Considering Game Companions: Implications for research and design

This empirical study explores the role of co-players in players’ motivations and experiences of gaming through relational sociological analyses of interview and survey data. The aim is to bring attention to the importance of divergent gaming partners, and to offer some implications for considering co-players in game research and design. Results explore three gaming situations: playing with family members, playing with friends and playing with strangers, and shows how differently these co-players impact on players’ experiences and motivations. Games as designed platforms have certain affordances for social behaviour that will vary for different constellations of individuals playing together. Moreover, the study shows how strong game structures facilitate and encourage play with strangers but simultaneously dissuade player agency and social incentive in play with friends and relations. From analysis of the data three design hypotheses concerning co-players and their impact on gaming are posed.