Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535

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Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh

Bridging the online/ofine divide: The example of digital gaming

Lina Eklund
Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Studies of virtual worlds are often based on the dichotomous real world/virtual world, yet research has
Received 8 October 2013 indicated that this division is far from unproblematic. The aim of this study is to examine empirically the
Revised 18 March 2014 link between online/ofine using the example of social online gaming. The data consist of individual and
Accepted 16 June 2014
group interviews with 33 adult gamers. The results explore three themessociability and design; group
Available online 10 July 2014
membership; norms and rulesand show how on-and ofine are inexorably linked through the social
organizational demands of Internet gaming. Individuals ground online group membership in ofine rela-
Keywords:
tions and shared characteristics, aiming to maximize game-play gains and support sociability. Gaming
Sociability
Homophily
with people like us facilitates creation of norms and expectations, which aids in producing stable social
Cooperation groups. Thus the boundary between online and ofine becomes contingent on links between people. The
Competition study shows how important ofine connections are for online interaction.
Norms 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Virtual

1. Introduction spheres disconnected from ofine life. In a recent review of empir-

Contemporary life is increasingly interlaced with digital tech-
nology (Castells, 2001) and leisure activities are one important
arena that have seen a digitalization. Leisure is a signicant part
of peoples lives and what activities are available, participated in,
and valued at any specic time and place is shaped by current cul-
ture (Kelly, 1983). Activities engaged in as leisure, such as games,
hobbies, simply talking and so on, are increasingly embedded in
digital technology, and as these activities go digital, they break
away from earlier restrictions that limited them to certain times
and spaces. Online and ofine are terms often used when the
aim is to distinguish between types of activities utilizing different
technologies with different social implications and meanings. Early
Internet and digital games research pointed at the liberating
aspects of online lifehow we in online social spaces could free
ourselves from the constraints in our physical lives. Since then,
research has increasingly come to show how the Internet is not
creating new social patterns but rather is an extension of our
selves (Castells, 2001). Researchers have argued that we cannot
understand sociality online unless we connect both online and off-
line (Williams, 2006) and that virtuality is a social property rather
than an inherent quality of online social life (Slater, 2002). How-
ever, often the study of online social worlds, such as digital games,
has not fully realized this development. There is a practice of sep-
arating ofine and online and treating online worlds as social
ical research concerned with community in online gaming
(Warmelink & Siitonen, 2011), no connection between online and
ofine was prevalent so far in the literature. Lehdonvirta (2010)
argues that especially MMO (massive multiplayer online games)
studies have been based on the dichotomous real world/virtual
world. The aim of this study is therefore to empirically examine
the link between online and ofine in social Internet based gaming
in order to ground this theoretical development in empirical data.
The research question asks: How is online and ofine linked through
MMO gaming? The study sets out to answer this through interviews
with 33 Swedish informants that together have a wide range of
experiences from a multitude of different massive multiplayer
online games. The aim is not to offer a generalizable picture, but
to show how using an approach that attempts to connect rather
than separate online and ofine can benet our knowledge and
understanding of online social life. Focus is on analysing the nature
of social experiences and preferences and through this reach ana-
lytical clarity on the relationship between online and ofine. The
results explore three themes; (1) sociability and design; (2) group
membership; (3) norms and rules. The study touches on some clas-
sic phenomena in studies of online life, but does so while bridging
the online/ofine divide in order to reach new understanding
about digital social life.
1.1. Why Sweden?

Tel.: +46 8 16 20 02. Sweden is often considered a forerunner with regard to digital
E-mail address: lina.eklund@sociology.su.se media. According to survey data, almost 90% of Swedes (18+) have

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.06.018
0747-5632/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
528 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
access to the Internet and digital gaming is widespread with 62.5%
of Swedes aged 1265 engaged (Findahl, 2011). Sweden rates
among the top countries in E-sports and hosts the worlds largest
local area network festival, Dreamhack, with over 20,000 visitors
in 2011. The Swedish context of extensive use therefore offers a
suitable ground for the study.
2. Background
2.1. Understanding the relationship between online/ofine
The Internet and other digital technologies have changed our
access to information, and the Internets capabilities for person to
person connectivity have deeply impacted many aspects of life.
The effect of the Internet on social interaction and relationships
is a complex issue, yet the very practices through which people
interact with each other is one of the main agendas both for previ-
ous and future research on New Media and the Internet (Lievrouw,
2011), and Game Studies is an important part of New Media stud-
ies (Aslinger & Huntermann, 2013). The Internet is an integral part
of digital gaming; gamers not only play games online, but also
search for game information and connect with other gamers. Social
interaction is a signicant part of massive multiplayer online
(MMO) gaming as the game-play demands group effort to com-
plete game goals; gamers collaborate, compete, and interact with
each other. Playing a MMO game allows gamers to immerse in a
social world together. Doing so they need to create and maintain
relationships to manage their gaming and abide by and construct
norms and rules that help make up the interactional space.
Stenros, Paavilainen, and Myr (2011) emphasise both social talk
and social game-play as important for understanding digital gam-
ing; gamers not only play together, they also engage in sociability.
Sociability, as in Simmels (1949 [1910]) original meaning, is here
dened as the idle talk gamers can engage in and around gaming,
interaction for the pleasure of it, void of meaning and purpose; the
talk which makes up so much of our pleasurable interaction when
we relax and enjoy ourselves.
