Global Mobile Media by Gerard Goggin

Author:Gerard Goggin [Goggin, Gerard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781136908316
Google: kQXGBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-10-18T03:39:06+00:00

Conclusion

In a little over a decade, mobile gaming has been established as a significant part of contemporary gaming cultures. It has not proven as lucrative as hoped, but in various forms it is firmly established as a central part of cell phone culture – whether as embedded games on a handset, downloadable games from a portal or premium rate number, or apps. Social, multiplayer gaming is now part of the mobile experience vying with solely internet based alternatives (Hadenius 2003). Perhaps mobile gaming’s greatest contribution has been to challenge dominant, gendered preconceptions of console and online gaming, about the duration, genre and type of practice that characterizes ‘real gaming’, or genuine gamers and their communities and cultures (Barkhuus et al. 2005). Mobile gaming tends to the episodic, or fragmentary; to reconfigure the large screen, embodied experiences of many gaming locales; and, instead, to encourage awareness of context – indeed through location technologies allowing incorporation of place into gameplay.

Games, then, are an important aspect of global mobile media. There is an obvious set of engagements, and new arrangements, which see cell phones recognized as an important part of the gaming business. As yet games companies have not exerted much influence in how mobile media has been shaped – with little investment into cell phones from games companies or their entertainment owners. This is different from the investments of other media companies, notably music, television or movie companies discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, or internet companies discussed in Chapter 7. Nonetheless, the investments have certainly been serious, and the revenues steadily increasing. Where we might think of directing attention is in the evolving structures of control and participation that govern and construct mobile gaming – at the intersection of its cultural and political economies. If cell phones are near ubitiquous infrastructures with billions of users worldwide, what kind of games appear upon these handsets? How open are cell phone carriers to offering their platform for innovation? These questions get pushed even further when we contemplate the vistas of mobile gaming that claim to be almost co-terminous with our everyday lives, its places and materials. What are the relationships among the different kinds of technologies, mobile media and others, that constitute the architecture of such pervasive, immersive gaming? What are the kinds of participation, and its politics, that this phenomenon, complex as it is, entails?

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.