Playful mobile communication: Services supporting the culture of play

Communication has many functions; from linguistics to social psychology, there is ample evidence that communication fundamentally defines our ways of being, which is the reason changes in communicational practices and technologies are particularly interesting. This article focuses on the recent developments in playful mobile communication, firstly discussing play and playful practices in general, then moving on to contextualise the discussion in terms of contemporary mobile technology. Not just restricted to formal game play (ludus) but also including more improvisational forms of being playful (paidia), mobile play allows us some creative distance from the routine ways of communicating and is consequently more freeform than the more immediately utilitarian communicative acts. Playfulness also has certain distinctive features and it is possible to identify and discuss playfulness as it is expressed in the design of new tools for communication, as well as in the communicative practices and attitudes adopted by the participants. This article provides an introduction to the study of playful communication, and proposes three key evaluation criteria for playfulness. It then proceeds to test these criteria in contemporary playful mobile communication services.

[1]  Rod McCall,et al.  TimeWarp: interactive time travel with a mobile mixed reality game , 2008, Mobile HCI.

[2]  Danah Boyd,et al.  Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter , 2010, 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[3]  Martin Ericsson.  Enchanting reality: a vision of big experiences on small platforms , 2003, DiGRA Conference.

[4]  Dan Pinchbeck.  An affordance based model for gameplay , 2009, DiGRA Conference.

[5]  E. Goffman.  Encounters; Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction , 1962 .

[6]  G. Frasca.  Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology , 2013 .

[7]  Ben Kirman.  Emergence and playfulness in social games , 2010, MindTrek.

[8]  D. W. F. van Krevelen,et al.  A Survey of Augmented Reality Technologies, Applications and Limitations , 2010, Int. J. Virtual Real..

[9]  D. Shanahan.  Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business: By Neil Postman New York: Viking, 1985, Penguin, 1986, 180 pp., $15.95 (cloth), $6.95 (paper) , 1988 .

[10]  S. Freud,et al.  Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious , 1905 .

[11]  G. Bateson.  A theory of play and fantasy. , 1955 .

[12]  Frans Mäyrä,et al.  An introduction to game studies , 2008 .

[13]  Alexandre Monnin.  From Game Neverending to Flickr. Tagging systems as ludic systems and their consequences. , 2009 .

[14]  C. Schaefer,et al.  Measurement of playfulness: A neglected therapist variable. , 1997 .

[15]  Adam Mathes,et al.  Folksonomies-Cooperative Classification and Communication Through Shared Metadata , 2004 .

[16]  Frans Mäyrä,et al.  Player-Centred Game Design: Experiences in Using Scenario Study to Inform Mobile Game Design , 2005, Game Stud..