Digital geographies of home: Parenting practices in the space between gaming and gambling
This paper advances debates at the intersection of geographies of children, youth and families, digital geographies, and geographies of home. We argue that social, seasonal and limited time are vitally important for understanding the new landscape between gaming and gambling and have wider analytical purchase for geographers. The paper reveals parenting practices connected to the multi-billion-dollar industry of paid-for currency in digital games used to access gambling style systems and chance-based mechanisms such as loot boxes. We use this timely example to develop new digital geographies of home from original interviews with parents and families based in England on their everyday lived experiences of gambling style systems in digital games, as well as data from video ethnographies with children and young people and interviews with international games producers and designers. This paper challenges current understandings by examining how parents and families make sense of gambling-related harms and demonstrates the spatial and temporal dynamics of purchasing decisions, rules, and associated conflicts in domestic space. We argue these systems in digital games shape, and are shaped by, family geographies. The paper concludes by outlining its relevance for the social and health sciences at a time of intense legislative interest in the increasingly blurred space between gaming and gambling.
Funding
Between Gaming and Gambling: investigating children and young people's experiences and understandings of gambling style systems in digital games
Economic and Social Research Council
Find out more...History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Children's GeographiesPublisher
Informa UKVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The Author(s)Publisher statement
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.Acceptance date
2024-06-11Publication date
2024-07-01Copyright date
2024ISSN
1473-3285eISSN
1473-3277Publisher version
Language
- en