The media oftentimes portrays video gamers as being anti-social loners, but past data has shown that many MMOs players were playing with their family or with their romantic partner. Thus, it was clear that a non-trivial percentage of MMO gamers were playing with someone they knew in real life - that gaming wasn’t always anti-social and wasn’t always simply virtual. And it was also clear that friends, romantic partners, and family members were the 3 main categories of people that gamers were most likely to play with. But because I had never asked all 3 at once, it wasn’t clear how much overlap there was. To that end, I finally got around to asking all 3 at once and that allowed me figure out the percentage of players who are and are not playing with someone they know in RL. All the following data relates to whether a player plays (on a regular basis) with someone they know in RL.

First, let’s start with the MMO players who play with their romantic partners. Overall, 25% of players are playing with a romantic partner. As we’ve seen before, and particularly because of the gender ratio in MMOs, female players are much more likely to be playing with a romantic partner than male players.

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