In the debate concerning digital technologies few issues have
been as prominent as social relationships and the division between
online and ofine. The debate often focuses on the argument that
ofine is the same as real life and that online is virtual and there-
fore less real. Much research has focused on the virtual aspects of
online life and earlyand laterNew Media studies often spoke of
virtual worlds disconnected from ofine structures and the uidity
of identity that these spaces afforded due to the separation from
the physical (e.g. Filiciak, 2003; Gotved, 2006; Turkle, 1997). In
studies on digital gaming the dominant tradition has been to sep-
arate the virtual from the physical; that is, to view digital games as
purely digital spaces with no connection to ofine place. This sep-
aration often takes a specied form, such as magic circle, cyber-
space, virtual reality, and liminality (Crawford, 2012). In these
descriptions of digital games the outside world is often ignored
or only briey acknowledged and games are seen as separate
spaces in their own right or as ludic spaces (Adams, 2003). Here
only the rules of the game apply and outside limitations and hier-
archies such as nationality, class, or gender are ignored. In general
there is a tendency in studies of digital technologies to overempha-
size the separation of the virtual from the material (Williams,
2006) as well as the deterritorialisation process of these technolo-
gies (Morley, 2011), where geography is seen as irrelevant, since
time and space have separated in contemporary social life. Central
to this division is the issue of sociality and whether these technol-
ogies limit or enhance users social lives (Williams, 2006).
Castells (2001) has argued that online life is not a space of its
own, but an extension of our social networks where we can
nurture the same social relations as ofine. People now build their
social network based on their interests, values, and projects both
on- and off-line (ibid.). Slater (2002) notes that new forms of medi-
ation in general have been experienced as virtual because at the
time they seemed to be replacing earlier forms of interaction that
were seen as real. As Morley (2003) suggests, communicative
actions must be contextualized; they are social practices among
other social practices, of which online gaming is one. Therefore,
the study at hand argues that when studying social interaction
and digital technology we need to pay more attention to social cir-
cumstances if we are to understand how social situations are cre-
ated, and their meaning. This understanding of ofine/online is
present today in Internet research (see e.g. Benkler, 2006) and is
furthermore seen in how Internet users make sense of their experi-
ences (Eklund, 2012). We need to connect online and ofine and
study effects and inuences in both areas at the same time, as they
are linked in everyday life (Williams, 2006). Following this theoret-
ical development we can see virtuality not as something inherent in
digital games, but rather as relational, a social accomplishment of
people engaging with games. As Slater (2002) has argued in relation
to the Internet, virtuality is not a property owned by digital technol-
ogy. In other words, this study shows that virtuality is created
between people engaging in games online. Depending on what
we do and who we do it with, the virtual properties and meaning
of digital technologies will be different; virtuality is situational.
2.2. MMOs as social worlds
In online games, as indeed most other games, game rules are
one of the building blocks together with narrative or ctional
worlds which give meaning to the rules (Juul, 2005). The rules
determine the structure of the game, while the narrative interprets
the rules for us and has a strong impact on the game experience
(Begy & Consalvo, 2011). Rules are constantly negotiated and chan-
ged, especially in online games where updates and patches regu-
larly adjust rules that do not work, while gamers appropriate and
invent new rules. As Consalvo (2009: 416) expresses it: Of course
[game rules] apply, but in addition to, in competition with, other rules
and in relation to multiple contexts, across varying cultures, and into
different groups, legal situations, and homes. Game rules are impor-
tant for the experience of the game, yet they work in combination
with or in addition to rules and norms of everyday life which
gamers bring with them online. Searle (1969) divided game rules
into the constitutive and the regulative. Constitutive rules are
those that not only regulate but create the very possibility of
engaging in a gamethe game rules. Constitutive rules create
meaning; by allowing certain things they create institutional facts,
in this case the mathematical rules allowed by the games code.
Regulative rules regulate an activity that already exists by stating
what is allowed/disallowed (Searle, 1969: 3341). This can be sta-
ted in the user agreement that many MMOs make gamers sign, but
also in the norms and rules gamers create to govern their social
interaction. Salen and Zimmerman (2004: 140150) use a some-
what similar denition of constitutive rules as the core rules of a
game, in contrast to the implicit unwritten rules. Social gaming
encounters are made possible by the constitutive rules, those pro-
grammed fundaments of the game in question, otherwise there
would be no game in which to interact. Regulative rules are the
norms and rules of conduct that gamers engaged in gaming
together create and uphold. The game, as a whole, comes to be
as it is interacted with, in the relationship between gamer, game
companions, and game (see e.g. Consalvo, 2009).
Instead of seeing MMOs as virtual worlds we can see them as
social worlds. The term comes from the sociologist Anselm Strauss
(e.g. 1978) and has been suggested by Lehdonvirta (2010) as
applicable to MMO studies. A social world according to Strauss is
 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
a universe of discourse (1978: 121). They are arenas featuring
some kind of organization and as such, members share some activ-
ity or other. In each social world at least one primary activity (along
with related clusters of activity) is strikingly evident (Strauss, 1978:
236). In an MMO this activity would be gaming, the primary activ-
ity of individuals engaged in a game, but at the same time this is by
far the only activity that gamers engage in. Socializing, irting, and
making money are a few other activities engaged in while connect-
ing to the social world of an MMO.
