Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This manuscript examines associations among achievement motivation, meaning in life, and well-being in a sample of student video game players—a timely topic that benefits from the use of validated questionnaires. However, several conceptual and methodological limitations undermine the strength of the conclusions.

Critically, the cross-sectional design precludes causal or mechanistic inferences, yet the manuscript often implies directional relationships (e.g., meaning in life "influencing" well-being), which the data cannot support. Mediation analyses warrant cautious interpretation in this context, and the authors should substantially moderate their claims accordingly.

Additionally, the definition of "gamer" is excessively broad, relying solely on self-reported game play without accounting for frequency, duration, or genre. This approach compromises the ecological validity of the results and diminishes their applicability to gaming-specific phenomena.

The categorization of participants into approach- and avoidance-motivation groups also lacks robust methodological rationale. Dichotomizing continuous variables can lead to information loss and artificially amplify group differences. Moreover, the reported suppression effect for mastery-approach motivation, though statistically significant, receives insufficient theoretical elaboration and may stem from modeling artifacts rather than a substantive psychological process.

In its present state, the manuscript primarily extends established patterns from broader academic motivation literature to a gaming sample, without elucidating what aspects of the gaming context uniquely contribute to these dynamics. Addressing these issues would greatly enhance the paper's rigor and novelty.

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the time and effort you dedicated to reviewing our manuscript. Your insightful comments and constructive criticism have been invaluable in improving the quality and rigor of our work. We have carefully addressed each of your concerns, and the corresponding changes in the manuscript have been marked in red (along with other fragments that were supplemented based on the comments of the other two reviewers). Please find the detailed responses below.

Comments 1: Critically, the cross-sectional design precludes causal or mechanistic inferences, yet the manuscript often implies directional relationships (e.g., meaning in life "influencing" well-being), which the data cannot support. Mediation analyses warrant cautious interpretation in this context, and the authors should substantially moderate their claims accordingly.

Response 1: We fully agree with the assessment regarding the limitations of a cross-sectional design. In response to this crucial point, we have thoroughly revised the manuscript to moderate our claims. Specifically we:
- replaced directional and causal language (such as "influence" or "impact") with more appropriate terms like "association," "link," or "relationship" throughout the text;
- significantly expanded the Limitations section to explicitly state that the cross-sectional nature of the data does not allow for causal or mechanistic inferences (lines 398-406);
- added a note regarding the cautious interpretation of the mediation analysis, emphasizing that the observed indirect effects represent statistical associations rather than proven causal pathways (lines 398-406; 437-445).

Comments 2: Additionally, the definition of "gamer" is excessively broad, relying solely on self-reported game play without accounting for frequency, duration, or genre. This approach compromises the ecological validity of the results and diminishes their applicability to gaming-specific phenomena.

Response 2: We acknowledge that our definition of "gamer" was relatively broad. Our primary objective was to investigate general psychological mechanisms (achievement motivation and meaning in life) within the population of students who engage in video gaming as a significant activity. However, we understand that the lack of detailed data on gaming habits is a limitation. We have addressed this by adding a detailed justification in the Introduction (lines 150-165) regarding why this group was chosen, highlighting the unique ecological context of modern gaming.
Furthermore, we have added this issue to the Limitations section (lines 407-419; 443-445), explicitly stating that future research should incorporate objective metrics such as playtime frequency, duration, and specific genres to increase ecological validity and allow for more nuanced comparisons.

Comments 3: The categorization of participants into approach- and avoidance-motivation groups also lacks robust methodological rationale. Dichotomizing continuous variables can lead to information loss and artificially amplify group differences. Moreover, the reported suppression effect for mastery-approach motivation, though statistically significant, receives insufficient theoretical elaboration and may stem from modeling artifacts rather than a substantive psychological process.

Response 3: Thank you for this critical remark. We have taken the following steps to address both the methodological and theoretical aspects of this comment.
Dichotomization: We have added a rationale in the Methods section (lines 187-191), explaining that this approach was used as a simplified way to illustrate qualitative differences in motivational orientations for practical interpretation. We have also added a disclaimer in the Limitations section (Lines 428-436) regarding the potential loss of information and the need for future studies to utilize continuous modeling.
Suppression Effect: We have substantially expanded the Discussion (lines 362-377) to provide a robust theoretical elaboration of the suppression effect. We now interpret this finding through the lens of the "psychological cost of commitment." We argue that while the pursuit of mastery involves taxing effort and performance pressure (leading to the negative direct path), it simultaneously builds agency and existential meaning. To further support this, we have incorporated the concept of "life crafting," explaining how meaning in life acts as a transformative resource that buffers the strain of effort and converts it into eudaimonic well-being. This suggests the effect is a substantive psychological process rather than a mere modeling artifact.

We believe that these revisions have significantly strengthened the manuscript and addressed all the concerns raised.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

After minor corrections, the article is suitable for publication. It deals with the important connection between motivation and satisfaction, offering the possibilities of mediation analysis as an output for this topic.

