Ambient Play by Larissa Hjorth (English) Hardcover Book

Description: Ambient Play by Larissa Hjorth, Ingrid Richardson "Games have becomes embedded in our daily acrivities and Ambient Play shows how this affects our creative and ludic practices in everyday life"-- FORMAT Hardcover LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description An engaging look at how mobile games are increasingly part of our day-to-day lives and the ways that we interact across real as well as digital landscapes.How mobile games are part of our day-to-day lives and the ways we interact across digital, material, and social landscapes.We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill-waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambient Play, Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives. They show that as mobile games spread across different genres, platforms, practices, and contexts, they become an important way of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. Mobile games become conduits for what the authors call ambient play, pervading much of our social and communicative terrain. We become digital wayfarers, moving constantly among digital, social, and social worlds.Hjorth and Richardson explore how households are transformed by media-how idiosyncratic media use can alter the spatial composition and emotional cadence of the home. They show how mobile games connect domestic forms of play with more public forms of playfulness in urban spaces, how collaborative play (both networked and face-to-face) is incorporated into private and public play, and how touchscreens and haptic play emphasize the perception of the moving body. Hjorth and Richardson invite us to think of mobile gaming as more than a "casual" distraction but as a complex cultural practice embedded into our contemporary ways of being, knowing, and communicating. Author Biography Larissa Hjorth is Distinguished Professor and Director of Design and Creative Practice at RMIT University in Melbourne. She is coauthor of Screen Ecologies (MIT Press).Ingrid Richardson is Professor of Digital Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne. Table of Contents On Thinking Playfully ix Acknowledgements xi 1 What is Ambient Play? 1 I Spaces, Places, and Bodies 2 Haptic Play: The Remaking of Touch 23 3 Domestic Play: At Home with Play 37 4 Urban Play: Reconfiguring the City 55 II Practices and Performances 5 More-than-Human Play 73 6 Waiting to Play 91 7 Watching Play 111 8 Conclusion 129 Notes 141 Bibliography 153 Index 181 Review "Ambient Play is a much-needed and incredibly useful book for all those interested in how mobile games, as locative and haptic activities, are intertwined with our daily social practices that occur across urban and domestic spaces. Through rigorous ethnographic work, Hjorth and Richardson delve into the exciting ways mobile games are transforming our contemporary lives."—Adriana de Souza e Silva, Professor of Communication, North Carolina State University "Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardsons Ambient Play is an insightful and engaging account of the ways in which people play with mobile media, embracing the multiple forms and meanings that play takes in our lives."—Miguel Sicart, Associate Professor, Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen; author of Play Matters "Ambient Play looks at play and games where they actually happen—in real life! Though direct observation and study, Hjorth and Richardson open up whole new avenues for thinking about how games fit into our lives."—Colleen Macklin, Associate Professor of Media Design, The New School; coauthor of Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure "Written in an accessible yet authoritative style, this text will be of interest to game designers and students of sociology and psychology. The case studies presented throughout are relatable, and the analysis of play as cultural practice is insightful and thought provoking." —Choice "Ambient Play is a masterful dissection of mobile games as an unwitting facilitator of ambience in our contemporary lives." —Mobile Media & Communication "In Ambient Play, authors Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson cogently point to how play overshadows so many aspects of everyday media consumption. In doing so, they set a robust agenda for the future of ludological research and expose critical gaps in the field. [ . . . ] [F]or those interested in exploring the frontiers of games and play, as well as how they persist and punctuate our everyday lives and activity, this pertinent book establishes a new set of frames to recognize, feel, and better apprehend play in society."—Critical Studies in Media Communication Promotional How mobile games are part of our day-to-day lives and the ways we interact across digital, material, and social landscapes Long Description An engaging look at how mobile games are increasingly part of our day-to-day lives and the ways that we interact across real as well as digital landscapes. We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill--waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambient Play, Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives. They show that as mobile games spread across different genres, platforms, practices, and contexts, they become an important way of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. We are digital wayfarers, moving constantly among digital, social, and social worlds. Review Quote " Ambient Play is a much-needed and incredibly useful book for all those interested in how mobile games, as locative and haptic activities, are intertwined with our daily social practices that occur across urban