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The Lonely Blog

Lonely in an online gaming world

7/3/2013

3 Comments

 
One of the interesting characteristics of some members on the Web of Loneliness (WOL) online support group is the fact that they are online gamers. I've often mused over the question about whether online gaming helps alleviate loneliness or increases it. To me, it seems like if you are in an online game where you need to connect and collaborate with others, it would naturally lend itself to creating relationships and reducing loneliness. In fact, the online world could become so powerful that people neglect their lives in the real world. For example, there have been multiple stories of parents neglecting their children to play online games (see examples here, here, and here). That leads to the question, if online gaming is so immersive and capable of connecting people together, why were there members popping up in the support group who were lonely. 

A study recently published by Visser, Antheunis, and Schouten sort to look at how playing the online game, The World of Warcraft (WoW) affected players social competence and loneliness. Some of the major findings included that there were no direct effects between playing the game and a person's level of social competence or loneliness. That means that just because you play the online game, WoW, it doesn't automatically mean you tend to be more lonely or less socially competent (or vice-versa). The study also showed that the amount of time a person spends playing the game is also not related to loneliness or social competence. What they did find however, is that if you had a variety of communication partners in the game, a person is less likely to be lonely. In addition, if you tended to experiment with your identity more, you tended to be lonelier as well. The question becomes, why do less lonely players having more communication partners and experiment with their online identity less.

Some insight into this question comes from one of the members on the WOL support group. He thought that online games in which you get to shape your environment, so-called sandbox games, had a better chance of reducing loneliness than your basic run-of-the-mill action packed, violent games, such as WoW.

To me, there seems to be two distinct threads running through the findings of the study and the comments by the WOL member. One thread is the idea of authenticity. Online games give you the opportunity to pretend to be someone else, someone who is not you, to wear a mask, and hide your true self. Very much in real life, we do wear masks and hide our true selves from others for a variety of different reasons. One of the biggest ones is probably because we are afraid we will be rejected if we show our true selves to others. The problem with mask-wearing is that you can never truly connect with others, whether it be face-to-face, or online. You cannot share the deeper, more intimate aspects of your life with others and without that connection, the relationship will remain shallow and meaningless. This thread of authenticity is connected to the finding of identity experimentation, where the real self may be hidden behind a variety of experimental identities. Similarly sandbox games allows for a much more complex, rich, and revealing manifestation of one's self. It allows a person to really express who they are in a variety of ways beyond just the typical avatar in online gaming. Imagine creating a world that is a reflection of you and then having others interact with it. That is certainly a powerful tool of communication.

The second thread is the idea that online gaming does not magically make things different. If a person is lonely offline, when he/she goes online, the difficulty of connecting with others still remains. It's no surprise that less lonely folks have an easier time having a wider variety of communication partners online, because they already have the skill set to do so. They already know how to initiate conversations, how to build collaborations, how to resolve conflict, how to ask probing questions, etc. But for lonely folk lacking that skill set, getting immersed in an online world won't make a difference. I think this fact is reflective in other areas online as well. I've heard many lonely folk say that online dating sites simply do not work. Perhaps that is true, but if you had difficulty dating offline, you are going to have difficulty dating online as well. Nothing changes except the means of communication. If you are, for example, a jealous person, it will become manifest in either medium.

Online gaming can certainly be a powerful tool for helping people connect with one another. However, if you are a lonely person, being able to use that tool to connect with others may still prove to be difficult.
3 Comments
Mike
7/4/2013 06:53:53 am

Sounds like major research outcomes are more or less aimed in one direction: verification of the gaming industry and ignoring negative side effects of that industry. While on the one hand I had a major boost of confidence from running a 60-player guild in WoW, it took me 16 hours a day which is a shame. It is a shame that games like WoW are protected so much, which actually also hinders that industry indirectly because these games would run much better if they were tailored to "average human needs of entertainment" (say, 10 hours a week?) with the additional service of supporting people who have difficulty handling these massive games. I found that socializing in online gaming DOES substitute socializing "in the outside world" if you are looking for it, and yes I looked for it. And in fact, lots of the current leaders in online games are such people I believe. They have to spend way too much time to run a successful crew. That is reality which I bet is not in those research papers.

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Klint link
8/6/2013 02:32:42 pm

I can relate and understand the poster about me, what they have said on this topic.
I was very new to the game...games...when I got into them. Coming from already feeling lonely and having a hard time connecting and communicating with people.
I decided one 2 week holiday that I had from work, to go out and buy a game for my holidays. I didn't know what a online game was, heard of Wow but had no idea. After buying the game( it was SWG...star wars galaxies)...I got so hooked. I loved he game environment, being something new. So, for 3 years it had me hooked, plus being in what is a guild. That is where you belong to a group of people...like a club of like minded people. We could talk in chat with in the game....later we got to using headphones .....and talked with voice....like being on the telephone.
A lot of the content in the game works better when you can talk for real. These scenerios of gameplay, required us to work as a team....not independent. So have a voicechat scenario, was the only way to make it work.
This was great for someone who had enept skills communicating with people. Though I did have hard times to socialize with others on it. But with the right people, I felt like I had connected to something great. At the same time, I felt embarrished for being much older in age. Almost like it was a childs or teenagers type of thing.

I think if a person has good social, communication skills (not having an issue with loneliness), it would not be dethramental to them.
Whereas someone, who had hard time to communicate with others, to form social connnections.........it might draw them (to pass the time) as well as to develop these social skills. So it depends on what you go into it with.....I think it is just another form of entertainment.....just like tv .....or anything.

The only thing that bothers me about online MMO games is .....how it seems to breed a lot of people so selfish, and hurtful. I've seen this in what is called dungeons...which is an instance...where people ...get grouped randomly to do a part of the game which is difficult....almost like people get selfish ...wanting the hard to get stuff.....at cost to the group members.
Some even do things in the forums, or even chat ....which is called trawling. Its almost like they want to stir things up ...in a neg away.

Reply
Mike
8/8/2013 12:28:38 pm

Exactly Klint, you hit some very good points there. The great thing about the original WoW was that you would find your teammates along the way and that guilds always needed players. It is SO much fun to walk in the world and actually meet someone and group up with them. That is really magic. The untold values of Vanilla WoW (the original WoW, when it hit the global market), when will they hit the surface? Later on the guildforums services and addons came and everything started to be about numbers and skills instead of companionship and teamwork.

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