The role of social video game play and relatedness in players’ well-being

Video games is one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and there are nearly 3 billion video game players in the world. The popularity of video games has caused a heated discussion about their influence on players’ well-being. Many negative impacts on mental and physical health have been found when problematic video game use or gaming disorder has been reported. However, some studies ignored the motivation for gaming when exploring the relationship between playing video games and well-being. Self-determination theory (SDT) proposes that people’s behaviours are driven by three basic phycological needs, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Relatedness, or being connected with other people, can be achieved through social video game play, especially as the multiplayer online video games community is getting larger. Therefore, this study explores the role of social video game play and the need for relatedness in gaming and examined whether it influenced one’s well-being and life satisfaction by analysing three waves of self-reported well-being and motivation data of 87,321 video game players and their game-behaviours data. Results provided evidence that social gamers and gamers with higher relatedness satisfaction scores experienced higher affective well-being and general life satisfaction. It was also found that the effects of social gaming and relatedness on affective well-being were stronger among female players. No moderation effect of gender was found in life satisfaction. This study reveals that playing video games with others and fulfilling social needs are beneficial to one’s well-being, stressing the importance of not only behaviours but also psychological satisfaction in video game studies.