Toys Traveling through Geocaching: Mobile, Social and Hybrid Values of Play

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Ihamäki Pirita Heljakka Katriina
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

This study explores emerging play patterns around the object-based but technologically-enhanced practices of toy tourism. This popular type of toy play featuring game-like elements entails movement across platforms: physical spaces and digital environments. Through a case study that explored toys traveling as Travel Bugs in the context of geocaching, the aim of this paper is to clarify the creative, gameoriented play and perceived value of practitioners of toy tourism. Our study consisted of 66 survey responses from geocachers traveling with Travel Bugs all over the world and enabled us to gain a detailed understanding of the experienced values related to traveling toys in the context of geocaching. As a result, we present a conceptual framework in which the relations between the mobile, social and hybrid dimensions of the play value of toy tourism are modelled.

 

“Travel Bugs”: Toys Traveling Socially through Geocaching

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Ihamäki Pirita Heljakka Katriina
2018 DiGRA ’18 – Abstract Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

 

Understanding 21st Century’s Mobile Device-Based Games within Boundaries

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Ihamäki Pirita Tuomi Pauliina
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

There are many new forms of entertainment in game industry. Often some of the forms are neglected in academic focus and research. Usually this is the case with marginal game forms. This paper will introduce two different, mobile device based game forms from the 21st century that are very successful among the users but are left out from the centre of game research. Qualitative studies of geocaching and SMS-to-TV human-hosted interactive TV games were conducted by analyzing the field of geocaching (by interviewing players and analysing geocachers’ web-pages and forums on the Internet) and iTV-entertainment (by recording sample of interactive TV-formats). These game phenomena were analyzed and discussed to answer the following questions: What kind of game culture these games represent? What new viewpoints they offer to the field of game studies? What are the reasons behind their success? What different dimensions can be found? Finally, why is it important to study marginal games and what can be learned from them?