The use of gamers as a research group is somewhat controversial—although justified, without controls, its benefits are relative, and as a group, it is quite heterogeneous (students under 35 years of age), and it does not utilize even partial characteristics of gamers (types of games, intensity of time spent, etc.). However, the subsequent emphasis on the applicability of the results to the group of players is adequate for the procedure.

The results are processed appropriately, but I recommend modifying the following parts:

(line 248) "increased and became statistically significant (β = -0.11, p < .05) when meaning in life was included as a mediator" does not correspond to the results in the table

Figure 1 and Table 3 should be better annotated - F1 lacks a description of what types of effects the selected characteristics represent, and T3 is a rather confusing abbreviation of the model name (instead of abbreviations, it would be more appropriate to describe the model in words (e.g., "mastery/performance goal model") and explain it in more detail in the legend (or in the text referring to Figure 1).

Author Response

We are deeply grateful for the thorough review and constructive feedback provided on our manuscript. Your suggestions have played a crucial role in enhancing the clarity and precision of our research. We have carefully addressed each of your concerns, and the corresponding changes in the manuscript have been marked in red (this includes revisions made in response to all three reviewers to ensure a comprehensive improvement of the paper). Please find our detailed responses below.

Comments 1: The use of gamers as a research group is somewhat controversial—although justified, without controls, its benefits are relative, and as a group, it is quite heterogeneous (students under 35 years of age), and it does not utilize even partial characteristics of gamers (types of games, intensity of time spent, etc.). However, the subsequent emphasis on the applicability of the results to the group of players is adequate for the procedure.

Response 1: Thank you for this insightful observation. We acknowledge that the student gamer population is indeed heterogeneous and that the absence of specific gaming metrics (such as genre or weekly playtime) is a limitation of the current study.
- In the revised manuscript, we have added a more detailed justification for focusing on this group in the Introduction (Lines 150-165), highlighting the psychological relevance of the gaming environment as a space for achievement and meaning-making.
- We have also expanded the Limitations (lines 407-419) section to explicitly state that future research should include control variables such as gaming frequency, duration, and specific genres to provide a more nuanced understanding of these dynamics across different types of players.

Comments 2: (line 248) "increased and became statistically significant (β = -0.11, p < .05) when meaning in life was included as a mediator" does not correspond to the results in the table

Response 2: We have corrected this fragment in the Results section to align perfectly with the data in the Table. The text now correctly reflects the direct effect size (B = -0.08, p < .05) observed in the final model.

Comments 3: Figure 1 and Table 3 should be better annotated - F1 lacks a description of what types of effects the selected characteristics represent, and T3 is a rather confusing abbreviation of the model name (instead of abbreviations, it would be more appropriate to describe the model in words (e.g., "mastery/performance goal model") and explain it in more detail in the legend (or in the text referring to Figure 1).

Response 3: We agree that the previous annotations were insufficient for clear interpretation. We have implemented the following changes:
- Figure 1: We have added a comprehensive legend and descriptive labels to Figure 1, clearly distinguishing between direct and indirect effects and explaining the paths illustrated in the model.
- Table 3 & 4: Following your suggestion, we have replaced all confusing abbreviations in the table titles and headers with full, descriptive names (e.g., "Mastery-Approach Goal Model" and "Performance-Approach Goal Model"). We have also expanded the legends beneath the tables to provide a clearer explanation of the variables and the statistical models used.

We believe that these modifications have significantly improved the readability and transparency of our findings.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The current research investigates relationships among approach and avoidance-oriented performance and mastery motivations and meaning in life among student gamers. The research is well-positioned in existing literature and grounded in an appropriate theoretical framework. The hypotheses are clearly stated and supported by both previous literature. The methodology and statistical analyses are further appropriate for testing the hypotheses, and the measures and results are largely adequately reported. I am particularly positively disposed to the use of best practices (e.g., bootstrapping) for conducting tests of indirect effects. The Discussion section presents well-considered implications, limitations, and future directions. Overall, the work seems to have a number of strengths and no major weaknesses.

One minor note for improvement:

When describing measures, report how composite variables were calculated, the resulting range of possible values, and the descriptive statistics (M, SD).

 

Author Response

We would like to express our sincere appreciation for your encouraging and positive evaluation of our manuscript! Your feedback has been very helpful in refining the technical details of our report. We have addressed your minor suggestion for improvement, and the changes are marked in red in the revised manuscript (along with other fragments that were supplemented based on the comments of the other two reviewers).

In accordance with your recommendation, we have updated the Materials and Methods section as follows:
- We have explicitly stated that composite scores for each scale (AGQ, MLQ, and WHO-5) were calculated by summing the scores of the individual items belonging to each subscale.
- Descriptive Statistics: We have included a new paragraph and table (Table 2: Descriptive statistics and results of the Shapiro-Wilk normality test), which presents the Mean, Standard Deviation, as well as range, skewness, and kurtosis for all primary variables.

We believe these additions provide a more complete picture of our data and enhance the overall quality of the paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors have satisfactorily addressed the reviewer comments including mine and have appropriately revised the manuscript. In my opinion, the revised manuscript is suitable for publication in the current form.