When PUBG is not just a game: An exploratory study of young Asian expatriates and maintaining social connections with those back home

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (hereafter referred as PUBG) is a multiplayer online game which was released in late December 2017. Since its release, PUBG has become a global phenomenon, and is now the 5th highest selling video game of all time. With its large user-base, PUBG outperformed all other games in Asian countries. In contrast to existing stereotypes, PUBG has been perceived to enhance social connection among young players. Social connection facilitated by group confrontation and the collaborative nature of multiplayer online games cannot be ignored but remains scarce in academic research. Parallel to that, the affordance of multiplayer online games as another form of social networking platform has provided young Asian expatriates more opportunities to acquire social connection, especially with those back home. By conducting indepth interviews from a hermeneutical phenomenology approach, this study investigates the ways young Asian expatriates make use of the multiplayer online game PUBG to maintain existing longdistant social connections. The data was taken from ten in-depth interviews with young Asian expatriates who are active players of the researched game. A qualitative thematic analysis method was utilized to analyze the complete data. The analysis indicates three main emerging themes. The first theme, emotional responses, describes players’ emotional engagement during game play with existing ties from their homelands. The findings indicate a centrality of positive emotional experience among gaming experience in a shared game with friends. The second theme, Just a Game?, narrates the participants’ immersive involvement and their perceived social and cultural capital from gaming with friends from their homelands. The final theme of uses and gratifications reveals how young Asian expats socially benefit from their gaming behaviours and experiences. The results of this study show the unique role of the multiplayer online game PUBG in maintaining social connections by providing an immersive social environment where expatriates and their long-distant ties can obtain emotional support, exchange social and cultural capital as well as obtain a shared identity regardless of geographical distances and different social contexts. In addition, this study has filled in the literature gap in examining expatriate social connections with existing ties from their home countries and further added to the research in the field of gaming. For gaming companies and creators, this research provides insightful findings related to gaming elements that can boost social outcomes.