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All in the Game: Families, Peer Groups and Game Playing in the Home

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The Connected Home: The Future of Domestic Life

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Abstract

There is, of course, nothing in the slightest bit new about game playing in and around the home. Pieter Breughel’s famous painting, ‘Childrens’ Games’, painted in the 1500s, shows how many and varied the games that were played in the home environs were, albeit with very limited resources in terms of toys or other equipment. Breughel’s painting in fact shows the majority of the games in question being played outside, although whether this has to do with the available technology (mainly sticks), specific household arrangements (e.g. the domestic mode of production), architectural matters or the construction of childhood/ adulthood itself (see e.g. Aries, 1962), remains unclear. Certainly, there is a view that, for whatever reason, gaming is now something that is a more isolated and isolating experience, at least in terms of the physical locality. In this chapter, I seek to understand what both the continuities and discontinuities of game playing might be in the light of the social arrangements of domestic life.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As an aside, according to the Independent newspaper of Jan 13, 2011, only 2% of the Japanese population are users of Facebook. If so, it demonstrates that while there are very good reasons for detailed descriptions of ‘culture’, comparisons can sometimes be interesting as well.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Dave Randall

  2. Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

    Dave Randall

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  1. Microsoft Research Ltd., J. J. Thomson Avenue 7, Cambridge, CB3 0FB, United Kingdom

    Richard Harper

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Randall, D. (2011). All in the Game: Families, Peer Groups and Game Playing in the Home. In: Harper, R. (eds) The Connected Home: The Future of Domestic Life. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-476-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-85729-476-0_7

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