Portable Play in Everyday Life

People play mobile games everywhere and at any time. Tobin examines this media practice through the players directly using the lens of the players and practice of the Nintendo DS system. He argues for the primacy of context for understanding how digital play functions in today's society, emphasizing location, "killing-time," and mobile communities.

Despite the fact that the Nintendo DS is one the most popular game systems of all time, theorists have largely ignored it. Here, Samuel Tobin argues that the reason for this is that the DS is literally and figuratively beneath notice and not just by game scholars but by its own players as well. Indeed it is the very "everydayness" of the Nintendo DS and of mobile gaming in general that is invisible yet filled with critical potential. Portable Play in Everyday Life explores how this everyday device fits into players'' homes, commutes and lives. Drawing on discourse analysis and ethnographic methods, Tobin looks at the contexts, constraints and desires that animates and complicates mobile play. This is a significant shift away from examining the fantastic spaces inside of games to looking instead at the real world and lives in which play happens and why sometimes the "good enough" is just right.