Community Building among Older Adults in a Digital Game Environment

This research study describes the social connections made by a group of older adults participating in a city wide Wii bowling tournament. Our results showed that participant's experienced an increased level of social connectedness with not only those who played with them weekly but others where they lived, their friends and family members outside of the places where they lived. Overall, the participants found that playing Wii bowling in a tournament setting contributed to the expansion of their existing network and deepened relationships in the players' community by extending the level of social connectedness both within the game environment and beyond the boundaries of the game space.