and domestic spaces. Through rigorous ethnographic work, Hjorth and Richardson delve into the exciting ways mobile games are transforming our contemporary lives." --Adriana de Souza e Silva, Professor of Communication, North Carolina State University "Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardsons Ambient Play is an insightful and engaging account of the ways in which people play with mobile media, embracing the multiple forms and meanings that play takes in our lives." --Miguel Sicart, Associate Professor, Center for Computer Games Research, IT University of Copenhagen; author of Play Matters " Ambient Play looks at play and games where they actually happen--in real life! Though direct observation and study, Hjorth and Richardson open up whole new avenues for thinking about how games fit into our lives." --Colleen Macklin, Associate Professor of Media Design, The New School; coauthor of Iterate: Ten Lessons in Design and Failure Promotional "Headline" How mobile games are part of our day-to-day lives and the ways we interact across digital, material, and social landscapes Excerpt from Book I find that I enjoy games on touch screens so much more because I find the whole idea of moving forward with W, going to the side with A and D and backwards with S just not very normal for me. . . . Its just so nice to be able to move your finger along the screen and jump. . . . Even though the games might not be as advanced, like Minecraft doesnt have all the elements to it, its just so much easier to do, and I find I enjoy games more. (Eileen from Adelaide) As Eileen notes, being able to touch the screen directly makes gameplay "feel" more natural and enjoyable. Game designers have long understood the importance of touch and how it can be synchronized with the other senses to achieve a sense of realism. As Brendan Keogh observes, playing a digital game involves multisensorial dimensions: "Through an entanglement of eyes-at-screens, ears-at-speakers, and muscles-against-interfaces players perceive videogames as worlds consisting of objects and actors with texture, significance, and weight." As a way to capture these sensory dimensions, we asked participants to reenact their practices, and they often intuitively mimed their practice and sensory knowing through hand gestures and body movements. This technique, drawing on tactile digital ethnography, aimed to capture what the body remembers in and around screen practice. In the reenactment process, people reflected on their favorite games and apps as they played or used them where and how they would usually do so (e.g., in their bedroom or family room). The role of the remembering body is an important aspect of media use, especially in terms of how this memory is often tacit and sedimented through repeated action. In this process, it became clear how the mimetic aspect of mobile games is core to the sensory pleasure experienced. An overwhelming number of games and apps available on mobile phones and tablets are mimetic to some degree; that is, they imitate or simulate real-world experience through the gesture of the touching finger (e.g., moving a block or slingshotting a bird). Ideally, mimetic games are designed so that they can be used immediately and intuitively rather than requiring instruction; they rely on experiences with which we are already familiar (pushing objects, hitting a ball, or using a slingshot). As Eileen from Adelaide observed, touch screens are intuitive and dont require a prior understanding or knowledge of games, so players dont have to spend time acquiring the skills to play: Were quite early risers, and we do things quite randomly, but we would usually get up, watch TV, and play on our iPods at the same time. . . . You can do anything, and you can still be playing on your iPod. Im someone that likes to be doing something all the time, and Ive noticed that I can just kind of be there flicking my finger around . . . playing a game while watching television. I find it relaxing because usually the touch screen games, theyre very basic, and you dont have to be a genius to work them out, and I just find them flexible. Haptic touch screens have what is called a post-WIMP interface. WIMP stands for windows, icons, menus, and pointing device, the standard tools for navigating and controlling a computer interface. Unlike WIMP-based interfaces such as the standard desktop computer, post-WIMP interfaces like touch screens invoke our bodily and visceral understanding of naive physics. For example, primary bodily sensations such as inertia and springiness can be found in many touch screen applications and games, providing the illusion that objects on the screen have mass and are affected by gravity. Naive physics can also include our body memory of hardware such as the keyboard and joystick that are simulated in many mobile games. This haptic intimacy or closeness to actual bodily experience is what makes the touch screen a device of tactile and kinesthetic familiarity. Mimetic games on the touch screen therefore work to enfold the player in a temporary and incomplete simulation of real-world physics. The pleasure and intimacy of mimetic play were expressed by twenty-four-year-old Anna as she showed us her favorite game, Tengami, describing as she did so the satisfaction of folding and unfolding paper to reveal worlds within worlds, each with its own puzzle challenge. She said, "Its like doing origami; I find it very relaxing and creative, but also exciting: you never know what youll find under the next fold." As twenty-one-year-old Jamie from Perth played her favorite iPad game, Angry Birds 2, she described the joy of destruction and pig popping-- similar to the satisfying