Studies into video game addiction are scarce. However, the increased recognition of the issue amongst the scientific community means more and
more researchers are beginning to look seriously at video game addiction. Daniel Loton, an ethics officer and former psychology honours student
from Victoria University, used his thesis to explore the relationship between social capacity and problematic video gameplay to try to determine
the cause of video game addiction. Loton used the Social Skills Inventory (SSI), a broad scale that measures basic social skills, to survey 560
male and 61 female gamers with an average age of 23.4 years. His survey found a very small connection between social capacity (that is, social
skills and self-esteem) and video game playing. Given the past research on the topic, Loton said his study yielded surprising results.
"To use the words of the American Medical Association after it had conducted a review of the literature, problem gamers are likely to
be...somewhat marginalised socially, perhaps experiencing high levels of emotional loneliness and/or difficulty with real-life social interactions,"
Loton said. "Considering this past research, I would have expected social skills and self-esteem to drop as problematic play increased. Instead,
only a tiny relationship emerged."
The results revealed that basic social capacity is not the central cause of problematic video gameplay. Broadly speaking, no serious negative
consequences of playing video games were revealed, even when playing to the extreme. Loton thinks his results may turn attention away from the
assumed link between social capacity and problematic video gameplay and direct attention to other characteristics such as behaviour moderation,