Leaving a Never-Ending Game: Quitting MMORPGs and Online Gaming Addiction

This study, drawn from a Taiwanese academic setting, examines why gamers stop playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) after having been addicted to them. The authors argue that existing research on game addiction has focused largely on diagnostic criteria, personality traits, and structural game features, while neglecting the dynamic process through which attachment to a game rises, changes, and eventually declines. Their central hypothesis is that the reasons people abandon a game reflect the same factors that drew them into addiction in the first place, and that quitting should be understood as a process unfolding over time rather than a single decision.

The findings are based primarily on individual interviews with twelve former MMORPG players aged 21 to 30, all holding at least an undergraduate degree, recruited through snowball sampling. These were supplemented by posts from Taiwanese gaming forums and discussion boards, including PTT, Bahamut, and Yahoo!Kimo Knowledge, along with graphical reconstructions of individual attachment levels over time. The authors identify three broad categories of reasons for leaving: immersion in virtual environments (such as in-game economic inflation, theft of possessions, and repetitive or stagnant gameplay), social networks and obligations (including guild conflicts, the presence of bots, and the emotional burden of group expectations), and offline social and family pressures. The case of one participant illustrates how attachment shifts across academic, family, and peer contexts, with multiple factors interacting and recurring over several years.

The study also documents self-awareness among addicted players, who monitored their own behavior, felt guilt or social disapproval, and sought advice on forums, where suggestions ranged from pursuing other activities to deleting accounts. The authors conclude that game addiction cannot be treated as one-dimensional, that gamer diversity must be acknowledged, and that a longitudinal view is needed. Given the small, self-selected sample and the study's exploratory design, the authors frame their work as a preliminary contribution.