Bringing a Micro-Sociological Theory to Co-located Social Games

Social play is complicated to study because of its emergent, diverse, and inter-subjective nature. Since social psychology and sociology have studied human interactions in great detail and depth in real life, we propose that they can deepen our understandings of social game experience. Specifically, the interaction ritual theory (IR theory) from Micro-sociology that focuses on moment-to-moment interactions in a small group seems to be a good fit to understand co-located multiplayer games. In this paper, we discuss the importance of theories in game research, how they inform the evaluation metrics, and how they reveal potential design problems. As an example of using IR theory, we analyze two tabletop augmented reality games through the lens of IR theory.