Studying mobile gaming experiences

For studying mobile gaming experiences and for evaluating mobile games concepts and methods are needed, which take into account the characteristics of the phenomena under study. Experiences emerge and change as a moment of mobile play activity. Underlying attributes of mobile games are the physical movement of players within a mixed game world, the changing contexts of use, the spatial distribution of the collaborating actors, the differences of users, and usage levels, and the complexity of the technologies deployed. At the core we face the issue of the unpredictable context of use. To handle this methodological problem a process-oriented method is outlined, allowing the study of mobile dynamic phenomena by combining two different views, the representational and the interactional view.