Online games and family ties: influences of social networking game on family relationship

  • Authors:

  • Jing Wen;Yong Ming Kow;Yunan Chen

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, CA and The State Key Lab of Software Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China;Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, CA;Department of Informatics, University of California, Irvine, CA

  • Venue:
  • INTERACT'11 Proceedings of the 13th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-computer interaction - Volume Part III
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

How do online games impact intergenerational family relationships? To answer this question, we investigated QQ Farm, the most popular online game available on a popular Chinese social networking site. We conducted observations and semi-structured interviews with sixteen pairs of Chinese parents and their adult children. Of the sixteen pairs, seven lived locally; nine pairs lived remotely. The findings of this study suggest that online games provide common conversational topics among local family members and enrich family time. Online games with well-designed shared virtual spaces can also help enhance remote families' awareness of each other's real-life activity. For future intergenerational games, we recommend a game design that requires minimal effort, has a 'healthy' theme, and provides features, such as an activity log and message board, which help maintain game based family communications.