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A digital play session is worth sharing when the people in it have something to do together, a reason to depend on one another, and a moment they can recall afterward. The genre label on the box says little about whether that happens. A co-located party game, a mobile game played in a public square, and a massively multiplayer role-playing game can all produce this, and any of them can also leave people staring at separate screens.
This article explains what the research on social gaming describes as the ingredients of a shared session, how to compare sessions along practical dimensions, and where the evidence stops. The strongest source is a 2023 systematic review, supplemented by smaller design studies. Treat their findings as a map of design choices, not a formula that guarantees friendship or enjoyment for every group.
What makes a session shareable
Across the studies, a session tends to be remembered and discussed when it gives players at least one of the following:
- An interaction they must negotiate. Players act on each other’s moves, signals, or information rather than running in parallel.
- A coordination problem. Progress depends on timing, splitting tasks, or agreeing on a plan.
- A difference in role. One player holds information, controls, or a position that the others do not, which creates conversation and dependence.
- A physical or spatial situation. Movement, touch, location, or the surrounding room becomes part of the play.
- A spectator moment. People who are not controlling the game can cheer, comment, or influence what happens.
None of these guarantees a good session. They are the points where a session gives people something to talk about, which is the working definition the sources support.
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Why genre is a weak guide
The 2023 systematic review by David Gonçalves, Pedro Pais, Kathrin Gerling, Tiago Guerreiro, and André Rodrigues defines social gaming as digital game experiences involving more than one person, with attention to social elements among players and or spectators. It does not limit the field to simultaneous competition. Its abstract states: “Digital games often constitute a shared activity where people can spend time together, communicate and socialize.” (Published in Computers in Human Behavior, 147, article 107851, October 2023; DOI 10.1016/j.chb.2023.107851.)
The review’s corpus was gathered in February 2021 and covers 263 publications. Massively multiplayer, role-playing, and MMORPG studies were the most common categories, with 57 MMO, 34 RPG, and 28 MMORPG studies in the corpus. These counts describe the studies the review examined. They are not market share or a census of games available today.
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The review also found frequent attention to hybrid forms and unconventional technologies, and it flagged gaps in attention to player diversity and context. Novelty therefore draws study, but the review does not show that novelty by itself produces social value.
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Six dimensions for comparing sessions
If you want to compare two sessions, these dimensions explain more than a genre label. The sources describe them as design dimensions, not a validated score for shareability, so use them to describe a session rather than rank it.
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| Dimension | Question to ask | Where the sources touch it |
|---|---|---|
| Co-located or remote | Do players share a physical space, or meet through a mediated environment? | Co-located mobile design work highlights public-space co-location and spatial interaction (Goddard, Garner, and Jensen, conference paper listed at about 2016). |
| Synchronous or asynchronous | Do players act together in real time, or affect each other across separate sessions? | The 2023 review notes limited treatment of asynchronous multiplayer. |
| Collaborative, competitive, or mixed | Does progress depend on joint action, opposition, or both? | The 2023 review discusses interdependence and varied goal structures. |
| Symmetric or asymmetric roles | Do players share the same information and actions, or does a difference in role or knowledge force coordination and conversation? | The co-located mobile study uses asymmetrical information and interaction as a design lever. |
| Player-only or spectator-inclusive | Can people take part by watching, commenting, or shaping play, not only by controlling the game? | The 2023 review covers spectators as social roles; the party-game study on semi-spectatorship is discussed below. |
| Screen-centered or embodied | Does play involve movement, touch, location, or the surrounding environment? | The 2023 review covers location-based, movement-based, and alternative-controller designs. |
Four design approaches beyond standard multiplayer
Public-space and mobile co-location
A study by William Goddard, Jayden Garner, and Mads Møller Jensen examines four co-located mobile games. It discusses mobility, public-space co-location, spatial and bodily interaction, and asymmetric information. The point for a session is that the environment and the players’ bodies can carry part of the interaction. The study does not show that mobile play always produces better social outcomes than seated play.
Sharing control
A study titled “Exploring sociality and engagement in play through game-control distribution,” published in AI & Society (Springer Nature, listed as 2009; DOI 10.1007/s00146-009-0245-y), compared configurations of control. Its partly distributed-control condition produced the greatest reported engagement among the configurations it tested, and the authors tie this to balancing social interaction with autonomy. That result comes from the configurations and participants of that study, so it is a reason to test shared control, not a rule to apply to every game.
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Spectators and semi-spectatorship
“A Three Person Poncho and a Set of Maracas: Designing Ola De La Vida, A Co-Located Social Play Computer Game” (DiGRA Digital Library, listed around 2018) describes community-building through game design and curation, and it treats semi-spectatorship as a way to blur the line between player and audience. In a party setting, a non-controlling guest who calls out moves or reacts to them is part of the session, even without a controller.
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Bodily interplay in exertion games
“Designing for Bodily Interplay in Social Exertion Games” (Microsoft Research record, listed around 2017) proposes “bodily interplay” and distinguishes parallel play, where people exert themselves alongside one another, from interdependent play, where their movements affect each other. The distinction is useful when you are judging whether a physical game is actually social or merely held in the same room.
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What the evidence does not establish
- The review found that much earlier work used mediated or controlled sessions, which limits how far its findings transfer to ordinary living-room or public play.
- Established measures of social outcomes were scarce, so claims that a game builds friendship or prosocial behavior should be checked against the specific study that measured that outcome.
- Player characteristics and context were often underexamined. The same mechanic may land differently with different groups, ages, skill levels, or cultural expectations.
- The design studies cited here are individual cases. Their results describe the games and participants they tested.
A checklist for judging a session
- Name the interaction: what does one player do that another must respond to?
- Identify the coordination problem: what must the group agree on, time, or divide?
- Check for role difference: does someone hold information, a control, or a position the others lack?
- Note the physical setting: does the room, the street, or the players’ movement matter to the play?
- Decide who can take part without holding a controller, and how.
- After the session, ask each person to name one moment they would retell. If nobody can, the session was probably pleasant but not shareable.
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