"Backseat Gaming" A Study of Co-Regulated Learning within a Collegiate Male Esports Community

Previous work demonstrated that esports players often leverage insights from other players and communities to learn and improve. However, little research examined social learning in esports, over time, in granular detail. Understanding the role of others in the esports learning process has implications for the design of computational support systems that can help esports players learn and make the games more accessible. Therefore, we perform an exploration of this topic using Co-Regulated Learning as a theoretical lens. In doing so, we hope to enrich existing knowledge on social learning in esports, provide insights for the future development of computational support, and a road-map for future work. Through an interview study of an esports community consisting of 14, college-aged, male players, we uncovered 10 themes regarding how Co-Regulated learning occurs within their teams. Based on these, we discuss three main takeaways and their implications for future research and development.