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Abstract

Online gaming may be associated with adverse outcomes in a minority of players. While some suggest that pathological patterns of online gaming are a public health concern in Iran, the evidence on pathological gaming among Iranian online gamers remains scarce. This study aims to investigate the patterns, motivations, and correlates of pathological online gaming in Iran. An online survey in Persian was performed among adult online gamers recruited across Iranian universities and social media. The 10-item Internet Gaming Disorder Test (IGDT-10) was used to screen for Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD). Motivations for gaming were assessed using the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ) and correlated psychiatric symptoms were assessed using the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). After the estimation of descriptive statistics and bivariate tests, multivariate linear and logistic regressions were used to assess the correlates of the IGDT-10 score and IGD. A total of 791 individuals (75.4% men) responded to the survey. More than 5% played 42 h or more per week. Only 3.7% of respondents met the threshold for IGD. IGD was 9.4 times more common among male than female gamers. The most commonly endorsed criteria were “continuation”, “negative consequences”, and “preoccupation”. Younger age, time spent on gaming, using a PC instead of a smartphone for gaming, “escape” and “fantasy” gaming motivations and psychiatric symptoms were associated with the IGDT-10 score. A small minority of Iranian online gamers may be at risk of pathological gaming and its associated harms, especially younger gamers who play long hours and play with escapist and “fantasy”-related motivations. Further research is needed to elucidate the causes and consequences of gaming-related problems and to evaluate proposed diagnostic criteria and screening instruments.

Introduction

Online video games are increasingly popular leisure activities and have a growing number of end-users across the world (Gough, 2020), and while video games have never been so pervasive as they now are, discourse about their potential health efects is nearly as old as commercial video games (Gwinup et al., 1983). After decades of research, it is increasingly clear that video games have a nuanced and complex impact on players, based on the interaction of player characteristics, game features and gaming context (Gentile, 2011; Johnson et al., 2013).

In social networks, the spread of influence has been studied extensively, but most efforts in existing literature are made on the product used by a single person. This paper attempts to address the product which is used by many persons such as the online game. When multiple people participate in one game, interaction between users is accompanied by browsing and clicking on advertisements, and operators can also earn certain advertising revenues. All these revenues are related to information interaction between people involved in one game. We use game profit to represent all of the revenues gained from players involved in one game and model the game profit maximization problem in social networks, which finds a seed set to maximize the game profit between players who are influenced to buy the game. We prove that the problem is NP-hard and the objective function is neither submodular nor supermodular. To solve it, we decompose it into the Difference between two Submodular functions (DS decomposition) and propose four heuristic algorithms. To address the complexity of computing objective function, we design a new sampling method based on reverse reachable set technology. Experiment results on real datasets show that our approaches perform well.

Introduction

As online social networks (OSN) grow rapidly[1, 2, 3], the information diffusion and social influence get into people’s daily life deeply. Therefore, the influence-driven information technology and influence-based research subjects have been studied extensively in literatures. One of subjects is the viral marketing. In fact, advertisements in online social networks have gained better results than traditional medias sometimes, such as newspapers and televisions. Among existing works in viral marketing, most of efforts in the literature are made on products used by a single person[4, 5, 6]. In this paper, we consider the product which is used by many persons, i.e., a online game with many players. When multiple players participate in an online game, interaction behaviors between game players are always accompanied by browsing on advertisements showed on the game scene, which will lead to advertising revenue. The more frequent the interaction between players, the more times an advertisement is presented and viewed which means more revenues[7]. All these benefits or revenues are related to information interaction between people involved in one game. We use game profit to represent the revenues gained from game players mentioned above.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the acceptance of online games, based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT 2). The data analysed correspond to a sample of online players through mobile devices in Spain. A structural equation approach based on Partial Least Squares was used to assess the acceptance model. The result of the analysis indicates that UTAUT 2 explains 71% of the use of online games in mobile devices. The main conclusion of the study highlights the importance of habit in the use of online games. Specifically, the intention to play online is explained, in order of importance, by the variables habit, hedonic motivation and social identity. In addition, the use of an online game is determined by habit and intention to play. We proposed a simplified UTAUT2 model adapted to the online game scope.

Introduction

To play or not to play: this is not the question, because according to the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) there were between 2.2 and 2.6 billion players around the world in 2017. The critical question is: what are the key factors for the success of a specific online game? Hundreds of new video games are launched every month, but people accept only a few. Specifically, in the mobile market, 21.8 billion game apps were downloaded from Apple’s APP store and Google Play in Q1 2017–2018, a 15.3% increase from the same quarter the previous year. For example, Niantic’s Pokemon Go surpassed 65 million active monthly active users in April 2017 and made over $470 million in gross revenues in the first 80 days after its launch. Three games broke the billion-dollar mark: Mixi’s Monster Strike, Supercell’s Clash of the Clans and Clash Royal. Furthermore, games generated 90% of Google Play revenue (UKIE, 2017). The future of the sector is very optimistic, and the growth of this market will be unstoppable in the coming years. Despite the relevance of these figures, the scientific research about the acceptation of online games is limited. Playing is a primary activity in human behaviour. While all mammals play, humans play more and throughout their lives (Schultz and Lavenda, 2005). Indeed, since humans are very social animals, as they grow they interact more with their age group and games become essential for learning (Nanda and Warms, 2010). For instance, games offer a unique class of mediation for the emergence of new mental functions in young children (Bodrova and Leong, 2015).