Social support in eSports: Building emotional and esteem support from instrumental support interactions in a highly competitive environment

In this paper we report an empirical study of how and what types of social support eSports players can experience from their gameplay. Specifically, we interviewed 26 eSports players and sought out their first-person descriptions of experiences of social support. We found that even though most players started out as strangers, the context of eSports facilitated frequent acts of helping through both tangible and intangible means within the game. Such in-game informational and instrumental support often led to emotional and esteem support, and these different types of support functions not only remained within the context of the game but also "bled" out into in-person interactions and relationships. We contribute to CSCW and HCI by both confirming and augmenting existing theories of mediated social support in this underexplored context. Our findings regarding how emotional and esteem support are built from instrumental support interactions in eSports not only provide a rich description of players' experiences in highly competitive digital environments and the consequences of their social interactions but also suggest a number of future research opportunities.