An Exploration of Feedback Loops in Friendship Games

Having deep friendships is a necessary part of a happy life, and the importance of friendships is shown in various research. The term, “Friendship Games” is a relatively new genre of games that aims to create cooperative video-games that utilizes systems to intentionally design for building deeper friendships among players. To explore this genre further, this study will investigate game design patterns for friendship formation and how to apply it to cooperative video-games. By applying other studies of friendship formation and positive/negative feedback loops, an iterative framework for one dimension of friendship formation was developed to illustrate how reinforcing and balancing relationships can intentionally create consensual reciprocity between players in cooperative online video-games. The extent to which the proposed framework can be used is discussed, however tests of the system with a real video-game scenario is needed for any real validation of the system.