effects of "finger-bombing" common to many mobile games--and explained how this pleasure was in part due to the way the game mimics real-time physics. Another thirty-five-year-old stay-at-home mum, also an Angry Birds fan, reflected on her previous addiction to the Ragdoll Blaster series (physics puzzlers that require the player to fire attenuated rag dolls out of a cannon at a bulls-eye). In particular, she enjoyed the way the rag dolls moved "like real ones," and she laughed as she lifted and flopped her arms about in mimicry. When people talk about their mobile game play, irrespective of age and gender, they often reenact their experience as a form of body memory. Devices that combine touch screen with accelerometer or position-recognition functionality, such as todays smartphones and tablets, have required us to develop a new kind of "motion literacy." This kinetic and motile learning works to overcome or adapt to the imprecise control we have over objects and actions on the screen. This is possible because of our ability to take on an "as-if" structure of embodiment--to react "as if" what we are experiencing is tangible and concrete. For example, when one plays Angry Birds, the kinetic experience of releasing an elastic band effectively becomes "condensed into the hand." In part, this effect is achieved by kinesic natural mapping, where the bodys movement corresponds in an approximate (or as-if) way to on-screen action. The physical analogies enabled by touch screens are also accompanied by sound effects, which simulate (or stimulate) the noise of tactile feedback and increase the sense of "being-in" a discrete and tangible game world. This microworldly experience, and the sensory pleasure and attachment it creates, was clearly described by Lucy, a forty-nine-year-old university lecturer, who told us of her ongoing obsession with Godus. Godus is an intricate world-builder that involves detailed sculpting of multiple layers of land, with each configuration unique to the player. Lucy explained how she played the game intensively for over a year, complementing her story with hand gestures that mimicked the on-screen action: There was something about the way you could sculpt the land, and set your little workers to build or mine, that was really satisfying. . . . I would have the game open on my iPad all the time and visit my land ten times a day at least. This bodily memory and knowledge in the hands was also called on when people did not remember the names of the mobile games they had played. Margaret, a thirty-three-year-old accountant from Brisbane, described how she played arcade-style match-three games on her phone while on public transport: "You know, those little puzzle games," she said, raising her right hand, index finger stretched out, and waving horizontal and vertical lines in the air. The pleasure of mimetic touch screen games is not just important at the level of sensory attachment to ones device. The haptic and aural intimacy of mobile games also becomes part of our social and personal intimacies more generally. In reenacting her Tengami gameplay, Anna walked to her bedroom and closed the door (she lived in a shared house), explaining that she preferred to play the game alone when she needed to wind down, as she enjoyed the soundtrack, sound effects, and noncompetitive, exploratory, and self-paced nature of the game. In this way, her mobile gameplay became part of her management of alone time in the home. Jamie recalled how she would share Angry Birds gameplay with her partner in the evenings; this involved lying together on the couch or bed, passing her iPhone between them (the only rule being that the device had to be relinquished to the other if a "life" was lost). This ritual of closeness and being together was bound up in the simplicity and "swapability" of the game, and in the materiality and co-touchability of the interface. We witnessed this kind of screen sharing often, particularly in the family use of designated phones, iPads, and tablets, and their deliberate placement in common areas of the house--practices that challenge the assumption that mobile screens are deeply private and personal. Sharing was a frequent practice particularly among siblings; while one child would play, others would watch and make suggestions, and then there would generally be tacit agreement (or sometimes more fractious negotiation) to swap roles. Charlotte, a parent from Sydney, spoke about the pleasures of observing her children play on their iPad: It brings us together. . . . Weve never had a negative view about things like gaming and screen time and rubbish like that. Weve always been very positive about it. . . . I actually enjoy watching them play, even mobile games. . . . Well lay down in bed together, and Ill watch them play. So its drawn us all closer, and its just another thing we can all share, like an interest in anything. And its not just in our home; its also when were out and about. Charlotte noted, however, that sharing was not an option for her older teenage daughter: I will say this, though, my seventeen-year-old, she will not allow anyone [to touch her iPad]. She loves her iPad so much. Sh Details ISBN0262044366 Author Ingrid Richardson Series Playful Thinking Language English Year 2020 ISBN-10 0262044366 ISBN-13 9780262044363 Format Hardcover Pages 200 Publication Date 2020-09-15 UK Release Date 2020-09-15 Imprint MIT Press Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2020-09-15 NZ Release Date 2020-09-15 US Release Date 2020-09-15 Illustrations 20 B&W PHOTOS Publisher MIT Press Ltd DEWEY 306.481 Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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