New study investigates friendship among gamers
(24th of March 2014) Are online gamers socially isolated or do they find new friends while gaming? Emese Domahidi, Ruth Festl and Thorsten Quandt (Department of Communication/Münster University) examine in their newest study “To dwell among gamers: Investigating the relationship between social online game use and gaming-related friendships“ the relationship between digital games use and users’ sociability.
Social online games are a mass phenomenon and, for most of the users, a social activity. Even though there are numerous studies on social online games, possible strong ties such as friendship relationships are often neglected. Additionally modality switching between the two spheres, online and offline, is not further investigated.
The study relies on a representative sample of 2213 gamers and 287 non-gamers in Germany. The results show that social online gamers do not differ significantly from other gamers or non-gamers regarding the number of their good friends. The respondents were socially well embedded, regardless of their gaming frequency or the gaming form. Gaming therefore does not seem to substitute for real-life contacts and does not lead to social isolation. The results suggest that social online gamers are well integrated and use the game to spend time with old friends—and to recruit new ones.
Different social motives played an important role for modality switching processes from online to offline and vice versa. Players with a pronounced motive to gain social capital and to play in a team had the highest probability to transform their social relations from online to offline context. The results suggest that gaming-related ties might be very useful: especially modality switching between the two spheres might lead to strong ties and accordingly to additional bonding social capital.
The study is available online ahead of print in Computers in Human Behavior. It will be published in one of the forthcoming issues 2014.
Contact:
Emese Domahidi
Research Assistant
ERC Starting Grant „The social fabric of virtual life: A longitudinal multi-method study
on the social foundations of online gaming” (SOFOGA)
Phone: +49 251 83-22406
Fax: +49 251 83-21253
Media Relations (Department of Communication):
Magdalena Bollmann
Research Assistant
Phone: +49 251 83-24653
Fax: +49 251 83-21310