Battle of royale game: Perspective from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) is an online multiplayer video game with components of survival, exploration, competitiveness, and winning by eliminating all opponents. It is being played between individual players, pairs of two players, or among a small team of 3 to 5 players. In each match, each player wants to the last player by eliminating all other opponents. The rapid growth and success of the PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds has been attributed to several factors, including in-game characteristics and its availability across computers, consoles, mobile devices. There are 30 million daily active users globally, and it is one of the popular game in India (Bhattacharya, 2019). Research evidence suggests that there are possibilities of developing problematic online gaming behaviors in different age groups, including children, adolescents, and young adults (Kuss & Griffiths, 2012; Sharma & Mahindru, 2015). The player’s motives and preferences also influence the manifestation of healthy uses of games or pathological gaming. It has been observed those players who use games to escape from their problems experienced gaming-related problems (Kneer & Glock, 2013; Yee, 2006). The social interaction component of internet games also makes it more addictive (Thomas & Martin, 2010). There is a need to understand the underlying motivation for playing popular games like PUBG. Yee (2006) proposed three main components of motivation. They are achievement, social, and immersion. Recent years have seen an increase in players’ engagement in these games and behavioral issues secondary to them. Thirty-seven PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds players seeking help at Tertiary Speciality Clinic were assessed after obtaining their informed consent. The present work is a part of the ongoing project and got the Institute Ethics Committee’s approval. These players were in the age group of 18 to 21 years. They were brought to treatment by caregivers due to the presence of psychosocial dysfunctions. Each player was assessed for demographic information, gamerelated information, hours of play, and motivation to play. Atlas Ti software was used to assess the domains of qualitative data. The mean age of the players was 19 years, with a standard deviation of 1.81. All the players were playing 8 to 10 hours per day. They justified the playtime to work on their gaming skills. Twenty-four players also had a history of participating in Esports. Thirty-two gamers were not regular in their academics. They reported disturbance in sleep, self, and physical activities. All the subjects meet gaming disorder criteria on Internet gaming disorder scaleshort, (Pontes & Griffiths, 2015). Qualitative data also revealed the presence of following the domains: Physiological – It includes survival tactics in the game and explore the game and use available in-game characteristics. Safety and self-esteem – The expression includes the desire to build up a career in gaming, acknowledgment from other players and feeling good about achieving rank; feel secure as a gamer/safe in the company of other gamers. Emotional disturbance and coping: Players attributed playing more to cope with the individual distress and environment/family critical attitude. Competition and self-actualization – It manifest as a feeling of achievement in winning the games, spending more time on you tube videos or games to improve one’s skills to outplay others. The qualitative analysis document the role of Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds in fulfilling physiological, safety, and self-esteem with subdomains of emotional disturbance and coping, competition and self-actualization. It has been corroborated by Carter perspective in 2018, which states that the survival need of the Battle of Royale game is being seen in the expression of physiological and safety needs (Melrose, 2018). Love/belongingness and self-esteem get fulfilled through social and competitive nature of games, and selfactualization comes through winning the games. Sharma et al. (2020) also implicated technology’s role in expression of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The lack of fulfillment of needs can mediate the presence of problematic or obsessive passion for games. These obsessive passion players are found to be overly reliant on their passion to meet their basic needs. Lalande et al. (2017) corroborated the relationship between need frustration and obsessive passion. One of the most important aspects of games is to allow gamers to overcome the interpersonal-deficit by providing a platform to discuss personal matters, gaming strategies, form alliances, Battle of royale game: Perspective from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs