Differentiating Video Game Addiction from Other High-Level Engagements Among Adult Players

This study focused on the behaviours of adult video game players in the context of positive and negative effects of video games, to accurately differentiate video game addicts from highly engaged and non-addicted players. To accomplish this, we adopted the Problematic Video Game Playing Test (PVGT) to measure the components of addiction and Flow Short Scale (FSS) to measure high-level engagement. This is a concept which has been lost in the previous studies, setting the current study apart from other studies which were primarily concerned with investigating the negative impact of video games on its players. To get the data needed for this study, we conducted an online survey with a 40-item questionnaire which included demographic information of the respondents, gaming experience and behavioural components of flow and addiction. We were able to attract 80 adult video game players to participate in the study. Our findings showed that 60% of these 80 adult video game players were not addicted, 34% were highly engaged while 6% of the players were addicted. These findings helped us to infer that not all highly engaged video game players are addicted. Furthermore, most of the addicted players were players who have been playing video games for a long time