Underlying Factors of Social Capital Acquisition in the Context of Online-Gaming: Comparing World of Warcraft and Counter-Strike.

Reer Felix, Krämer Nicole C.

Research article (journal)

Abstract

The present study examines how players’ behaviors within gaming-communities (clans and guilds) influence the acquisition of social capital in online-gaming. In contrast to most existing studies, our study asks for crucial underlying factors of social capital acquisition and thereby includes players of online-games of different genres to allow comparisons. We hypothesize that frequently playing together (familiarity), participating in offline events (physical proximity) and being involved in clan/guild administration (social proximity) lead to more communication with fellow players and foster self-disclosure towards fellow players, which together facilitates the formation of bridging and bonding social capital. A sample of 682 clan/guild players of the games Counter-Strike and World of Warcraft was recruited via Internet and was asked to fill out a questionnaire. Results of a path analysis support our assumptions and enhance previous findings that players of online-games especially gain positive social outcomes, when they go beyond the game and join game-related groups, engage in clan/guild administration and participate in offline events. By revealing the crucial role of self-disclosure and communication frequency as underlying factors of social capital acquisition in online-gaming, our results provide a deeper insight into these mechanisms than existing studies. Our findings have implications of general importance, since the tested model worked well for player samples stemming from online-games of different genres.

Details zur Publikation

Release year: 2014
Language in which the publication is written: English