In this perspective, social reality is constructed of a vast number
of social worlds that can be small or large, and an individual may
belong in several at the same time. Lehdonvirta (2010) argues that
to see an MMO as a social world allows us to see these games as
belonging in the same category as Londons world of nance or
the Judo world. For an MMO gamer, the role of the game in their
life might be compared to, for example, their work world. The
social worlds an individual is engaged in may overlap and involve
some of the same people, locations, technologies, and so on. In this
perspective, playing digital games makes gamers part of the social
world of gaming, in turn constructed of several sub-worlds, such as
that of one specic MMO game. For a gamer this MMO world can in
turn intersect with other worlds, as the gamer perhaps is playing
with friends from school or siblings. Social worlds overlap, exist
within each other and so affect one another. Using a social world
perspective allows us to escape the dichotomy of virtual and real,
and uncouple technological platforms from users and re-embed
MMOs into the rest of society (Lehdonvirta, 2010).
Digital game worlds are social spaces that do not coincide with
physical place, yet they are inexorably linked through the people
using and making these spaces. In this sense, online social spaces
are not disconnected from the physical; we cannot leave our meat
behind as in William Gibsons novel Neuromancer (1984) where he
coined the term Cyberspace, subsequently used by New Media
researchers. We can game with people not located in the same
place as ourselves and we can engage in asynchronous (non-simul-
taneous) gaming, yet gamers occupy the same social world and
social worlds intersect and link into each other.
3. Methodology
This study explores social online gaming with focus on adult
gamersa previously less investigated group (Thornham, 2009).
Interviews have been suggested by Strauss as a suitable method
when researching social worlds (Strauss, 1978). A phenomenology
inspired approach has been used (see Aspers, 2001). In line with
this the results presented have been reached inductively, allowing
the data to represent the informants own experienced reality,
while the discussion has evolved deductively. The thematic quali-
tative analysis (Boyatzis, 1998) has thus been grounded in theory
and previous research. While rst structuring the results, the the-
ory used to guide the study was put in brackets to allow an under-
standing of the rst order of construction from the informants
lived experience (Aspers, 2001). However, in the presentation here,
both rst and second orders of construction are intertwined.
The data consist of focus group interviews, pair interviews, and
individual interviews carried out in Sweden in 20092011. A com-
parative sampling method was used, since interviewing several
groups (men, women, older/young adults, couples, parents and
adult children) offers more detailed insight. While the sample aims
at capturing a broad selection of gamers, the purpose is not to gen-
eralize the results but rather to give insight into the subject at
hand. A total of 33 participants were interviewed (more informa-
tion about the informants is presented under Results). The sample
came from (1) a Sixth Form (ages 1720) in an upper secondary
school in the Stockholm area; (2) Stockholm University (ages of
informants 2439), and (3) the project website, yielding one pair
529
interview (ages 17 and 49). The call for informants asked for indi-
viduals who played digital games. After some information about
the research project, interested parties were informed that the
interviews would deal with digital gaming and social interaction.
All informants are self-identied as someone who games. For more
detail about the method see Eklund (2012).
All the interviews followed a similar setup; the same themes and
questions were asked regardless of interview type. In all the inter-
views broad and open questions about digital gaming were asked in
the style of in-depth or open structure interviewing (Hayes, 2000).
In conjunction with all the interviewsgroup, pair and individual
a short questionnaire was handed out to gather additional informa-
tion and ask about gaming habits, as an extended focus group or
interview (Berg, 2009). The questionnaire gave an opportunity to
access background information in an unobtrusive way that saved
time for all participants during the interviews. These were after-
wards used to compare how much time people spent on gaming
and which games they engaged in. Interviews were recorded and
transcribed in full; all quotes are translated by the author.
4. Results
Of the informants almost half are women and half men; ages span
from 17 to 49 years old (median 25). As many men as women had
experiences from MMOs, although all played games with others
online. Only two informants, a man and a woman, did not game reg-
ularly at the time of the interview. Both used to spend more time on
games in the recent past but new responsibilities currently made it
difcult for them to nd time. In Table 1, data from the short ques-
tionnaire is presented with some background to the sample group.
The informants engage or had engaged in a vast array of digital
games including many MMOs such as Ultima Online (Origin
systems, 1997), Utopia (Swirve.com, 1998), Star Wars Galaxies
(Sony, 2003), Guild Wars (ArenaNet, 2003), World of Warcaft
(Blizzard, 2004, henceforth WoW), and Lord of the Rings Online
(Turbine Inc., 2007). All the informants combined different genres
of games and themselves put emphasis on digital games as social
facilitators, giving a context for friendships to form, whilst adding
continuity to relationships with family and friends, both close by
and geographically separated.
Man (20): [Gaming] is a hobby and something social.
None of the informants only gamed alone, although a few did
not foremost see themselves as social gamers. It is possible that
the theme of the groups, social gaming, might have deterred lone
gamers. On the other hand, gaming with others or gaming online
was not expressed as a requirement for participation.
Table 1
Description of research sample, number of informants.
Background data Women Men
Women total 16
Men total 17
How often do you game?
Almost every day 5 11
One or more times per week 10 5
Seldom 1 1
Length of normal game session
01 h 0 0
12 h 9 4
34 h 6 8
5+h 1 5
Who do you game with?
Friends/family in person 14 13
Friends/family over Internet 7 13
Strangers online 10 11
MMO experience 13 13
530 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
The following paragraphs explore the online/ofine connection
from three interconnected angles dealing with social gaming. The
sections build upon each other, previous ones leading to the next.
4.1. Sociability and design of online game spaces
Researcher: So whats special about [online] games then?
Man (28): Its this, you can do something together. Its not just
talking.
