ABSTRACT
As technology continues to be a part of our life, online gaming has claimed the hearts of millions of people as a favourite leisure activity. Among them online role-playing game provides people the opportunity to play a de-sired role, be it a king, princess or warrior. This article aimed to provide an insight into what role-playing game is, and why it has become so popular in recent years, with the help of existing literature. This article also attempted to point out the need to research more in the field of gaming as the existing literature is not suffi-cient to cover the vastness of the topic. The digitalization of games from physical form to online form has changed the way games has been viewed, played, and understood. Due to the popularity of online games, there is a significant change in the research around online games, especially role-playing games. There is still more research needed in Indian context about online games as it has become a popular source of entertain-ment throughout all the ages and also become a huge source of economy.
ABSTRACT
Background: Online video games are one of the most popular recreational activities irrespective of age, gender and culture. Gaming disorder has been recently included in the 11th Revision of the international classification of diseases (ICD-11). Thus online video game addiction among people is a serious mental health issue and unfortunately, research on this addiction is still in its infancy. Thus the present study examines the prevalence of problematic online gaming among undergraduate medical students and its association with demographic variables, and health-related measures like well-being, self-esteem and depressive mood.Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted among the undergraduate students of Goa medical college using online survey method. Problematic online gaming was assessed using the problematic online gaming questionnaire short form (POGQ-SF). Additionally, well-being was assessed using the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS), self-esteem was assessed using Rosenberg’s self- esteem scale (RSES) and depressive mood was assessed using the patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9).Results: According to POGQ-SF, 8% of the study participants showed problematic online gaming. It was significantly associated with sex of the study participants, frequency of online gaming, duration of internet use per day and duration of a gaming session.Conclusions: Playing online games is a widespread activity among undergraduate medical students and a substantial proportion of these students exhibit addictive behaviours with regards to online gaming. Further research in terms of longitudinal studies involving larger samples of general population is needed to throw light on causal relationship between problematic online gaming and related factors.