Background. Psychological characteristics of gamers (video games players) is an extremely relevant field of research today, because prevalence of gaming is wide and growing, covering all current generations (Avetisova, 2011; Bogacheva, Voiskunsky, 2014; Snodgrass et al., 2017).

Objective. The study reveals the explicit real-life motives in online gamers and the reasons why they choose certain leisure compared to other passtimes.

Design. The sample includes 10,916 Russian-speaking gamers from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other CIS countries. The main explicit motives in the real-life gamers are considered: motives of cognition and motives of achievements. The discriminant analysis method identified and described three groups of players: with motives of cognition and motives of achievements of a rational type, motives of cognition and motives of achievements of an indefinite type. A comparison was made between male gamers and male non-gamers according to the degree of explicit motives. High mean ​​on the Likert scale are observed in non-gamers within motives associated with communication and interaction with other people (Wilcoxon test, p≤0.01) and in motives aimed at perception of beauty, significance and grandeur (Wilcoxon test, p≤0,001). The gamers have a higher assessment of situations related to the clarity of the tasks, and perform significantly less interest in situations within which they can influence something (Wilcoxon test, p≤0.01).

Research Results. A scale for assessing real-life motives is designed to estimate the empirically identified motives in gamers on multiple choice scales and then on a five-point Likert scale. There are three groups of gamers with different types of motivation have been identified and described, a comparison of the severity of these motives in male gamers and male non-gamers has been made.

Conclusion. Cognitive motives and motives of achievement for male gamers and male non-gamers were expressed in equally high figures, which may be due to the universality and significance of the values ​​of knowledge and achievements in modern society. Perhaps computer games are the most available leisure to gamers that satisfy their needs for cognition and achievement. A further task is set to test these assumptions using other methods (for example, in-depth interviews).