Mobile Gaming Behaviors: An Exploratory Study of Mobile Game Players' Agency in Space and Time

Sky LaRell Anderson's 2018 study in Eludamos examines how mobile game players exercise corporeal and temporal agency, arguing that mobile gaming, unlike console or PC play, frees players' bodies to move through varied spaces and times. Grounded in nine player interviews and situated within scholarship on materiality and embodiment in game studies, the article organizes its inquiry around three themes: physicality, space, and time. Its central research question asks which corporeal characteristics of mobile gaming are most prominent according to players' own reported experiences.

Players described a wide range of physical configurations for play, including couches, beds, cars, desks, and waiting rooms, along with varied methods of holding devices. This freedom is a defining feature of mobile play, though it carries the tradeoff of greater physical discomfort, such as eye, neck, and wrist strain. Touch-screen technology further extends this corporeal dimension, allowing play through toes, elbows, or facial movements and thereby broadening access for diverse bodies.

Temporally, most players reported sessions of twenty minutes or less, frequently used as time fillers during interruptions. Turn-based designs allow play to extend across days without penalty, reinforcing the flexibility that distinguishes mobile gaming from more structured traditional formats. Players reported gaming at work, in transit, and throughout their homes, often in brief and unplanned moments, leading the author to conclude that player behavior shapes the gaming space rather than the reverse.

The study argues that these patterns call for a new paradigm centering player choice in understanding mobile gaming. Its findings are qualitative and draw on no quantitative data, and the author positions mobile gaming's popularity within broader trends, including augmented reality, virtual reality, and hybrid consoles, as evidence of a lasting shift toward gaming's embeddedness in physical life.