Contextualizing Pathological Gaming: A Proof-of-Concept Study

This proof-of-concept study examines whether a widely used screening questionnaire for pathological gaming accurately captures the experiences of gaming professionals and players. Four eSports players and streamers completed Gentile's (2009) 11-item instrument and then took part in semi-structured interviews in which they explained their answers. The authors argue that the questionnaire, built largely by adapting substance-abuse criteria, may not measure what it intends to, and that decontextualized items risk labeling healthy, committed players as problematic. Their central thesis is that gaming behavior can only be meaningfully evaluated within the context of a person's everyday life, and that a bottom-up, context-sensitive approach is preferable to screening tools when assessing whether gaming is harmful or addictive.

The interview data reveal several specific points of misfit. Ambiguous wording, such as the two-part "try to play less" item, led respondents to answer based on interpretations the instrument did not anticipate; one participant's "No" reflected never having tried to cut down rather than an inability to do so. The item on increasing time spent gaming is effectively impossible to endorse for players already gaming full-time, and the "sometimes" response option on the stealing item produced inconsistent answers. Respondents also used "addiction" in a lay sense, and the absence of a clinical distinction between dependency and addiction in Danish complicated interpretation. Together, these findings suggest the instrument can generate both false positives and false negatives in this population.

The study's scope is deliberately narrow, reflecting its proof-of-concept design. It draws on a small sample of Danish-speaking professional gamers, with interviews conducted in translation from English-language materials, and it focuses on a screening tool originally developed for players aged 8 to 18. The authors acknowledge these limitations and note the diversity of professional gaming experiences as a factor that may further complicate standardized measurement. Rather than offering prevalence estimates, the study's contribution lies in identifying conceptual and methodological problems. It calls for more context-aware research and questions whether the addiction framework fits gamers' experiences at all.