Les usages émergents d'un jeu multijoueurs sur terminaux mobiles géolocalisés: Les conséquences interactionnelles des "rencontres d'écran"

This communication a case study about the uses in Japan of a multiplayer location aware mobile game. The gameplay is a collection game where users must gather sets of "virtual" objects. This case study of a commercially available location-aware multiplayer game provides a glimpse of what the experience of inhabiting an augmented urban public space might be like, and of the kind of social order and emergent "form-of-life" that might characterize it.The key feature is an onscreen map which features geo-localized players and virtual objects within a radius of 500 meters. This interface allows players to "see" one another onscreen. We analyze the interactional conventions that develop through such mediated encounter. How can "seing" one another in this way, and the geographical proximity it entails, become a pretext to start text-messaging exchanges. We discuss how such encounters involving mutual perception on the screen of the mobile phone are embodied, by analyzing the work users occasionally accomplish to realign their onscreen perspective with their embodied one.