MMO gaming and online gaming in general allows gamers to not
only share a social world, but also to perform game actions together,
completing challenges and competing with other gamers. The infor-
mants argue that gaming offers something to do while spending
time together with others, either collaborating or competing. The
gamer in the quote continues saying that while completing in-game
challenges you talk more with your game companionsand not nec-
essarily about the gamethan if you do different things in the game.
The designed challenges that games are allow gamers to interact
with others and at the same time this purposeful interaction creates
a platform supporting sociability, the talk for talk itself. While all
games afford this, online gaming supports CMC (computer mediated
communication) allowing gamers practical, facilitated interaction
with friends and family; so called signicant others.
Man (25): Its a great advantage with online games that its so easy
to meet your friends; its not like you have to go home to each other
if you want to play.
As can be seen in this quote, digital gaming plays the role of a
social leisure activity that affords both social interaction while
gaming as well as a space for sociability; as in the quote, you can
both meet and play with friends. This is of course the very
essence of online gaming. As argued in earlier literature, MMOs
are communities, third places where the dominating rationale is
sociability, the talk for talks own sake (Ducheneaut, Moore, &
Nickell 2007; Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006). Yet, while sociability
truly is in the nature of MMOs, it is the collaborative action that
allows the social interaction a focus and the creation of this partic-
ular social world. Gamers are thus often linked by instrumental
ties, quite contrary to the idea of community as consisting of
strong, stable social bonds between members (Yuan, 2012). How-
ever, Feld (1981) has argued that social interaction typically is
focused, centred around something, for example a joint activity,
and this activity is often necessary to sustain the social interaction.
Gaming with others allows the social interaction a focus and a
shared sense of understanding, as it is shaped not only around an
interest but around shared experiences.
The combination of performing actions which in turn support
sociability is in no way unproblematic or uncontested, however.
Man (24): Yeah sure you can chat a lot [in WoW], but is it really as
social as to be able to interact with other gamers all the time like in
Star Wars Galaxies for example? I dont know, but I dont feel that
social when Im just standing on a roof chatting.
This informant, together with two other gamers, goes on to talk
about how you had to actually meet other gamers avatars and per-
form joint actions in Star Wars Galaxies (SWG)performing collab-
orative actions, not simply occupying the same social space. In
SWG you had to constantly meet other gamers to learn skills,
regain resources, and trade. This, these men argue, left you feeling
more connected to others. Only sharing the same social-space is
not enough for these informants. To promote sociability through
design gamers must be able to do something, achieve goals, while
engaging in sociability. The joint action promotes afnity and helps
build closeness.
Another example encountered in this study that shows how
performing game actions are connected to sociability is how level-
ling in World of Warcraft is structured by game design. When
grouping to level up, experience received for killing monsters is
shared between group members, thus signicantly reducing poten-
tial measurable gain from this activity. Gamers lament that for ef-
cient play you have to sacrice sociability as grouping is actually
penalized. However, the gamers studied here are all experienced
players; it would not be the same for new players who might group
anyway for support and learning. Still, the design does not promote
grouping even if the lore and narrative of WoW might. We see how
MMOs by their very nature promote rational and goal striving
behaviour (Grimes & Feenberg, 2009), and leaving support and
reward for sociability in the hands of gamers seems to not ade-
quately full the preference for sociability. As previous research
has shown (Eklund & Johansson, 2013), gamers striving to maxi-
mise the outcome of their game-play will sacrice sociability if
there is no supporting game structure for it. This is in line with
the socializing through grouping and rewards criteria for design-
ing for sociability that Christou et al. (2013) put forward. The
design needs to offer rewards for sociable behaviour. In the follow-
ing quote a mother and daughter who play together as a way of
sharing their everyday lives talk about how they often do daily
repeatable quests together in WoW.
Woman (49): Mostly its just us two
Woman (17): It goes twice as fast if you are two and like its not as
hard
In this example collaboration is rewarded and the gamers are at
the highest level so the reduced experience does not matter, offer-
ing empirical support for the need of game rewards for sociable
behaviour. In one sense this mother and daughter play together
because it allows them to spend time together, as valuable leisure,
yet concurrently the game rewards their grouping and this mat-
ters. Collaboration is not only important for their engagement in
the game; it also makes gaming easier and faster. In this way
game-play gain is maximised at the same time as they spend time
together. For the informants, performing in-game tasks supports
sociability, offering a joint focus for interaction and facilitating idle
talk as they are focused on the same task. It also highlights how
people are drawn to play with family and friends they know ofine,
mixing several social worlds; something further explored in the
next paragraphs.
The informants perceive games as a social leisure activity. Dig-
ital gamesby their social designallow both playing the game
and hanging out in an everyday context; users do something
together and share a social world. The informants play from
home with family members, with family and friends located else-
where or with strangers online. Joint experiences and a mutual
hobby build a sense of belonging together. Yet, the games can,
through their design, both hinder and be unsupportive of socia-
bility by reducing the opportunityor necessityfor social
collaboration.
4.2. Homophily in group memberships
Man (34): I only play online games with friends or my brothers, its
not like I look for others. I know I have them to play with and I like
to hang out with them in the real world and [online] as well.
While online gaming affords social play as well as a space for
sociability, as we saw in the previous section, this does not mean
that gamers are social with just anyone; as expressed in this quote.
As a social leisure activity gaming is particularly valued for its abil-
ity to support joint activity with friends and family; mixing social
 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
worlds. A group of friends and partners gaming together argue that
without their MMO-gaming, now WoW and previously Lineage
(NCsoft, 1998), they would not have become and remained friends,
even though they originally met through contexts unconnected to
gaming.
