Beyond the Casual: Situating Ambient and Cultural Play

Abstract

The opening quote is from Toshi (not his real name), who was playing a haptic game during the 2011 Tokyo earthquake and tsunami known as 3.11. His immersion in the PSP game was so deep that he mistook the quake’s vibrations for the monster’s movements within his game. In the moments after he realised the horror of real life events, he desperately tried to contact friends and family, but to no avail. In the days after 3.11, and as multiple and conflicting news reports emerged across broadcast and social media, Toshi and his friend used the game to hide from the pain and confusion. Later it emerged that the national broadcaster, NHK, had deliberately withheld important information about the Fukushima reactor under the instructions of the government. In that moment of media betrayal, Toshi, like millions of other Japanese and non-Japanese people worldwide, (re)turned to trusted social mobile media like Twitter and LBSs like Foursquare and Instagram. As they traversed this mobile and participatory mediascape, they not only experienced the comfort of perpetual co-presence with their family and friends, but also became part of intimate publics.

When the earthquake occurred, I was alone in my room playing a monster hunter PSP game. Exactly at the time, I was fighting with a monster who makes an earthquake so that I didn’t realise that an actual, offline quake had occurred. Only after beating down the monster, I realised something was different around me. A fish tank had overflowed and books had fallen down. Initially I was not really shocked by the earthquake itself, but felt frustration aftermath—the power failure, panic buying, nuclear accident, and such stuff. I stayed inside with a friend, and continued to play the monster hunter game. But the game was no longer entertaining.

(‘Toshi’, 25, Japanese male)