Reconceptualising Casual Play

Abstract

The ubiquity of touchscreen smartphones has placed mobile games in the hands of a growing number of people, across gender, generations, and situational contexts—at home, at work, and on the move. At the same time, the ease of app development has provided many game developers—and consequently, players—with more elastic innovation around game genres, gameplay, and the aesthetics and affordances of game environments. Thus, not only have we witnessed an increase in the popularity of casual and ‘small’ games across web-based and mobile media, the spectrum of gaming has also shifted to include playful social media and location-based apps, as gameplay traverses cultures, places, and media interfaces, and players engage in a diverse array of use-contexts and modalities of play.