Renegade Gaming: Practices Surrounding Social Use of the Nintendo DS Handheld Gaming System

Christine Szentgyorgyi, Michael Terry, & Edward Lank

Summary

The authors present a qualitative study of the social uses of the Nintendo DS. The handheld gaming system supports ad-hoc wireless networking for multiplayer gaming.

In the first part of the study, 9 participants were interviewed. The interviews were semi-structured with a number of research questions related to how and why people engage in multiplayer gaming using the Nintendo DS. The results of the interviews discovered what places and times are acceptable and not acceptable for gaming with the DS. The concept of renegade gaming arose from the interviews. Renegade gaming consists of playing multiplayer games in "a subcontext within a larger host context." Renegade gaming was found to be acceptable as long as it didn't physically disturb others and it is socially acceptable to do so in the given host context. The interviews pinpointed issues with DS and being able to start pick-up games with strangers.

In the second part of the study, 3 gaming events were observed. The events ranged in size and the types of gaming. One event was DS only. Another had both DS and console gaming. The last was a competitive gaming event with consoles only. The authors noted that large screen displays used with console gaming events allowed non-participants to observe the gaming; where as, with the DS, observers cannot easily watch the gaming action.

The authors proposed a number of design implicaitons to address the problems of multiplayer gaming on the Nintendo DS.

Discussion

The authors have evaluated the social uses of the Nintendo DS gaming system. The study is only the start to larger understanding of gaming practices with mobile handheld systems. Understanding the social contexts for this type gaming can help game and gaming system designers to create gaming experiences that better facilitate these social contexts.

It's interesting to me the use of a basketball pick-up game as a comparison to a Nintendo DS mulitplayer pick-up game. The comparison does an excellent job of explaining the problems associated with starting a pick-up game with strangers on the Nintendo DS.

Future work in this research would be to continue with the evluation but with a greater number of participants to obtain a wider and more accurate depiction of the gaming community. As well, quantitative results can never hurt. However, obtaining quantiative results for this context seems non-trivial and an interesting area of study.