Emergent uses of a multiplayer location‐aware mobile game: The interactional consequences of mediated encounters

This case study of the behaviours of players in an advanced location‐aware gaming environment provides a first glimpse of what the experience of living in a mobile‐basedaugmented urban public space might be like, and of the kind of social order and emergent ‘form‐of‐life’ that might characterize it. We have focused our analyses on three key features. First, game‐related mobility: how users adjust their movements to the‘augmented’ ecologies that they encounter (augmented with localized informational objects relevant to the ongoing game activity). Second, ‘Onscreen encounters’, which occur when players notice one another’s position on their mobile screen. The management of such interactions, where players are open to interaction because their location is a publicmatter, is a key feature of the construction of the social order in such a location‐awareenvironment. Third, the management of situationsof actual or potential misalignment between ‘ordinary’ and screen‐mediated perceptions. The very possibility of such misalignment is also a peculiarity of location‐aware technologies. These technologies entail collaborative work by the actors to appropriately tamethe power relationships that might emerge from such perceptual asymmetries.