Touchscreen travelers: Hands, bodies, agency, and mobile game players

Abstract

Unlike traditional games that anchor players to a controller in a designated gaming space, mobile games invite haptic interfaces wherein players may touch, hold, play, move, sit, and otherwise reconfigure their bodies through various spaces and times. I call this characteristic mobile gaming’s corporeal agency, and while mobile games include many limitations to player agency, the increased freedom of bodies to traverse time and space merits discussion and analysis. This study focuses on interviews conducted with mobile game players, and those interviews reveal that mobile games invite behaviors conducive to a corporeal agency that break away from traditional conceptions of gaming time and space. I argue that mobile gaming bodies demonstrate a more fluid relationship with touch, space, time, and physicality than traditional forms of gaming, allowing players to move their fingers, hands, and bodies through time and space while performing the corporeal task of gaming. The analysis consists of sections dedicated to three primary elements of mobile gaming’s corporeal agency: physicality, temporality, and spatiality.