ABSTRACT
Mobile and handheld gaming presents a complex interplay of cultural, contextual and corporeal factors. The mobile phone and handheld game device are simultaneously-and often equally-acoustic, visual and haptic mediums. The mobile screen is now populated by data menus and fi les, scrolling text, web pages, word and image software, still photographs and video, animations, casual and hardcore online and offl ine games, virtual objects overlaying actual environments and other transformations brought about by third (3G) and fourth generation (4G) technologies and networks. Such portable media devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and should be examined in their own right as nascent new media forms. While the mobile phone is perhaps the most signifi cant technology in the context of mobile converged technologies, it is part of a more general trend towards wearable, handheld and pocket communications and entertainment media.
