Renegade Gaming: Practices Surrounding Social Use of the Nintendo DS Handheld Gaming System

摘要

Today's handheld gaming systems allow players to engage in multiplayer games via ad-hoc, wireless networking. They are also now sufficiently commonplace that it is possible to study how portability and ad-hoc wireless networking have affected the social gaming practices of owners of these systems. In this paper, we report findings from a qualitative study investigating the collocated multiplayer gaming practices of Nintendo DS owners. Based on interviews of nine DS owners and observations of three organized gaming events, we identified three major themes surrounding the social, multiplayer gaming practices of Nintendo DS users: renegade gaming, or the notion that users re-appropriate contexts traditionally hostile to game play; pragmatic and social barriers to the formation of ad-hoc pick-up games, despite a clear desire for multiplayer, collocated gaming; and private gaming spheres, or the observation that the handheld device's form factor creates individual, privatized gaming contexts within larger social contexts. These findings lead to a set of implications for the design of future handheld gaming systems.