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studies with games for entertainment and games for learning in natural environments
(e.g. classroom, video games clubs) have long identified behaviours that don't
entirely connect with flow-like engagement between players and digital games but
identify behaviours that extended beyond the game-world whereby players
momentarily reflect and/or interact with other users-players out-of-game in the real-
world. Rather than having a detrimental effect, extending engagement beyond the
game world improved the overall experience for users-players [11, 16, 20].
Fig. 1.
Interaction and gameplay: one application/game on one platform (left), through to more
than one application on one (middle) or more platforms (right)
In addition to multitasking and task driven interactions, we emphasize a more free-
spirited, unconstrained, non-linear, improvised and extemporaneous nature of
interaction and gameplay for entertainment or stimulation. Where users-players craft
their own narratives, in-game and between applications and platforms, by playing,
selecting, searching, and creating, that is driven by and appropriate to, their own
tastes, interests, preferences, desires and individual/group cultures and sub-cultures.
In this respect, users-players have been likened to editors, curators, authors and
composers [3, 13]. A perspective that is similar in many respects to the “cut-up”
technique (attributed to Dadaists) practiced by artist writer Brion Gysin and William
S. Burroughs [2] and various musicians (David Bowie, Kurt Cobain) whereby
narratives, storylines, lyrics and points of view are created, cut-up into pieces and
arranged “any which way” (figure 2). In addition, in contrast to
interruption/disruption as potentially negative characteristics in design and evaluation
of interactive technology and media, paradoxically interruption from email, SMS or
social media, etc. are positive characteristics that provide anticipation and experience
that heighten engagement. In many ways the "cut-up" and interruption are similar to
techniques used in filmmaking styles alternate to Hollywood (e.g. French New Wave,
Russian montage), and Brechtian and improvisational theatre, in which devices are
used at unpredictable moments in a production/performance to surprise, shock, startle,
create juxtapositions, etc. and encourage reflection in an audience/participants. Our
concern in this paper is not only to inform design of interaction and gameplay from
such devices per se [12], but also to view users-players as designers, authors, curators,
composers and editors creating their own narrative, texts and experience through
interaction and gameplay, within, between and across applications/games and
platforms.
In order to analyze such engagements in interaction and gameplay with one or
more applications/games on one or more platforms, we need an approach, method or
