The mediating effect of motivations between psychiatric distress and gaming disorder among esport gamers and recreational gamers

TLDR

Research on gaming disorder, motivations, and mental health is growing, yet studies rarely differentiate between recreational gaming and esports. The study aims to investigate how escapism mediates the relationship between psychiatric distress and gaming disorder across esports and recreational gamers, informing prevention and treatment. The authors compared 4,284 recreational and esports gamers on game time, motivations, gaming disorder severity, and psychiatric symptoms, and examined the mediating role of gaming motivations between psychiatric distress and problematic gaming. Esports gamers spent more time playing, reported higher social, competition, and skill motivations, and the mediation analysis showed that escapism significantly linked psychiatric distress to gaming disorder for both groups, with no group differences, indicating escapism as a common predictor of problematic gaming.

Abstract

Research examining the relationship between gaming disorder, gaming motivations, and mental health is increasing, but the types of gaming use, such as recreational gaming and esports are not commonly distinguished. The present study compared recreational gamers and esport gamers (N = 4284) on a number of variables including game time, gaming motivations, severity of gaming disorder, and psychiatric symptoms. Additionally, the mediating effect of gaming motivations among esport and recreational gamers between psychiatric distress and problematic gaming was examined. Results showed that esport gamers spent significantly more time playing video games both on weekdays and weekend days than recreational gamers. Moreover, esport gamers had higher scores on social, competition, and skill development gaming motivations than recreational gamers. The mediation model demonstrated a significant positive direct and significant mediated effect via escapism (i.e., gaming excessively to avoid real life problems) between the higher levels of psychiatric distress and gaming disorder. However, esport and recreational gamers showed no significant differences in the model. The escapism motive appeared to be the common predictor of problematic gaming among both esport and recreational gamers. Future studies should focus on exploring escapism's mechanism in different subgroups of gamers in relation to problematic gaming to help the development of prevention, intervention, and treatment programs.