Gaming Motivations as a Guide to Treating Problematic Gaming Behaviors

With the recent edition of Gaming Disorder to the ICD-11, it is imperative for clinicians to explore avenues to treat individuals who may seek treatment for videogame-related difficulties. An important factor in treating addictive behavior disorders is to select adaptive, appropriate replacement behaviors. Thus, this study explored typical non-gaming-related activities enjoyed by gamers as predicted by their gaming interests, with a goal of predicting targeted replacement behaviors based on gamer motivations. Online data were collected for 216 participants. Each participant completed a Gamer Motivation Profile and a General Interests Profile, and multiple regression analyses were conducted to test the degree to which gaming motivations also predicted interest in other, non-gaming-related activities. A number of significant, meaningful results emerged, both in positive and negative directions. For example, socially motivated gamers tended to also enjoy social activities outside of gaming, while showing decreased interest in creative activities. Similarly, immersion-oriented gamers tended to have higher interest in Intellectual activities, with decreased interest in Social activities and in Vacationing. Preliminary results revealed insights that can be used by clinicians in making targeted recommendations of replacement behaviors for problematic gamers, based on their specific Gamer Motivation Profiles. © 2019, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.