Working towards an international consensus on criteria for assessing internet gaming disorder: a critical commentary on Petry et al . (2014)

Working towards an international consensus on criteria for assessing internet gaming disorder: a critical commentary on Petry et al. (2014) This commentary paper critically discusses the recent debate paper by Petry et al. (2014) that argued there was now an international consensus for assessing Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD).Our collective opinions vary considerably regarding many different aspects of online gaming.However, we contend that the paper by Petry and colleagues does not provide a true and representative international community of researchers in this area.This paper critically discusses and provides commentary on (i) the representativeness of the international group that wrote the ‘consensus’ paper, and (ii) each of the IGD criteria.The paper also includes a brief discussion on initiatives that could be taken to move the field towards consensus.It is hoped that this paper will foster debate in the IGD field and lead to improved theory, better methodologically designed studies, and more robust empirical evidence as regards problematic gaming and its psychosocial consequences and impact. REPRESENTATIVENESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL GROUP AND PROBLEMATIC GAMING INSTRUMENTS ASSESSEDThe criteria for selecting the members of this international panel that met to discuss the IGD criteria were not stated clearly, and we would argue that the panel does not represent adequately the international community of gaming researchers.The authors of the ‘consensus’ paper came from nine different countries (i.e.United States, Germany, the Netherlands, China, Singapore, Mexico, France, Spain and Australia), with at least one author from Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia.Africa and South America were not represented.However, there were no representatives from countries where many empirical studies on IGD have been carried out, including the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Czech Republic, Turkey, Hungary, Switzerland, Taiwan and South Korea.With regard to the representativeness of the problematic gaming