Further validation and cross-cultural replication of the video game demand scale

The Video Game Demand Scale (VGDS) is a 26-item, five-factor scale designed to assess the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social demands experienced by video game players. Given the international relevance of video games, cross-cultural research focusing on gamers beyond the US community holds promise to substantiate and refine extant approaches. The current study introduces a German-language VGDS, which was tested for measurement invariance with respect to the original US scale as well as predictive, convergent, and concurrent validity (replicating the original VGDS validity tests). Results revealed configural and partial metric measurement invariance when compared with data from the original scale. Validity tests between the German-language VGDS and common measures of task load, entertainment, need satisfaction, and game ratings largely replicated original results. Overall, we conclude that the VGDS is a reliable, valid, and useful contribution to media psychological game research and suggest areas of future work for which an interactivity-as-demand focus might benefit.