Gaming in Social, Locative and Mobile Media

Larissa Hjorth is an artist, digital ethnographer and Professor in the Games Programs, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia. She is co-director of RMIT's Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) with Heather Horst. Since 2000, Hjorth has been researching the gendered and socio-cultural dimensions of mobile, social, locative and gaming cultures in the Asia–Pacific. These studies are outlined in her books, Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific (2009), Games and Gaming (2010), Online@AsiaPacific: Mobile, Social and Locative in the Asia–Pacific Region (with Michael Arnold, 2013), and Understanding Digital Media in the Age of Social Networking (with Sam Hinton, 2013).Ingrid Richardson is Associate Professor in Digital Media at Murdoch University, Western Australia. She has a broad interest in the 'human-technology relation', and has published on topics such as scientific technovision, virtual and augmented reality, games, mobile media and small-screen practices, urban screens, remix culture and web-based content creation and distribution.

• 1. Introduction: Social, Locative, and Mobile Media Gaming PART I: MOBILE MEDIA GAMES 2. The Histories of Mobile Media and Mobile Gaming 3. Locating the Mobile: The Unruly and Ambiguous Rise of Mobile Gaming 4. Reconceptualising Casual Play PART II: LOCATIVE MEDIA AND GAMES 5. Ambient Play 6. Locating the Game: Location-based services (LBS) and Playful Visualities 7. Co-presence Café Cultures: Kakao, Games, and Camera Phone Sharing in Seoul, South Korea PART III: SOCIAL, LOCATIVE, AND MOBILE: NEW CARTOGRAPHIES OF GAMING AND PLAY 8. Social Media, Facebook games, and Fantasy Sport 9. Locating Home: Cross-generational Play and Co-presence 10. Games and Cultural Play 11. Beyond the Casual: Situating Ambient and Cultural Play

"Hjorth and Richardson have given us a groundbreaking look at the world of social, locative, and mobile gaming. They present a fascinating range of stories tracking these new forms of everyday play across the globe. A must read for anyone interested in the critical and social aspects of contemporary gaming and technology." - T.L. Taylor, Associate Professor, MIT, USA"Using a diverse pool of methods, locations, and cases, Hjorth and Richardson provide a robust picture of the interaction and codependent nature of social, mobile, and locative gaming in multiple contexts. Not only does this work utilize electronic means of social and locative games, but on-ground games such as Parkour and fantasy sports teams are discussed in comparison. In doing so, our experience in play is highlighted as a natural part of life and how our technology shifts the execution of our playful nature. For games, this representation of multiple cultural perspectives through a triangulation of research efforts adds a robust extension of prior work in the field of mobile gaming." - Robin Haislett, Weber State University, USA