means with standard deviations in brackets; the article prints decimal commas. *The MANOVA was run with a slightly smaller sample than the descriptive statistics show: 33 participants did not report weekly time spent gaming (1 from the NPGwP group and 32 from the NPGwoP group).
Table 3. Correlations between gaming motives, disordered gaming, and weekly time spent gaming
| Correlation with GDT | Social | Escapism | Competition | Coping | Skill development | Fantasy | Recreation | Weekly time spent gaming* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PG | .047 (p = .595) | .396 (p < .001) | .233 (p = .008) | .192 (p = .029) | −.032 (p = .715) | .191 (p = .030) | −.174 (p = .048) | .187 (p = .034) |
| NPGwP | .034 (p = .386) | .427 (p < .001) | .277 (p < .001) | .260 (p < .001) | −.035 (p = .375) | .258 (p < .001) | .034 (p = .387) | .172 (p < .001) |
| NPGwoP | .148 (p < .001) | .437 (p < .001) | .253 (p < .001) | .254 (p < .001) | .082 (p < .001) | .270 (p = .001) | .055 (p < .001) | .333 (p < .001) |
Spearman’s rho with two-sided p values. GDT = Gaming Disorder Test. *Slightly smaller samples for this variable because of missing data (NPGwP n = 645; NPGwoP n = 4,380). The third row is labelled ‘NGwoP’ in the article.
Table 4. Hierarchical regression (stepwise) predicting Gaming Disorder Test scores
| Predictor | B | SE | β | t | p |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Constant) | 7.232 | 0.399 | 18.138 | < .001 | |
| Gamer groups | −0.450 | 0.120 | −.044 | −3.738 | < .001 |
| Gender | −0.395 | 0.144 | −.033 | −2.735 | .006 |
| Age | 0.006 | 0.005 | .013 | 1.083 | .279 |
| Weekly time spent gaming | 0.046 | 0.002 | .226 | 18.764 | < .001 |
| Escapism | 0.320 | 0.010 | .412 | 32.821 | < .001 |
| Competition | 0.161 | 0.011 | .193 | 14.418 | < .001 |
| Skill development | −0.103 | 0.011 | −.131 | −9.639 | < .001 |
| Recreation | −0.077 | 0.019 | −.050 | −4.043 | < .001 |
n = 5,154 (a few participants did not report weekly gaming hours). The model explained 30.4% of the variance in GDT scores, F(8, 5145) = 280.97, p < .001.
The question
Esports has grown into a billion-dollar industry, yet little is known about whether professional gamers play for different reasons than other gamers, or whether their motives relate to gaming disorder in the same way. We compared professional gamers, gamers intending to become professional and gamers without such ambitions on seven gaming motives, and examined how these motives relate to gaming disorder as defined by the World Health Organization.
Implications
Practical implications
Because escapism was the motive most linked to gaming disorder in every group, it can help flag gamers who may be vulnerable, including those pursuing an esports career. Aspiring professionals had the highest rate of disordered gaming, so esports organisations and education programmes could tell them that long hours of play carry risks, and that it is possible to be a highly engaged gamer and keep a healthy lifestyle.
Theoretical implications
The study extends research on gaming motives to esports using the WHO framework for gaming disorder. Motive profiles of professionals and aspiring professionals were alike, against the expectation that professionals would score highest on skill development, competition and social motives. The links of the social and coping motives with disordered gaming are discussed in light of the interpersonal impairment hypothesis.
Limitations and future research
- The cross-sectional design prevents causal conclusions, and all data are self-reported.
- The professional gamer group was small (n = 129), and non-professional gamers were about four years older than the other groups.
- Gender could not be examined because few women took part (8 professional gamers were women); no performance data were available to judge professional success.
Questions this paper answers
Do professional gamers play for different reasons than other gamers?
Not compared with aspiring professionals: in a survey of 5,187 gamers, the two groups had similar motive profiles. Both scored higher than gamers without esports ambitions on all motives except recreation (Montag et al., 2022).
Which gaming motive is most linked to gaming disorder?
Escapism, gaming to get away from everyday life. It correlated most strongly with gaming disorder symptoms in professional, aspiring and non-professional gamers alike (ρ = .40 to .44; Montag et al., 2022).
Are esports players more at risk of gaming disorder?
In this sample, gamers aspiring to turn professional had the highest rate of disordered gaming (8.8%), while professional gamers (5.4%) were similar to other gamers (5.9%) (Montag et al., 2022).
How was gaming disorder measured?
With the Gaming Disorder Test, a four-item measure based on the World Health Organization’s ICD-11 criteria for gaming disorder.
Key concepts
- Gaming disorder
- A condition in ICD-11 (6C51) marked by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming and continued gaming despite negative consequences, with significant impairment.
- Esports
- Playing video games competitively, with organised teams and official international competitions.
- Escapism motive
- Gaming to escape from everyday life and its problems.
- Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ)
- A 27-item measure of seven gaming motives: social, escapism, competition, coping, skill development, fantasy and recreation (Demetrovics et al., 2011).
- Interpersonal impairment hypothesis
- The idea that disordered gamers are more prone to interpersonal stress, such as conflict or social isolation (Cheng et al., 2018).
Open science and materials
- Accepted manuscript (PDF) Free full text, including all tables and the figure
- Data (OSF) Open Science Framework project with the dataset
- Published version Addictive Behaviors (Elsevier), with the supplementary material
Study materials
- Measures
- Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (Demetrovics et al., 2011), five-point scale from ‘almost never/never’ to ‘almost always/always’; Gaming Disorder Test (Pontes et al., 2019), five-point scale from ‘never’ to ‘very often’.
- Supplementary material
- LSD contrasts, MANCOVA results, skewness, kurtosis, normality tests and Pearson correlations are in the article’s online supplementary data.
How to cite
Montag, C., Schivinski, B., Kannen, C., & Pontes, H. M. (2022). Investigating gaming disorder and individual differences in gaming motives among professional and non-professional gamers: An empirical study. Addictive Behaviors, 134, Article 107416. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2022.107416