Honey Trap or Romantic Utopia: A Case Study of Final Fantasy XIV Players PII Disclosure in Intimate Partner-Seeking Posts
Yihao Zhou, Tanusree Sharma
TL;DR
This paper addresses privacy and safety concerns in game-mediated intimate relationships among MMOG players by analyzing 1,288 intimate-partner seeking posts from FFXIV players on Weibo. It employs a mixed-methods approach, combining Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling with qualitative thematic analysis to identify themes around information disclosure, relationship expectations, and cross-platform engagement. The findings reveal pervasive disclosures of personal and sensitive information, complex cross-platform identity management, and diverse, sometimes exploitative relationship expectations. The authors propose design interventions—unified privacy settings, trust-building mechanisms, and privacy education—to foster safer, more inclusive virtual spaces for digital intimacy in gaming contexts.
Abstract
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) can foster social interaction and relationship formation, but they pose specific privacy and safety challenges, especially in the context of mediating intimate interpersonal connections. To explore the potential risks, we conducted a case study on Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) players intimate partner seeking posts on social media. We analyzed 1,288 posts from a public Weibo account using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and thematic analysis. Our findings reveal that players disclose sensitive personal information and share vulnerabilities to establish trust but face difficulties in managing identity and privacy across multiple platforms. We also found that players expectations regarding intimate partner are diversified, and mismatch of expectations may leads to issues like privacy leakage or emotional exploitation. Based on our findings, we propose design implications for reducing privacy and safety risks and fostering healthier social interactions in virtual worlds.