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Developing current geographical debates on children's digital geographies and popular culture, this article examines children and young people's experiences and understandings of gambling-style systems in digital games. Chance-based mechanisms such as loot boxes are a growing feature of the global gaming industry. This article examines the space between gaming and gambling and provides new perspectives to this emerging field, drawing on empirical research from video ethnography game-play sessions with children and young people. This article uniquely foregrounds these accounts, giving room for their voices in a debate dominated by adults. We argue gambling-style systems must be understood within children's everyday sociospatial experiences, including friendship, family, and curating collections. We provide a fuller picture of children and young people's situatedness and negotiations around digital gaming through interviews with parents and game designers. We demonstrate the conceptually striking ways they narrate generational change, mobilizing powerful social constructions of childhood. We advance understandings of children's popular culture and nostalgia in academic debates on digital childhoods, arguing that loot boxes are a new and important lens through which to view wider anxieties. Furthermore, we reveal potential risks associated with these systems and offer recommendations for a timely international policy debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines work in cultural and human geography that theorises temporality in terms of events. Moving from humanist phenomenology, to non-representational and assemblage theories and current geographies of encounter, it suggests these accounts of events tend to analyse the past and future through the lens of the present. Building upon these literatures and the work of Tristan Garcia, the paper argues for an expanded notion of the event, where past and future events can be considered as both distinct from, and linked to, the present moment. Here, time comes to be defined as the ordering and stacking of events, where events are understood as sites of comprehension, in which entities are differentiated. The paper suggests this position is useful in order to trace temporal causality across and between entities and events. Tracing the causality of entities and their ordering and stacking across events enables a closer analysis of what the paper terms the temporal power of non-human things. To illustrate this argument, examples from an ESRC project on digital gaming and in-game purchasing are analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post‐phenomenological geographies have critiqued the idea that the world appears for humans alone. In turn, these geographies have begun to develop concepts to investigate the way entities appear to one another in ways that exceed or confound human sense, while recognising that these entities can only be investigated through human modes of access. Addressing the absence of explicit spatial theorisation in this literature, the paper develops a post‐phenomenological account of space. Building on relational and phenomenological geographies and expanding the work of Tristan Garcia, the paper analyses space in terms of the comprehension and form of entities. In doing so, it defines space as a dual process of differentiation and distanciation that produces different modes of nearness and farness that are specific to the intercomprehension of particular entities. Through this analysis the paper offers an account of power as tied to the spatiality of entities, where power is defined as the inequality of comprehensions between entities and how these inequalities are designed to provoke and encourage particular forms of engagement. The paper develops a post‐phenomenological account of space. Building on relational and phenomenological geographies and expanding the work of Tristan Garcia, the paper analyses space in terms of the comprehension and form of entities. In doing so, it defines space as a dual process of differentiation and distanciation that produces different modes of nearness and farness that are specific to the inter‐comprehension of particular entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently cultural geographers have become increasingly interested in postphenomenological ways of thinking. This article develops a distinct postphenomenological style of analysis. Such a style is twofold, referring both to a style of conceptualizing and writing about objects and a concern for those objects' style. Drawing on the example of the television show In the Night Garden, the article demonstrates two postphenomenological styles of thought—allure and resonance—and how these styles enable us to understand the style of these objects and the role they play in the construction and experience of different cultural worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the concept of technical memory in relation to smart city systems. Using the example of the UK air pollution monitoring system Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN) and how information from this system is displayed in smartphone air monitoring apps, the article theorizes the memory of smart systems. Developing the work of Garcia, the article rethinks Stiegler's retentional accounts of technical memory, which suggest that memory is held or inscribed on or within a particular technical object. To do this it argues that technical memory can be productively considered as a form of artificial comprehension. Here, the memory of smart systems is analyzed through a variety of logics that disclose particular qualities of objects for particular purposes, which shapes how people make sense of and respond to their environment. Through the example of AURN, the article suggests that the concept of artificial comprehension is useful for geographers studying a range of smart and nonsmart technical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon the example of High-Cost Short-Term Credit products accessed via digital interfaces and devices to examine practices of interface design and the operation of digitally mediated power. Utilising interviews with High-Cost Short-Term Credit website designers and users of these products, the paper shows how these interfaces are designed and tested to manage frictions: practical, affective or emotional contestations that interrupt or stop users from applying for these products and entering into credit and debt. We suggest that the key role of interface design is to manage these frictions by guiding action in such a way to