Partnership through Play: Investigating How Long-Distance Couples Use Digital Games to Facilitate Intimacy

TL;DR

This study addresses how romantic couples in long-distance relationships use digital games to maintain intimacy, a relatively underexplored area in HCI. The authors combine a diary study, dyadic semi-structured interviews, and a Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics design activity with 13 couples to uncover how game modalities support relational maintenance and affection. They identify three archetypes of couple play styles, map these onto game features via the MDA framework, and propose design implications including memory storage tools and participatory haptic/peripheral designs. The findings highlight that awareness and joint action are central to in-game connectedness, while memories and physical sensations remain underrepresented, pointing to concrete opportunities for game designers to support long-distance relationships through tailored, archetype-aware interventions.

Abstract

Long-distance relationships (LDRs) have become more common in the last few decades, primarily among young adults pursuing educational or employment opportunities. A common way for couples in LDRs to spend time together is by playing multiplayer video games, which are often a shared hobby and therefore a preferred joint activity. However, games are relatively understudied in the context of relational maintenance for LDRs. In this work, we used a mixed-methods approach to collect data on the experiences of 13 couples in LDRs who frequently play games together. We investigated different values around various game mechanics and modalities and found significant differences in couple play styles, and also detail how couples appropriate game mechanics to express affection to each other virtually. We also created prototypes and design implications based on couples' needs surrounding the lack of physical sensation and memorabilia storage in most popular games.

Figures (8)

• Figure 1: A snapshot of the initial board given to participants for the MDA activity, listing examples of each component (the full list of mechanics and dynamics are not shown in this image).
• Figure 2: An example of the output of a couple’s MDA activity. The ideal aesthetics are in red (Fantasy, Discovery), mechanics are in purple (Map, Levels, Missions, Obstacles/enemies, Items), and dynamics are in blue (Players explore virtual environment of game, Objects can be collected in no particular order, Turn-based gameplay).
• Figure 3: How often game types (left) and facets of connectedness (right) were reported in the diary entries.
• Figure 4: The five raters independently gave each couple a Likert score ranging from 1-5 on two axes: cooperative and competitive. Averaging these ratings for each archetype showed clear divisions between each archetype on these axes.
• Figure 5: Commonly used mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics referenced across archetypes in the MDA activity.