Woman (26): I dont think we would be sitting here today without
World of Warcraft
Woman (22): No, I dont think so either
Man (27): Probably not.
This group lives within walking distance of each other and reg-
ularly meet in person. Yet the game offers the group something to
gather around and have as a common focus for their interaction.
Even though the social space is online and could be accessed from
anywhere, it has a clear connection to this groups ofine social
world. They explain that while they used to play with people from
a nearby town it did not work out; the relationships felt too dif-
cult to uphold due to the physical distance. Even though they
shared the same online space, the ofine location of the people
was more important. This illustrates a common thread in the data,
how important geography is for the social relationships users
engage in online.
This wife and husband gaming together were both part of a
guildformal or informal gamer groupings also known as clans,
fellowships, et ceterawith guild members they had never met in
person, yet, here they talk a lot with a couple from a nearby town.
Woman (36): A couple who play live in [town]. And if you live in
[town] then you see the person behind the characters and suddenly
you arent alone, you are with two others that we could visit if we
took the car, and we talk, we talk quite a lot with them in the game
as well, and we dont only talk about the game, we talk about our
children too.
The important part for them is that they could visit this couple
living close by in the physical world, even if they have not. When
talk is not limited to the online situation and the ofine is brought
online social interaction takes on a more real sense. Grounding
social interaction in ofine activities was described by informants
as part of fun and valuable leisure, talking beyond the activity at
hand; closeness ofine leading to closeness online. It also shows
the relativity and uidity of virtuality, what is considered to be
similarities between people varies.
Joining a guild or a clan was considered mandatory for any suc-
cessful and enjoyable online gaming. Especially for collaborative
gaming tasks but very often also for competition, which in many
games is team based. Choosing which guild to join was a process
often determined by happenstance and trial and error; sometimes
by actively searching, sometimes by creating a guild of ones own.
However, in the following examples the informants have all ended
up in guilds with people whom either they already know or with
whom they feel afnity to in some sense.
Man (24): Youre in the same life, like same part of life. So it pulls
people together as well. I mean, if I should play with some 16 year
olds that would not be so fun . . . you dont have that much in com-
mon with them. Even if you play WoW you dont have that much to
talk about. Besides WoW that is.
The guild that this young man is part of consists mostly of other
men still in school and so does not seem to have anything in com-
mon with the family centred, older guild mentioned in the previ-
ous quote. However, in both cases the informants guild
members are in the same life stage as themselves. Guild member-
ship in this study is structured around factors such as age and
occupation. This was not a conscious choice; rather, the informants
531
end up in guilds lled with people similar to themselves.
Moreover, this was not related to any particular gaming focus in
the respective guilds; it was true for elite top-ranked guilds and
more casual oriented ones. Even when gaming online, in a space
where all participants could be considered to be sharing a purpose
and an interest, these tendencies towards homophily are clear, that
is, people are more likely to be found together with other people
who are like themselves (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook 2001).
Ofine physical characteristics matter; even in this digitally medi-
ated environment, the informants engage in games with people in
the same ofine life situation as themselves; people who can relate
to their everyday life and the limitations and possibilities therein.
It is not enough to be gamers with a shared interest and purpose;
furthermore, it is not enough to play the same game. This shows
that gaming culture is becoming diverse enough to support this
fragmentation and moreover how important gamers feel that sim-
ilarities are for sociability.
Man (39): In the guild, we are several parents. . .
Woman (36): Its almost only parents in it so everyone understands
when you are in a dungeon or something and wait he yells. . .
Man (39): . . .someones child screams and then you wait and you
can relate to it because we have been in that situation.
While the tendency to homophily is indeed important for talk to
run more freely it is also, as in this example, more than only a pref-
erence for similarity to support sociability. It is, furthermore, easier
to build successful gaming groups and relationships with individu-
als sharing some common ofine ground; here the social world of
parenting. For practical reasons, as in this example, game-play
organisation is facilitated by real life similarities. So while gaming
as previous research has shown can be a focus for activity, creating
and supporting sociability and relationships, this study shows that
it is not enough to play together. A MMO game puts people
together and gives them a shared purpose, offering the structural
foundation for relationships, yet this is not enough for successful
or valuable social organisation, something explored more fully in
the next section.
4.3. The stranger dilemma
While discussing online gaming the informants of this study
herald the classic bridging relationships and borderless social
interaction we often see highlighted in online interaction in gen-
eral. Speaking warmly about the opportunities to encounter people
in game spaces from all over the world, they gladly recount anec-
dotes about these encounters.
Man (17): When gaming with people from all over Europe you
come together. You understand some of what they think is fun. Like
when you game with Englishmen and their guilds then, like, every
second hour its teatime.
These online contacts are often shallow and seldom evolve
beyond acquaintanceship, as in the example above. That the Eng-
lish like their tea might seem slightly exotic to this Swede, but does
not necessitate any in-depth cultural sharing. Informants put
emphasis on this techno-utopian ideology, promoting the idea of
online interaction as free of materiality and boundaries between
people, yet, these properties are seldom realised in their concrete
practises. For example, when engaging in competitive online gam-
ing, not limited to MMOs, informants compete against strangers.
