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

2025-05-14

AI Summary

This study investigates how digital games support intimacy maintenance in long-distance romantic relationships. Employing a mixed-methods approach—including in-depth interviews, game logging, and co-located observational sessions—with 13 long-distance couples, it systematically examines how game mechanics and interaction modalities shape affective expression. The research uncovers, for the first time, couples’ creative appropriation of existing game features to compensate for haptic absence, reinforce emotional memory, and construct virtual intimacy. It identifies three distinct couple-level gaming styles and proposes the “affective embodiment” design paradigm—a theoretical framework grounded in empirical findings. Based on this, the study develops an extensible game-based intimacy prototype and derives seven evidence-informed design implications. Collectively, these contributions advance both theoretical understanding and practical development of remote intimacy technologies.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Game Design — Virtual Humans, NPCs and Autonomous Characters
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Cooperative Game Theory
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Studies of user behavior, including longitudinal effects of personalized systems
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy
• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance

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.

Problem

• How digital games enhance intimacy in long-distance relationships
• Exploring game mechanics for virtual affection expression
• Addressing lack of physical interaction in couple gaming

Innovation

• Mixed-methods approach studies LDR couples' gaming
• Investigates game mechanics for virtual affection expression
• Prototypes address physical sensation and memorabilia lacks