Mobile and Locative Gaming Platforms

This book reinvigorates discussions of play and mobile locative gaming. This book analyses the fluid and hard-to-define process of playful place-making and asks how play operates as a form of mobility. The primary question of this book is, how might the act of playing location-based games be integral to forms of place-making? Moreover, how might this practice of place-making contribute to platformisation? The primary theoretical underpinning for this book is the sociological paradigm of mobilities – an emphasis on the movement of peoples and society. Adding to this discussion is the act of play – whereby this book considers play in location-based gaming to be a formative urban mobility that impacts and shapes how we create, inhabit, and belong across multiple contexts.

Kyle Moore is a lecturer in Digital Media at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. He researches playful and playable mobile technologies, exploring the social, cultural, and situated nature of locative media, mobile games, and emerging mixed reality technology. He is currently researching the platformisation of mobile and location-based technologies and their impact on place-making. He has published widely on mobile games, smart cities, digital ethnography, and digital gaming cultures.