Gaming Preferences Matter: Relationships between Online Gaming Experience and Social Behaviors

Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games represent a predominant genre in the global gaming market, offering people multiple game modes, avenues for online interactions, and incentives for teamwork. Despite the considerable popularity of MOBA games, scant research has examined relationships between MOBA gameplay and social performance. Given implications for learning and health, the extent to which individual gaming preferences moderate such potential relationships warrants investigation. The present study introduces two experimental investigations to explore relationships between individual MOBA gaming experiences and social learning (Experiment 1), as assessed by the Social Learning Task, and relationships between team MOBA gaming experience and collaborative problem-solving (Experiment 2), as evaluated through the Room Assignment Task. In Experiment 1, participants were stratified based on their MOBA gaming experience into Party-Matching (PM), Solo-Matching (SM), and non-MOBA (NM) groups. Subsequently, they were randomly allocated to triads for participation in Experiment 2. In addition, triads comprising individuals with prior collaborative experiences in MOBA were specifically recruited. Experiment 1 (N = 170) showed that the PM group outperformed SM and NM groups on social learning (F(2, 162) = 3.386, p = 0.036, partial η2 = 0.04), with this relationship moderated by sex. The advantageous performance reflected more adaptive social-response behavior than a more precise perception of intention. In Experiment 2 (N = 67), a positive association was found between team members' gaming experience and team efficiency (F(2,41) = 3.662, p = 0.034, partial η2 = 0.152). These findings suggest that MOBA games hold the potential to improve human social behavior and that it is important to consider gaming preferences in understanding potential social advantages of gaming.