Enjoyment not addiction: Attracting human players without fueling psychological addiction to computer games

Purpose

Game addiction creates health and social problems among players, leading to the following question: How can games attract players without fueling game addiction? This question has not been sufficiently answered in the literature because, theoretically, it has not included the carry-over effect of earlier game addiction. Additionally, methodologically, prior research has not included all possible correlations among the game experiences as the antecedents to addiction, indicating the possibility of mis-specifying addiction predictors. To address these gaps, our study built a model to explain how game loyalty, enjoyment, escapism, and immersion affect current game addiction and, importantly, considers the influence of earlier game addiction.

Design/methodology/approach

The data were drawn from complete responses from 1026 players to two waves of surveys. The model was tested using structural equation modeling, which includes all the correlations among the game experiences, effectively overcoming the methodological challenges in the literature.

Findings

Earlier game addiction was observed to have the greatest influence on current game addiction. Escapism and immersion fueled game addiction, whereas game loyalty did not. Surprisingly, enjoyment reduced game addiction.

Originality/value

Our findings offer insights to game makers by envisioning that they focus on enjoyment and game loyalty, thus likely enhancing game sustainability in an ethical manner. Our model explained 53 % of the variance in current game addiction, indicating its relevance to players’ health and the sustainability of gaming systems. Caution should be taken, as the findings are based exclusively on a sample from Taiwan.