A study published in Computers in Human Behavior suggests that playing video games with a trusted, familiar group can boost loyalty to a game while reducing the risk of addiction. The research, led by Shih-I Tai of Chang Gung University in Taiwan, involved an online survey of 884 video game players in Taiwan who reported on their habits over the previous month.
Researchers anchored their analysis in two established psychological frameworks: the pleasure-arousal theory, which separates emotional experience into how pleasant and how arousing it is, and brain reward circuitry theory, which posits separate neural pathways for pleasure and arousal. They hypothesised that high pleasure would reinforce loyalty, while high arousal could reinforce addictive tendencies.
The study asked participants to rate four social dimensions of their gaming experiences: the size of their usual gaming group, how many of those group members they knew in real life, the level of trust within the group, and the extent of game escapism—the use of gaming to escape real-world stress. Respondents also indicated their self-reported levels of game loyalty and game addiction.
The researchers employed structural equation modelling to examine the relationships between these factors. They found that larger gaming groups were positively associated with loyalty—gamers in bigger groups were more likely to intend to keep playing and to recommend the game to others. However, group size did not have a statistically significant link to addiction.
Real-world familiarity yielded a different pattern: knowing fellow players personally did not predict loyalty, but it did relate to lower levels of addiction. The authors proposed that real-life acquaintances might remind players of outside responsibilities, helping to temper immersion and emotional arousal.
Trust among group members emerged as the most beneficial factor. High trust correlated with both increased loyalty and reduced addiction, suggesting that reliable peers provide a comforting, pleasant gaming environment that supports healthy engagement.
Escapism showed a dual effect. While it predicted higher loyalty by delivering temporary relief from stress, it also strongly predicted higher addiction, as intense immersion can amplify emotional arousal and reward-seeking within the brain’s pathways.
Despite these insights, the researchers emphasised that the study is based on self-reported data collected at one point in time, meaning it identifies associations rather than proving causation. They acknowledged that players less prone to addiction might be more inclined to form trusting peer relationships, a potential bidirectional influence.
They also noted that no clinical brain monitoring was conducted, and suggested that future work could incorporate tools such as electroencephalograms to verify how social interactions influence brain activity in real time. Additionally, the Taiwan-only sample may limit generalisability, so replicating the study in other cultural contexts could test whether these protective effects of trust and real-world familiarity hold more broadly.
The study, “The ties that (healthily) bind: Playing in groups increases game loyalty but decrease addiction,” was authored by Shih-I Tai, Thi Tuan Linh Pham, Tzu-Ling Huang, Alexander S. Dennis, Chun-Hao Liu, Gen-Yih Liao, and Ching-I Teng.
