What Compels People to Play Games in India? A Study Comparing Gaming Motives across the Two Genders

A video game is defined as a type of game played based on audio-visual apparatus and may or may not have a storyline in it. Previous Literature understands multiple elements are responsible for motivating an individual to play games, such as genre, situation, relatedness, and personality styles. Due to the lack of research in India on gaming motives, this descriptive-effects study explores gaming motives with the Indian population and observes gender differences. A total of 100 participants (67 males and 33 females) were taken for this study using snowball sampling and motives were obtained by using the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ). Results were computed using descriptive statistics, parametric (ANOVA) and non-parametric (Mann Whitney U Test) tests. Results show males have the highest gaming time for the skill development motive and females have the highest gaming time for the recreational motive. Furthermore, both males and females had the second-highest gaming times for the coping motive. Except for the recreation and escape motives, all other motives were observed to be significantly different across the two genders. When studying for interaction effects between gender and gaming motives, results showed gender had a significant effect on gaming time but gaming motives and the interaction of gender and motives did not.