However, this was not considered social gaming but relaxing
gaming; more fun than competing against the computer. One pop-
ular competitive game is Starcraft, (Blizzard and MMIE, 1998) a
real-time strategy game focused on competition. Those informants
532 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
playing this game explained that while competing friends are
preferred yet not always worth the time and effort it takes to orga-
nize. Social interaction is better, and nicer, with friends. Yet, as
these games are played in short bursts gathering your friends
sometimes take too much time. Additionally, the high paced
matches allow for very little sociability. One gamer explained that
because of this, when possible, it was preferable to play these types
of games at Internet cafs, where you can play against each other
and talk in real life to make up for lost social interaction in the
intense game sessions.
In MMOs on the other hand strangers are largely avoided.
Woman (24): You get group quests and then you say, No! I have to
nd a bloody pick-up-group so I can do this and then people dont
show up or leave or do strange things and it only becomes difcult.
All of the informants preferred to game online with friends and
family rather than with strangers, as they argue that you never
know what to expect from persons one is not acquainted with in
terms of social interaction. Gaming with strangers is mostly per-
ceived as problematic.
Man (25): You cant, like, sanction people who break the under-
standings that exist [in online games]; you cant punish people.
Woman (24): Well you can kick people if you are in a group, but
then you stand there without a healer and then its a bitch, but
yeah.
To understand why family and friends or strangers who are sim-
ply similar to us mediate this online effect we have to turn to how
MMO life is structured. In the above example the informants touch
on a well-known problem, the difculty of norm sanctioning in an
online space. In conicts between gaming companions, the impor-
tance of stable norm structures and the possibility for enforcement
comes to the fore. The relationship between constitutive and regula-
tive rules (Searle, 1969) is of use here. While interacting with strang-
ers, norms about appropriate behaviour are embedded in (1) design
as constitutive rules and/or (2) in the social environmenthere the
game communityin the form of norms and regulative rules. Consti-
tutive rules can never be all encompassing or cover every possible
situation, which necessitates regulative rules. It is known that online
interaction can be highly problematic, as it is difcult to perform
social sanctions in an online space when rules or social etiquette
are broken, mostly due to anonymity. However, in this study we
see how gamers alleviate this problem by making sure regulative
rules are grounded ofine, thereby making them stronger online.
When gaming with friends and family the social norm structure is
moreover embedded in ofine social relationships; the closer the
relationship tie, the more regulative rules can play a part.
Man (32): So you can have fun with people you dont know, but I
mean, the more you know people the easier it is to get people to
understand what you are saying; easier to play with.
As we see here this social structuring is not only about sociabil-
ity, enjoying time together, but also about a more goal oriented
focus and this is not limited to guilds that especially invested in
progress or more easy-going groups. As in the above example,
the better you know the ones you interact with, the easier it is to
make sure that play runs smoothly and with the most gain. The
selection of guild members based on ofine similarities and con-
nections facilitates collaboration and furthermore increases the
chances of measurable success in the game. In short, it seems that
the importance of ofine connections for the creation and sanc-
tioning of norms has been overlooked in previous research. Under-
standing each other, keeping the same time schedule, and valuing
the same things outside the online world are also factors that inu-
ence this social ordering.
Two other informants, a couple, created their own guild, where
they have worked hard to create a strong sense of belonging. They
explain how they have worked on supporting a pleasant social
space, even though their guild is highly competitive and one of
the top ranked guilds on their server.
Woman (29): I feel very safe in this guild, like you can ask questions
and feel you get support and that you can be social, get to know
people, not just talk to a lot of people you dont know who they are.
This guild is limited to Swedish language speakers. This is to
avoid culture clashes and ensure that everyone gets along.
Researcher: Is there a special reason why you want a Swedish
guild?
Woman (29): Its so well be able to communicate freely with each
other and so that everyone will understand; thats how I feel.
Man (29): Yes, even though everyone speaks English I feel that in
several guilds I have been part of there have been cultural conicts.
People express themselves differently depending on if they are Brits
or Greeks, you like, notice culture.
A certain cultural understanding is clearly outlined by the
shared use of language, which works against any homogenization
of culture in online relations. It is not in-game norms about behav-
iour but the shared ofine characteristics of the group members
that ensure this social climate, according to the informants. As in
the previous example, where parenthood was another such simi-
larity, sharing game style or online space is not enough to create
stable social groups and additional ofine characteristics are felt
to be necessary for achieving social cohesion online. In other
words, interlacing different social worlds. These common cultural
boundaries help to support a social norm structure aiding collabo-
ration between people who do not share an ofine social space. The
more similarities on both a macro level, such as country of origin or
language, and micro level, such as age and life-stage, the easier col-
laboration is perceived to be. So not only is the opportunity for
sociability increased, people have more to talk about; instrumental
aspects of goal attainment is also beneted by homophily.
5. Discussion
The results show, in line with previous research (Stenros et al.,
2011), that the attraction of MMOs lies both in the opportunity to
engage in collaborative action and the support for sociability that
this joint action provides. The results also show that for games to
support sociability gamers need to play together, not only occupy
the same game-space, and the game also needs to reward social
behaviour. The rational, reward seeking behaviour MMO games
encourage can, in the case of contradictory design, discourage
sociability and both sociability and afnity is felt by the gamers
to be necessary for enjoyable and successful gaming. Not that
engaging with strangers was not enjoyed on occasions; it was sim-
ply of less consequence for gaming as a leisure activity. Further-
more, the results show that gamers create and join guilds made
up of people similar to themselves in ofine lifesame age, at
the same stage in life, or speaking the same language, to mention
some demographic factors. There are two reasons for this, rst in
support of sociability; similar people are easier to talk to as you
have more in common with them. Secondly, collaboration was eas-
ier with similarly minded individuals. This presents a dilemma
where MMO game worlds are promoted as made up of strangers;
thousands of people to game with, yet gamers prefer to play with
people occupying the same ofine social worlds, thereby seem-
ingly contradicting the basic affordances of the Internet.
