اشتیاق، ولع و احساس در بازی های آنلاین: پیش بینی چگونگی احساس علاقه مندان به بازی هنگام بازی و هنگامی که از بازی مانع می شوند

According to the Dualistic Model of Passion, two forms of passion can motivate a behavior: harmonious passion and obsessive passion. Across various life activities, studies have found that the two forms of passion show different relationships with affect, linking harmonious passion to positive affect and obsessive passion to negative affect. To investigate if this pattern also holds for online gaming, the present study investigated 160 gamers involved in playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMOs) and examined positive and negative affect (a) when playing and (b) when prevented from playing. In addition, the effects of general affect and craving for playing MMOs were controlled for. Results were as expected from the Dualistic Model of Passion: harmonious passion for online gaming predicted positive affect when playing whereas obsessive passion predicted negative affect when playing and when prevented from playing. Moreover, these effects remained unchanged when general affect and craving were controlled for. With this, the present research shows that individual differences in passion for online gaming explain unique variance in gaming-related emotions. Moreover, the present findings suggests that craving is a variable that future research on positive and negative affect in online gaming should pay closer attention to.

With ever more people having high-speed Internet access, online gaming has become increasingly popular, particularly among young adults. One of the most popular online games are massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs or MMOs) such as World of Warcraft, which reached a worldwide subscriber base of over 12 million in 2010 (Blizzard Entertainment, 2010). While some research found that playing MMOs has harmful effects linking it to psychological problems such as Internet addiction (e.g., Parsons, 2005), other research found that playing MMOs has both positive and negative effects (e.g., Smyth, 2007). Following the latter perspective, the present study investigated the relationship between playing MMOs and positive and negative affect and the role that individual differences in passion for playing MMOs have in these relationships.