She makes me brave: The emergence of intimacy in gameplay

Abstract

This paper investigates the complex relationship between intimacy and play, and offers an empirical analysis of how intimacy emerges in a playful digital environment (i.e., Audition). Audition is a non‐violent, non‐fantasy dance battle Multiplayer Online Game (MOG) that has many Asian and female players, and provides a sophisticated in‐game marriage system. Based on players’ self‐reports posted on public online forums and in‐depth interview data from 35 Audition players, this study shows that Audition marriage is more than a playful game feature for many players. Instead, players experience genuine, meaningful intimate relationships there, and consider their in‐game marriage an emergent learning process to satisfy their social and emotional needs. This study contributes to understanding interpersonal dynamics forged around technological objects in digital environments, which is important for designing Intimate (Ubiquitous) Computing and the next generation of ICTs.

Virtually Together: Examining Pre-Existing Relationships in MMOG Play

“…Approaching couples' play from a different viewpoint is the ongoing work by Freeman née Zhang and her co-authors who are studying marriage as a game mechanic in Audition Online (Freeman, 2014;Freeman, Bardzell, & Bardzell, 2016). A free-to-play dance-oriented Massively Online Game, Audition Online breaks from many of the mechanics and affordances of fantasythemed games such as World of Warcraft or EverQuest discussed thus far in this review.…”