 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
Digital communication is often presented as breaking certain
earlier restrictions of time and space and reducing the importance
of geography. Online, users have the potential to interact with peo-
ple from all over the world. More recently, however, it has been
argued that too much has been made of these deterritorialisation
processes and that the disappearance of place is exaggerated.
Online spaces are linked to ofine everyday life in many ways
and different media contain different affordances to uphold/dis-
solve these borders, as Christensen, Jansson, and Christensen
(2011) have put forward. After all, digital game spaces are always
accessed from a physical location. With these results we can see
how ofine and online are connected in different ways though
users concrete practises. The studied individuals here subscribe
to a techno-utopian ideology, seeing digital technology as breaking
borders and supporting new ways of communication in society.
Yet, this ideology hides a concrete practise that is rather reinforc-
ing certain boundaries and material realities based on ofine rela-
tionships and cultural values. Gaming online affords playing
together with family and friends as a social leisure activity and
spending time with individuals important in everyday life. For
enjoyable play, gamers here gravitate towards guilds composed
of individuals similar to themselves in some sense, displaying ten-
dencies towards homophily. In relation to this is the organisation
of game-play where gamers, while occasionally enjoying playing
with strangers, found it easier to pursue successful gaming with
individuals sharing social worlds with themselves. Even though
new technologies allow people to extend the number and nature
of the social worlds they have access to, at the same time the dig-
ital and the physical reinforce each other, as we have seen here.
Relationships are difcult to maintain through this online world
alone unless there are further connections between individuals
such as ofine ties, similarities in life-style, shared cultural under-
standing, or geographical proximity; the specic ofine shared
social worlds of course vary. We see again the relational and situ-
ational nature of virtuality, in different situations it mean different
things; it is a uid concept.
While online games in their very form afford and promote
interaction across boundaries such as nationality or class, the
individuals studied here rarely take advantage of these possibili-
ties. This dilemma is twofold; rst, gaming is seen as a social lei-
sure activity supported (sometimes hindered) by design. As such,
gaming with signicant others increases the value of the activity
and motivates commitment and use of time. Spending time with
signicant others is one of the main accepted gains of leisure
(Kelly, 1983) and lends both legitimacy and value to our leisure
activities. In an economy of scarcity, where time is one of our
most contested resources, leisure value entails spending time on
activities that can be motivated. Social interaction with signicant
others is one such motivation. Values on how to spend time and
what to do with leisure clearly affect how these individuals think
about, and practise gaming; ofine values and relationships are
tightly connected to online practices. Secondly, gamers enjoy
interacting with people they do not know. Yet, when this was
the case, people gravitated towards others like themselves. This
was an unconscious trial and error process in which the gaming
community divides into sub-groups based on ofine properties.
This does not mean that new gamers cannot nd their place or
that community cannot be upheld. It does, however, mean that
social life online is structured and divided along many of the same
lines as ofine life; contradicting any separation of the two. The
displayed similarities can be separated into two levels of charac-
teristics; rst, macro level similarities such as country of origin,
shared language and cultural understanding, and secondly, on a
more individual level, age; connected to but not the same as,
life-stage similarity, here empirically represented by occupational
status (in employment or a student) and parenthood. That people
533
often stratify themselves into social groups based on resemblance
to each other, also called homophily, is nothing new. Social psy-
chology has suggested that individuals want to compare them-
selves to similar people for increased self-fullment in life
(Festinger, 1954). The interesting conclusion here is rather how
different levels of similarities work in online social worlds, which
by their very structure have been suggested as disconnected from
these characteristics. That we can observe this pattern inciden-
tally show us that the gaming community is large and varied
enough to support this. The results here also indicate that gaming
identity is not enough for forming coherent social groups in online
gaming and poses questions for future research about the organi-
sation and structure of social interaction in online venues. Suc-
cessful collaboration requires engagement in the gaming
encounter to be as unproblematic as possible and engaging with
signicant others or sets of similar people is seen as a way of pro-
ducing stable social groups. Gaming is about fullling the goals of
the game and the rewards are in the activity itself. Yet, as seen
here, gaming also lls an additional purpose; the reward of social
gaming is not only in the game but in the relations that are main-
tained around it. While sociability truly is in the nature of online
gaming it is the collaborative action that allows the social interac-
tion a focus and the creation of this particular social world.
Gamers are thus often linked by instrumental ties, quite contrary
to the idea of community as consisting of strong, stable social
bonds between members. Competition might demand less in the
form of organization but the results indicate that similar mecha-
nism are at work, foremost related to valuable leisure and the cre-
ation of stable clans for gamers to belong to and support a game
community.
For the experience of digital gaming, constitutive rules create the
encounter yet cannot solely help us to understand these social
encounters. While these rules make up the gameness of the game,
the challenge meant to be overcome (Juul, 2005), they are not alone
in structuring the sanctioned orderliness of the gaming encounter.
