Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out by Mizuko Ito

Author:Mizuko Ito
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: The MIT Press

In contrast to the genre of gaming we characterize as killing time, much of game practice centers on social activity of various forms. The genres that follow are all examples of different, more sociable forms of gaming. The first is how the hanging out genre of participation intersects with game practice.

Hanging Out

The hanging out genre of participation happens when people engage with gaming in the process of spending time together socially. It is largely a form of friendship-driven sociability; while gaming is certainly important, it is not the central focus. Video games are part of the common pool, or repertoire, of games and activities that kids and adults can engage in while enjoying time together socially. Although games are usually considered occasions to compete around clear outcomes, this orientation can often be superseded by a more conversational or relaxed mode. Played this way, games are not inherently different from traditional board games. In a sense, they represent their electronic evolution. Like board games, hanging out forms of gaming were not as strongly gendered or age specific as the more geeked out forms of gaming that we examined; though boys were more likely to talk about gaming as a social focus, the hanging out genre of gaming represents a relatively democratic and accessible form of play.

As described in chapter 4, gaming can facilitate the interaction between peers but also between youth and adults. In fact, the family is one of the most common contexts for gaming as hanging out. In their detailed studies of game play in the home, Stevens, Satwicz, and McCarthy (2007) describe the settings in the home around the game console where siblings and playmates move fluidly in and out of game engagement with one another. This family gaming increasingly includes parents as well. A study con ducted by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) states that 35 percent of American parents say they play computer and video games. Among “gamer parents,” the ESA (2007) says, 80 percent report that they play video games with their children, and two thirds (66 percent) say that playing games has brought their families closer together. Hanging out genres of gaming enable people to bridge different forms of gaming expertise and to cross generational and gender divides. For instance, Steven, a twenty-one-year-old from Mountain View, California (Bittanti, Game Play), said,

At Christmas, I played this game called Scene It? for the Xbox 360 over [at] my girlfriend’s house. We played with her parents as well. . . . It’s a trivia game about the history of cinema and you use a big controller instead of a conventional joypad. It was fun. We got to sit down on the couch and play together, and we laughed at our mistakes and we had a really good time. I mean, I would not normally spend that much time with my girlfriend’s parents, you know? [laughs]

The more casual mode of this kind of gaming sociality facilitates game play by those outside the stereotypical gamer demographic. The Nintendo Wii is in many ways the emblematic platform for hanging out as a gaming practice.

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