Second Nature :: Issue #2: Mobile Gaming and Haptic Screen Cultures :: Call for Papers — Deadline: December 30, 2008.

This special issue of Second Nature journal aims to stimulate discussion, debate and research into the burgeoning area of mobile gaming, with a particular focus on extending discourses around “screen cultures” into the realm of the haptic. In particular, the issue seeks to counter the notion that our experience of screens (and digital media more generally), is largely “virtual” and disembodied — or at most exclusively audiovisual. From location aware gaming (using GPS) to casual games accessed on the mobile phone, the arena of mobile gaming is becoming increasingly widespread in contemporary culture, dynamically redefining perceptions of mobility, place, play and embodiment.

With these issues in mind, this special issue aims to combine philosophical, new media and ethnographic approaches as a means of critically interpreting the growing correlation between mobile gaming and emerging haptic screen cultures.

We seek papers that explore the following:

* Different forms of mobile gaming and how they impact upon notions and experiences of play, place and mobility.
* The role of mobile gaming in the burgeoning user-created content (UCC) environment and participatory media culture.
* Australia’s specific historical role in the context of mobile gaming and the games industry in general.
* Emergent notions of mobility, play and gaming in an age of Web 2.0 and convergent mobile media.
* Mobile gaming and screen cultures theorised in terms of the haptic — i.e. as spatial, contextual and corporeal practices.
* The relationship between mobile gaming and other screen cultures — and the emerging complexity of new media literacies.
* The relationship between online and offline practices in the context of location aware gaming (or “big games”).

Please submit an abstract of 250-500 words by December 30th 2008 to Rowan Wilken (rwilken [at] unimelb.edu.au). Once selection of abstracts is complete, full papers will be due by March 31st 2009.