Attempts Were Made

After my tutorial where I was encouraged to get the game night idea out of my head and test it, I invited two individuals to participate. Both are longtime gamers with distinct personalities when interacting online versus offline.

The first person I invited was Ting, a 23 year old Chinese student living in London. I approached him casually, under the pretense that we would be meeting new friends during the game night next week. Ting, however, declined the invitation due to his busy schedule. While I can’t be certain if his reason was only about availability, it does align with a broader hesitation that socially anxious gamers have towards stepping into unfamiliar face-to-face situations.

My second person was Jimi, a 27 year old male living in Taiwan, whom I had interviewed at the beginning of my Unit 3 independent study. Jimi had previously voiced interest in participating, but only if a friend invited him. I told him my idea of organizing such a game workshop in Taiwan remotely, with someone else helping on the ground, but Jimi also declined. His reason was he didn’t want to play with strangers. Additionally, a fellow member of my tutorial group, who falls into my target audience, also shared this same sentiment, expressing his disinterest because he doesn’t want to play with people he doesn’t know.

This experience confirmed the bias I had since my last tutorial: many socially anxious gamers are hesitant, some even resistant, to engage in face-to-face interactions with strangers. This reluctance raises the difficulty in making social interventions like game nights effective for this particular audience.

With this, I’m shifting my focus and changing my question to: How can we help socially shy young gamers recognize and encourage the transfer of their online social skills to face-to-face interactions? This reframed question will allow me to explore interventions that emphasize self-reflection and recognition of existing social abilities, rather than trying to force face-to-face situations that these gamers are uncomfortable with.