Blurring boundaries between everyday life and pervasive gaming

Abstract

We present findings from an interview-based study of the pervasive mobile multiplayer game Ingress. Our study focuses on how boundaries between (1) everyday life and play and (2) 'real' and game space blur in pervasive gaming. We present findings on how the game is integrated into everyday life and affects players' mobility patterns, and on how players experience the relation between real world and game world, the game 'bleeding' into the everyday (blurring boundaries at least partially) even though it is not explicitly experienced as hybrid. Furthermore we discuss how notions of play versus ordinary life still affect some players, and how some players are willing to take and create risks and treat the game as consequential in their everyday interactions with (enemy) players. This further blurs the boundaries of the magic circle, but also creates tensions between casual and serious styles of play. Our findings add to the empirical literature on pervasive games by focusing on player experience in a large-scale pervasive game.