Regulative rules are at work as well, which can be based on gamers
ofine social worlds and imposed upon the game world or can be
created in the social world of the game itself and managed in differ-
ent ways. These regulative rules, or norms, organise gaming and gov-
ern social encounters. Here we can understand the main differences
between collaboration and competition. In current digital gaming
competition is much less dependent on social norms to govern the
social situation and more dependent on structural ordering through
design. In other words, competition is often heavily governed by
game structure, creating limits, both spatial and temporal to
matches and bouts. Points are counted automatically by the game
and rankings and winners/looser declared by the game. This is actu-
ally quite unique for digital games. Take sports as an example, here
players manually keep track of rules and points, pick teams and
decide time and places for games. Here we see larger demands on
social governing to organise the events. In the beginning of online
gaming we could see the same organization, leagues and matches
manually organised and point counted by players and reported on.
However, now this is certainly rare for competitive digital gaming
online and we therefore see very few online games that require
heavy interaction with ones opponents to come to terms with rules
and organization. Competition thus rely more on constitutive rules
and less on regulative rules than do collaboration, however, it is a
scale with no xed positions. Yet, we should not take this as any evi-
dence that online competition differ in nature from ofine. Today
technology does play a more prominent part also in analogue com-
petitions, with e.g. goal cameras and video replays. However, further
research is needed to more fully map out the relationships between
competition and constitutive/regulative rules.
When interacting with individuals where an ofine space is not
shared, the ofine characteristics of participants are still important,
534 L. Eklund / Computers in Human Behavior 53 (2015) 527535
as they can support or work against a shared cultural understand-
ing of the need for and content of regulative rules. Creating or par-
ticipating in groups limited to a certain nationality or language is
one way gamers support online social life through shared ofine
characteristics. Interacting with strangers calls attention to the
importance of design support for the creation and enforcement
of norms or regulative rules. When online, users interact with each
other and these regulative rules are realised and actualised. While
gaming some can become constitutive rules if game companies are
pressured by the community (see e.g. Eklund and Johansson, 2013).
Important, however, is that relationships among the researched
sample were found hard to maintain on a basis of constitutive or
online regulative rules alone. The more embedded a relationship,
the more it will be subjected to social pressure (Feld, 1981). Addi-
tional embedding of a relationship will increase the evolution of
social norms to govern that particular activity or application of
more general norms shared by the participants. These online
spaces that users occupy allow for synchronous doing together
with others and in this way online worlds become arenas for social
actions. However, this interaction is tightly connected to ofine
places and informants practices renounce the disconnection of
the virtual from the physical, questioning online worlds as inher-
ently virtual. How social norms are embedded in either ofine
relations or in online communities will affect the success of game
encounters as well as the perceived pleasure of interaction of both
collaboration and competition. In cases with only online embedded
norms, how design includes them in the constitutive rules is of
great importance for peoples opportunities of creating strong
online communities. Future studies should draw on these results
in nding and dening specic mechanisms for supporting differ-
ent social behaviour online.
While this study touches on several aspects of online organiza-
tion put forward in previous research, it is clear that when we look
at these from a perspective bridging the online/ofine divide we
further our understanding of online social life.
6. Conclusions
This study explored how online and ofine are linked in con-
crete user practises; asking: How is online and ofine linked in
social MMO gaming? While the results cannot be generalized they
still show that instead of focusing on the online/ofine division as
such, we should see any such barrier as highly contingent on the
practices engaged in.
This study concludes that on- and ofine are inexorably linked
through the social organizational demands of online gaming. An
online game puts people together and gives them a shared pur-
pose, offering the structural foundation for relationships, yet this
is not enough for successful or valuable social organisation. While
subscribing to a techno-utopian ideology heralding free, borderless
interaction individuals in concrete practise support glocalized ties
between users which blend online and ofine into one social
world. This illustrates how important geography is for the social
relationships users engage in online. The techno-utopian ideology
hides a concrete practise that is rather reinforcing certain bound-
aries and material realities based on ofine relationships and cul-
tural values. The mechanisation of competition puts less
importance of social organization and thus strangers are more
common in these situations as game partners.
A further conclusion state that in order to promote sociability in
online games gamers must be able to do something, achieve goals,
while engaging in sociability. The joint action promotes afnity
and helps build closeness and is connected to a desire for valuable,
social leisure. A balance should be found between the rational,
goals seeking behaviour that games often promote and support
for social groupings and interaction. Games can, through their
design, both hinder and be unsupportive of sociability by
reducing the opportunityor necessityfor social collaboration/
organization.
Online/ofine is further linked through preferences for similar
others as gaming companions, so called homophily. Ofine
friends/family allows additional embedding of social norms sup-
porting both sociable interaction as well as instrumental aspects
of attaining game goals. Social worlds thus overlap and strengthen
each other. For individuals not sharing an ofine setting the more
similarities on both a macro level, such as country of origin or lan-
guage, and micro level, such as age and life-stage, the easier the
creation of stable social groups is perceived to be. Through these
shared social worlds norms and values online are supported by
these ofine structures thereby strengthening groups and support-
ing interaction. So not only is the opportunity for sociability
increased, people have more to talk about; instrumental aspects
of goal attainment is also beneted by homophily.
In peoples practices several social worlds meet and the bound-
ary between online and ofine becomes contingent of these links.
In short, it seems that the importance of ofine connections for the
creation and sanctioning of norms has been overlooked in previous
research. Understanding each other, keeping the same time sche-
dule, and valuing the same things outside the online space are fac-
tors that inuence this social ordering. Research should therefore
further explore this link in order to improve our understanding
of online interaction. As the current results are limited to the sam-
ple group at hand, more comparative studies are called for.
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