Brothers and Sisters at nay: Exploring Game Play with Siblings

摘要

To effectively design for families, we must understand familial relationships, which exert a significant influence on children's growth, learning, and play. In particular, siblings can be influential play partners and teachers, providing important scaffolding to each other. We report our observations of eight sibling pairs between ages 6 and 10, playing four popular games of different gaming paradigms. We found that certain patterns of sibling behavior persisted through all game sessions, regardless of the play patterns afforded by the different games, and that parents reports were consistent with our observations. We also observed instances where game design seemed to influence sibling play dynamics. We share our insights into considerations for designing for sibling play, including specialized social dynamics, opportunities for scaffolding, and the particular challenges they present.