minimise negative affective states at key thresholds of the application process. The management of friction is enabled by practices of data-driven design, where the contingency of human response is engineered through analytics in order to increase rates of application. Working through the example of High-Cost Short-Term Credit, the paper complicates a notion of control as a smooth or automatic operation of power, instead emphasising the necessity of both continuity and discontinuity as key to modulating action in a digital age. To understand the specificity of interface interactions and move beyond existing work on control, we offer a vocabulary of friction, thresholds and transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geography is in the midst of a digital turn. This turn is reflected in both geographic scholarship and praxis across sub-disciplines. We advance a threefold categorization of the intensifying relationship between geography and the digital, documenting geographies produced through, produced by, and of the digital. Instead of promoting a single theoretical framework for making sense of the digital or proclaiming the advent of a separate field of ‘digital geography’, we conclude by suggesting conceptual, methodological and empirical questions and possible paths forward for the ‘digital turn’ across geography’s many sub-disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital interfaces, in the form of websites, mobile apps and other platforms, now mediate user experiences with a variety of economic, cultural and political services and products. To study these digital mediations, researchers have to date followed a range of methodological strategies including the modification of pre-existing qualitative research methods, such as content analysis, discourse analysis and semiotics, among many others, and an experimentation with new methods designed to make visible the operation of data aggregation, analytics and algorithms that are hidden from users. Building upon, while distinct from these strategies, the article sets out a post-phenomenological approach to studying interfaces, websites and apps that explicitly interrogates how they appear as objects. In doing so, the article provides a response to a problem that animates contemporary cultural geography: that new cultural objects are emerging which place in question the habits and practices of analysis that composed the ‘new’ cultural geography. To do this, the paper develops the concepts of unit, vibration and tone to unpack interfaces as sets of entities that work together to shape the experiences and responses of users. As such, the article provides a methodological vocabulary for the analysis of how interfaces operate to modulate user response and action on a series of habitual and un-reflected upon levels and thereby to create outcomes that suit their owners and operators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines geography’s engagements with phenomenology. Tracing phenomenology’s influence, from early humanist reflections on the lifeworld to non-representational theories of practice, the paper identifies the emergence of a distinct post-phenomenological way of thinking. However, there is currently no clear articulation of what differentiates post-phenomenology from phenomenology as a set of theories or ideas, nor is there a clear set of trajectories along which such difference can be pursued further. In response to this, the paper outlines three key elements that differentiate phenomenology from post-phenomenology and that require further exploration. First is a rethinking of intentionality as an emergent relation with the world, rather than an a priori condition of experience. Second is a recognition that objects have an autonomous existence outside of the ways they appear to or are used by human beings. Third is a reconsideration of our relations with alterity, taking this as central to the constitution of phenomenological experience given our irreducible being-with the world. Unpacking these differences, the paper offers some suggestions as to how post-phenomenology contributes to the broader discipline of human geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conversation with James Ash, Pasi Väliaho discusses the relationship between video games, politics and the turn to affect for thinking about mediated experience. In doing so, both authors consider the promises and problematics of utilizing neuroscientific concepts for understanding modes of power that operate through the knots of image and sensation that make up contemporary media culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the skills and knowledges involved in multiplayer first-person shooting games, specifically Call of Duty 4 for the Xbox 360 games console. In doing so, it argues that the environments of first-person shooting games are designed to be intense spaces that produce captivated subjects - users who play attentively for long periods of time. Developing Heidegger's concept of attunement and Stiegler's account of retention, the article unpacks the somatic and sensory skills involved in videogame play and discusses how videogame environments cultivate a sense of captivation. In conclusion the article reflects on the politics of captivation for the bodies that engage with these games through the idea of vulnerability as an 'opening of the body's capacity for sense'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the industrial art of videogame design and production as an exemplar of what could be termed affective design. In doing so, the article theorizes the relationship between affect and attention as part of what Bernard Stiegler calls a ‘retentional economy’ of human and technical memory. Through the examination of a range of different videogames, the article argues that videogame designers utilize techniques of what I term ‘affective amplification’ that seek to modulate affect, which is central to the commercial success of these games. The article considers how the concepts of amplification, modulation and bandwidth, developed through this example, inform and expand understandings of this retentional economy by analysing the ways in which affective design attempts to transmit and translate the potential for affect through a range of technical systems and environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper I develop the concept of 'technicity' to theorise how technology shapes spatiotemporal perception. This concept of technicity is applied to the development of skilled play in the fighting videogame Street Fighter IV. Drawing upon a larger research project consisting of participant