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Playing video games has become a very popular habitual leisure activity. For many individuals, it is mainly a benign source of entertainment that has potential to produce benefits in several areas including cognitive, social, educational, and therapeutic (Colder Carras et al., 2018; Granic, Lobel, & Engels, 2014). However, there is a growing scientific concern that a minority of gamers, who play excessively, meet criteria for addictive gaming, such as loss of control and functional impairment with impacts on psychological well-being (Billieux et al., 2017; Jo et al., 2019; Király, Nagygyörgy, Griffiths, & Demetrovics, 2014).
Considering significant importance to public health, Internet gaming disorder (IGD) has been recently included in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (WHO, 2019). ICD-11 defines internet gaming disorder as a pattern of gaming behavior (“digital-gaming” or “video-gaming”) characterized by impaired control over gaming, increasing priority given to gaming over other activities to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other interests and daily activities, and continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences. Moreover, Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) has been included in Section III of DMS-5-TR by the American Psychiatric Association (2022) as a result of research on problematic gaming and its significance for public health, which has provoked abundant criticism and a continuing debate among scholars concerning conceptualization and clinical significance of problematic gaming as a formal psychiatric diagnosis (Aarseth et al., 2017; Schimmenti & Starcevic, 2019). A focal point of disagreements involves a tendency to apply the biomedical approach to the concept of IGD, using criteria similar to those of substance-use disorders and addiction, without considering alternative etiological models (Billieux et al., 2015; Van Rooij et al., 2018). In line with the view of the Internet as a social environment, problematic gaming should not be considered apart from its psychosocial context (Musetti & Corsano, 2018) and psychological needs that individuals aim to meet (Kardefelt-Winther, 2014a). As proposed by the model of compensatory internet use (CIU) (Kardefelt-Winther, 2014b), problematic gaming could be intended as a maladaptive coping strategy to compensate for psychosocial problems with the underlying motivation to restore psychological well-being. Given that socially anxious or lonely people may engage in video gaming for socializing (motive) or stressed people to escape (motive) from reality, in this compensatory view problematic gaming may occur when individuals are motivated to use video games as a mean to cope with their life problems. Individuals with high psychological maladjustment could be more motivated to use video games to alleviate or compensate for their negative feelings occurring from unfavorable life situation, potentially starting a vicious circle ending with problematic use. Consequently, the aim of this study is to test the CIU model by exploring the relationship between motivation, psychological well-being and problematic gaming.
Previous studies have confirmed a relation between problematic gaming and a wide range of psychological factors. Studies on excessive forms of gaming have shown a direct positive association between problematic gaming and psychosocial factors such as loneliness, lack of social skills, life dissatisfaction, and low self-esteem (Festl, Scharkow & Quandt, 2013; Kim & Kim, 2010; Lemmens, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2011a). When investigating the relationship between psychological characteristics and problematic gaming, it was found that players’ unstable self-esteem and/or hypersensitivity to success or failure increase likelihood of problematic gaming (Beard & Wickham, 2016), depending on their perceptions of self-efficacy and a sense of achievement experienced during online gaming (Calado, Alexandre & Griffiths, 2014). Exploring psychological well-being and motivation for play simultaneously may have some merit in understanding problematic gaming.