Many online gamers play with their real-life family and friends,which is another indication that socialization is a significant component in many online game environments. Sociability creates a culture in which people feel comfortable to communicate and interact with each other in the virtual community, enabling the development of “affective ties” among online group members. Farmville, embedded in the Facebook platform, is also played within players’ social networks and often built more around close relationships. Some players play as a means of seeking social interaction with existing members of their friends network.The bonding mechanisms of Farmville, such as sending gifts, working on cooperative crafting jobs, and trading goods in the farmer’s market, allow these tightly knit groups to feel comfortable sharing their in-game benefits, playing experiences,and even generating mutual interests. The mechanism may also provide an alternative way for strongties to interact in addition to the multiple communication channels such as face-to-face or other computer-mediated conversations.
The aspects of ongoing in-game socialization and reciprocity found in bonding social capital may further provide emotional and substantive support for players.Researchers have discovered positive effects of the Internet use on social ties and aspects of users’ psychological well-being,vertical grow system such as self-esteem and life satisfaction . Benkler pointed out that social connectedness, psychological well-being, gratification, and material gain are found to motivate social media use while others have suggested that SNS users who actively engage in the site are more likely to perceive connectedness and feel happier.However, mixed results have also been produced when testing whether the association between SNS use and both dimensions of social capital varies depending on the level of the users’ life satisfaction.Further, drawing parallels to the Internet addiction assumption, researchers hypothesized an association between game play and loneliness and found mixed results.In fact, the causal relationship between Internet use and loneliness is complicated. For example, researchers found people who are lonely, shy, or depressed are more likely to use the Internet to escape from daily life .
Lonely people are also more likely to use the Internet to search for new social contacts. Research on game play also found that gamers are motivated to play as a way of coping with loneliness . Recent research demonstrated that loneliness was the cause and consequence of pathological game play . Although the social capital resource of group attachment may relieve loneliness , the causality of game play and loneliness is unclear. In particular, the empirical support of causality of game play and psychological wellness is inconclusive. Using survey data collected from Farmville players in Taiwan, the current study showed a positive relationship between the intensity of Farmville play and both dimensions of social capital. The study extended the popular assumption that using SNSs contributes to the perception of social capital to social game play and accumulation of social capital more specifically. The Facebook intensity scale was successfully adapted and further developed to measure Farmville play.Moreover, mobile grow system whether the relationship between Farmville play and social capital variables was moderated by levels of players’ psychological wellness was explored. Interestingly, players who were more satisfied with life perceived higher sense of bridging and bonding social capital but they may not gain even more with intensive play.
Although lonelier players tended to perceive more bridging social capital, intensive game play may not be helpful to tackle real-life problems either. One explanation is that given the casual setting of social gaming, the effect of playing in coping with real-life difficulties may not be particularly salient. For people with an inherently higher sense of psychological wellness, casual play may not reinforce their sense of social capital either.The empirical findings of this study suggested a number of important implications for understanding how individuals mobilize their social networks and foster a sense of belonging and psychological wellness in the context of social gaming. First, previous research developed various measures for examining negative consequences of online game play, such as addiction, aggression, and withdrawal symptoms . Other researchers found that social interaction is a factor for playing online videogames in the massive player game setting .