observation, interviews, and video ethnography with professional and nonprofessional competitive players, I develop an in-depth analysis of how information about the animation system for the game is compiled and used to develop new sensitivities to time. In doing so, I argue that this is one example of the ways in which a variety of technologies shape users' capacities to sense space and time through the habitual development of skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While videogames have been a popular form of entertainment practice for a number of decades, it is only recently that they have been paid much attention by academics. Although there is a burgeoning body of scholarship that deals with videogames in new media and games studies, human geography is only just beginning to offer its own take on the medium and the practices associated with it. This essay outlines ways in which scholars (both within geography and beyond) have traced out the geographies in videogames (in terms of the representations and politics within videogames), the geographies of videogames (in terms of the production and consumption of videogames) and videogames as a cultural geographical practice (in terms of the technocultural practices through which videogames and videogamers are produced). We argue that approaching videogaming as a (techno)cultural practice can enrich the cultural geographies in and of videogames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I develop the concept of ‘teleplastic technologies’– technologies that pre-shape the potentials and possibilities for human action, movement and sense – through the example of videogaming. I develop a case study of videogame users through which I unpack the characteristics of teleplastic technologies and the ways in which they operate to reorganise the capacities and capabilities of users’ bodies through spatial means. In the first section I argue that teleplastic technologies should be understood from a spatial/ethological perspective and show how ethologically limited videogame environments encourage users to act and move without conscious thought in response to various inhibitors and disinhibitors designed into that environment. In the second section I show how the somatic techniques users develop in response to these worlds reorganise the cardinal orientation of users’ bodies and, thus, how the ‘geography’ of teleplastic technologies shape the potential and possibilities for spatial sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the importance of using open architecture within current systems for easy and efficient adoption of technological improvements. Although an open systems environment will enable easy integration with future technology enhancements, the authors note that it also brings with it inherent problems that need to be addressed such as transformation life cycle, interoperability and physical connectivity among others. Changes in personnel and technical systems will also need to be tackled.

In this article we attend to an emergent practice of visualising GIS data in physical geography using the graphics engine of a videogame, Crysis. We suggest these modes of image-making aid the possibility of imagining and disseminating complex geographical data differently by re-contextualising seemingly abstract mathematical information within a human horizon of embodied meaning. Furthermore we argue these ways of imagining are closely linked to the technology and phenomenology of screens which make the presentation of these images possible. We close by reflecting on the possibility that these technologies are shifting the grounds of vision and the geographical imagination of users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I develop a nonrepresentational spatiality of screened images, in which space does not refer to the way space is represented in images or the spaces in which images exist, Instead it focuses on the spaces that images themselves produce. Drawing upon the technology of the screen as a contemporary site at which images are experienced, I argue for a dual conception of the 'space' of screened images: an existential space constructed through the background context of a user's relation with an image; and an ecological space constructed through the expressive relationship between body and screen. I use video games as an exemplar of these spaces to show how screened images reconfigure the relationship between touch and vision and how this alters users' spatial awareness of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study initiated in late 1999 to map new media with substantial input from fifty-one CEO's or other top executives from a list of 350 new media firms in the U.S. to participate in the industry assessment. Aim of the study to foster a taxonomy for new media outlets and firms within the larger media and entertainment industries; Identification of key elements in defining new media; Factors identified by CEOs that are essential in defining new media that distinguish them from traditional media and entertainment industries.

Analysing the affective geographies of digitally mediated payday loans in the UK, this paper advocates and exemplifies an approach to cultural economy that focuses on how economic worlds are affectively animated and lived. Supplementing the two versions of "culture" that cultural economy approaches have to date been organised around – culture as signifying system or culture as assembled effect – we propose a cultural economy of everyday space‐times which is attuned to the affective composition of forms of living. Drawing on empirical work with 40 users of digitally mediated payday loans, we employ this approach to trace how their loans become part of three intersecting forms of living: relief, as a pressing concern is deferred to the immediate future; separation, as private spaces are created within ordinary life and obligations are felt as individual responsibilities; and pressure, as demands to pay intensify the sense that debt is spiralling out of control and already‐ongoing precarity cannot be sustained. In conclusion, we pose further questions for a cultural economy approach orientated to the analysis of forms of living. Analysing the affective geographies of digitally mediated payday loans in the UK, this paper advocates and exemplifies an approach to cultural economy which focuses on the "forms of living" through which economic worlds are affectively animated and lived. Drawing on empirical work with 40 users of payday loans, it shows how they are lived through three forms: relief, separation, and pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]