Digital geographies of home: parenting practices in the space between gaming and gambling

Abstract

This paper advances debates at the intersection of geographies of children, youth and families, digital geographies, and geographies of home. We argue that social, seasonal and limited time are vitally important for understanding the new landscape between gaming and gambling and have wider analytical purchase for geographers. This paper reveals parenting practices connected to the multi-billion-dollar industry of paid-for currency in digital games used to access gambling style systems and chance-based mechanisms such as loot boxes. We use this timely example to develop new digital geographies of home from original interviews with families based in England on their everyday lived experiences of gambling-style systems in digital games as well as data from video ethnographies with children and young people and interviews with international game designers. This paper challenges current understandings by examining how parents make sense of gambling-related harms and demonstrates the spatial and temporal dynamics of purchasing decisions, rules, and associated conflicts in domestic space. We argue these systems in digital games shape and are shaped by family geographies. This paper concludes by outlining its relevance for the social and health sciences at a time of intense legislative interest in the increasingly blurred space between gaming and gambling.