Ambient Play: Understanding Mobile Games in Everyday Life

In this chapter, we seek to conceptualize the shifts in mobile gaming through two key rubrics – ambient play and digital wayfaring—to coalesce the multiple forms of domestic, casual and urban play that constitute mobile gaming. This chapter begins with a contextualization through a short history followed by a discussion of pervasive games as vehicles for transforming urban environments into playspaces. We finish with a brief discussion of the Pokemon Go phenomenon as exemplary of both the possibilities and limits of contemporary mobile gaming. The chapter brings together three areas often disconnected—pervasive urban games, casual mobile games and domestic gameplay on mobile devices—to think about how mobile play has become ubiquitous and diversified.