Games in motion. How mobile games change everyday’s life.

In recent years the amount of mobile devices has increased dramatically. Smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous. Due to new developments, phones are not only used for communication anymore, but have become digital platforms for various purposes – as gaming for example. This new gaming platform provides possibilities in games that were limited to a certain extend so far: Gaming as part of everyday’s life gets in motion. Thus a new spatial dimension comes into play. Now the gamer has to orient him/herself not only on the screen, but also in his/her ‘real’ physical environment. Since players have the possibility to move around and interact with, via and through their mobile phones, they experience a mixed-reality game environment that is not necessarily a clash of realities, but can be rather described as a merging of realities. This merging of virtual on-screen reality and embodied everyday life’s realities has, without any doubt, a deep impact on daily routines. The talk will adress these issues through theoretical reasoning as well as first empirical results of a recently started pre-study about the usage of mobile phones as gaming platform.