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.
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Wen, J., Kow, Y.M., Chen, Y. (2011). Online Games and Family Ties: Influences of Social Networking Game on Family Relationship. In: Campos, P., Graham, N., Jorge, J., Nunes, N., Palanque, P., Winckler, M. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2011. INTERACT 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6948. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23765-2_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23765-2_18
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