Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Time and Space in Play

2012; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1555412012440313

1555-4139

Samuel Tobin,

Media, Gender, and Advertising

The Nintendo DS has been, given its huge popularity, relatively understudied. This article is a small step toward correcting that and, in doing so, contributes to game studies in general. Using Goffman’s and Benjamin’s theories of play and Innis’s analysis of media, this article explores the nature of play on a handheld videogame system as an illuminating case of the tension between time-based storage media and space-based transmission media. Storage, transmission, space, and time are intertwined and made complicit in the ways in which the Nintendo DS is used and played. By engaging with non-diegetic aspects of the video game experience, such as saving and pausing, we can begin to address the materiality of handheld video gaming systems as objects with which we play with and rework time and space. In turn, mobile play itself is highly contingent and spatial–temporal practices take on special significance in this light.