Friending to flame: How social features affect player behaviors in an online collectible card game

Online Collectible Card Games (OCCGs) are enormously popular worldwide. Previous studies found that the social aspects of physical CCGs are crucial from player engagement. However, we know little about the types of sociability that OCCGs afford. Nor to what extent they influence players' social experiences. This mixed method survey study focuses on a representative OCCG, Hearthstone [24] to 1) identify and define social design features and examine the extent to which players' use of these features predict their sense of community; 2) investigate participants' attitudes towards and experiences with the game community. The results show that players rarely use social features, and these features contribute differently to predicting players' sense of community. We also found emergent toxic behaviors, afforded by the social features. Findings can inform the best practices and principles in the design of OCCGs, and contribute to our understanding of players' perceptions of OCCG communities.