Interaction affordances, emergence and sociality in mobile augmented reality video games

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Hipertext.net. número 25, noviembre 2022
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Héctor Puente Bienvenido
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7441-1908
Marta Fernández Ruiz
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3004-3242
David Ruiz Torres
Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2458-2992

Mobile augmented reality has grown in popularity since the success of video games like Pokémon Go (2016). The growing ubiquity of the hybrid video game, as a sociotechnical device for mediating interactions and sociality, has given rise to new forms of cultural practices. Thus, augmented reality, its contexts and affordances, are progressively permeating a multitude of spaces, geographies and ludic and everyday practices. In this paper we propose a taxonomy based on a mixed analysis consisting of virtual ethnography and quantitative techniques from a sample of 41 mobile augmented reality video games. Our analysis observes how augmented reality resignifies and increases the possibilities and agencies of interaction and sociality. Although augmented reality in smartphone video games enhances the socializing nature of the medium, favoring interactions characterized by co-creation, co-spatiality or co-presence, at the same time, they also make visible and reproduce other hegemonic forms of inequality and socio-structural exclusion. Examples of this are the access gaps that operate as mechanisms of social closure or the reproduction of stereotyped and unequal collective frameworks and imaginaries.

Keywords
Game studies, Mobile augmented reality, Video game, Affordance, Interface, Sociality

Article Details

How to Cite
Puente Bienvenido, Héctor et al. “Interaction affordances, emergence and sociality in mobile augmented reality video games”. Hipertext.net, 2022, no. 25, pp. 123-36, doi:10.31009/hipertext.net.2022.i25.12.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

(c) Héctor Puente Bienvenido, Marta Fernández Ruiz, David Ruiz Torres, 2022


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Author Biographies

Héctor Puente Bienvenido, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Héctor Puente Bienvenido: PhD in Sociology (2015) from Complutense University of Madrid (2008). Professor of statistics, data analysis and coordinator of the master's degree in Research Methodology in Social Sciences (UCM). He is currently part of the Ordinary Sociology research group (UCM). He has been a visiting researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen, the Georgia Institute of Technology (GaTech) and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His main areas of research are data analysis and the social implications of ICTs (mobile, social networks) and video games, especially in relation to the processes of interaction, social change and emergence; as well as the study of youth and leisure practices and cultures, virtual communities, technological mediations, agencies and user experience. He has published on video games and digital mediations in national and international magazines such as First Monday or the Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas.

Marta Fernández Ruiz, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Marta Fernández Ruiz. PhD in Media Research (2013) from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - UC3M. Lectures and coordinator of the Degree in Video Game Design and Development at Centre de la Imatge i la Tecnologia Multimèdia, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - UPC. She conducts research on Game Studies: video games and media ecology (transmediality, intertextuality, remediation); affordances and the impact of video games beyond entertainment (serious games); new game experiences linked to emerging technologies and research methodologies focused on design. She has published on video games and new technologies in national and international journals such as Icono 14, Revista de Comunicación and Computers & Education.

David Ruiz Torres, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo

David Ruiz Torres. PhD in Arts (2013) from the University of Granada (Spain) and professor in the Department of Theory of Art and Music and in the Post-Graduation Program in Arts of the Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo - UFES (Brazil). He is part of the research group of the University of Granada Andalusia-America: heritage and artistic relations (HUM 806) since 2011. His lines of research involve the use of new digital technologies in the fields of museology, cultural heritage and contemporary artistic creation. Among his most outstanding publications are the book La realidad aumentada y su aplicación en el patrimonio cultural (2013), and the Focus on The use of digital technologies in the conservation, analysis and dissemination of cultural heritage of the AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2017.

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