Software-sorted Streets: Nintendo 3DS Streetpass and the Reconfiguration of Social Interactions

Transcription

1 Software-sorted Streets: Nintendo 3DS Streetpass and the Reconfiguration of Social Interactions A paper submitted for publication in the proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association Annual Conference, Swinburne University, Victoria 9-11 July, Kyle Moore The University of Sydney Department of Media and Communications kylejohnmoore@gmail.com 1

2 Abstract Portable gaming practices are increasingly becoming social from the integration of social networking platforms such as Facebook, to the development and release of closed social networks for both Nintendo and Sony platforms. This paper explores the contemporary portable gaming console, the Nintendo 3DS, and the built-in software Streetpass as a prime example of software-sorted social encounters. Dedicated gaming devices like the 3DS are becoming increasingly pervasive reconfiguring periods of waiting into play sessions. With the addition of background software like Streetpass, moving through urban environments becomes an element of play. As such, the act of digital game play becomes mediated through new forms of code and software drawing direct links between the digital and the material. 2

3 Software-sorted Streets: Nintendo 3DS Streetpass and the Reconfiguration of Social Interactions Kyle Moore Introduction This paper explores the software platform specific software Streetpass, focusing on how the sending and receiving of information from Nintendo 3DS to Nintendo 3DS reconfigures passing social interactions. Streetpass sorts passers-by into players/non-players, and resituates social encounters from face to face to onscreen. Sociality is further abstracted via the sending and receiving of select data shared by console owners.the result is a type of ludic transaction, where players are able to collect and utilise avatars and information in order to complete puzzles and quests. Mobilising the concept of software-sorted geographies, this paper argues that a Streetpass-enabled Nintendo 3DS has the potential to reshape social interactions performed within public spaces sorting passers-by based on their access to technology, specific games, preselected forms of data, and previous social encounters. Released in 2011, the Nintendo 3DS is the latest portable gaming device to be developed and released by Japanese videogame company Nintendo. While similar in appearance to its predecessor, the Nintendo DS (Nintendo Dual Screen), the console is a new platform that requires compatible 3DS cartridges in order to play games. The most notable difference between these two consoles is the addition of stereoscopic three-dimensional images that can be viewed without the aid of 3D glasses or other peripherals. Since the original release, the console has been revised and released as two new devices: the Nintendo 3DS XL (3DS LL in Japan and ique 3DS XL in China), and the Nintendo 2DS. While the XL has 90% larger screens, and the 2DS does not have three-dimensional graphics, the devices are both members of the larger 3DS family. The term 3DS is used in this paper to categorise all three consoles, and discuss the platform in general. While there are the aforementioned differences, each iteration of the device still functions as a platform for the same software, and they will be discussed as a collective whole. Most significantly, this paper focuses on the built-in software known as Streetpass a platform-specific function that allows for passive communication between nearby 3DS consoles. 3

4 In this paper, I examine how the Nintendo 3DS functions as a platform that enables the reconfiguration of social encounters within urban environments. The Nintendo 3DS continues social gaming practices associated with dedicated portable gaming devices practices commonly associated with the Nintendo DS. Focusing on theoretical and ethnographic analysis of the Nintendo DS, this paper looks at how social practices surrounding the DS platform are continued by 3DS players, and how the integration of the new Streetpass software enables new forms of social encounters. Utilising Grahams (2005) concept of software sorting, this paper examines how Streetpass sorts social encounters into a range of different categories each with specific levels of values. Such encounters benefit the player in their engagement with multiple games, and the quest to accumulate social encounters often results in a reconfiguration of urban mobility. Ultimately, this paper views the Nintendo 3DS as a social platform, whereby hardware and software functionality shape urban encounters while the device is at hand. A Social Platform Together with Sony s latest console the PlayStation Vita, the Nintendo 3DS has been deemed a next generation portable console. The rhetoric here implies it is at the cutting edge of gaming technology, as well as situating the device chronologically in a larger history of portable and mobile gaming. What this means is that the Nintendo 3DS follows an established history, with established brand loyalties and cultural practices associated with devices from the Game and Watch series, and the multi-cartridge Game Boy system. The 3DS retains a number of technological features found in the console s predecessor, the Nintendo DS. The DS represents a shift in marketing for Nintendo a move away from the inclusion of Game Boy in the console title (for example, Game Boy Pocket/Advanced/SP). The device represents a maturing company, and the shift towards a broader, casual market, with games such as Brain Training symbolising the shift away from established franchises and towards a casualisation of the market and a broadening of the desired demographic. The Nintendo DS saw multiple revisions, the DS Lite DSi and DS XL, both of which retain the core features of the console two screens, one of which is a touch screen and a stylus. The console featured wireless connectivity, and the download play function, which allows for multiplayer gaming using a single game cartridge. Such features have been retained by the successor, the 3DS, which also includes glasses-free 3D graphics, and new forms of software. 4

5 While little scholarship has focused on the relatively new device, the 3DS, there have been a number of important studies into the nature of portable and social play regarding the Nintendo DS. Nanna Verhoeff (2010: 281) uses the term theoretical console to describe the means in which the DS raises both theoretical and historical questions. Here, the DS is framed as a still a metaphor not intended to capture a snapshot of history, but rather to be viewed as a frame within a series giving the illusion of moving forward and retaining historical perspective simultaneously. Such a perspective offers insight into the DS as a still before the 3DS historically situating the 3DS as an object bound in time. Christian McCrea (2011), similarly, focuses on the historical specificity of the Nintendo DS differentiating the portable from the mobile in terms of design and development practices, as well as the cultural practices of play. The Nintendo DS is a distinct cultural object, with specific loyalties, stemming from a history of marketing and establishing of key franchises such as the Pokémon series. Such loyalties come with a socially constructed level of attention and dedication as opposed to mobile casual games which can be interacted with and played at a glance (Hjorth and Richardson, 2009). The DS player, much like the 3DS play, requires longer periods of play, with a more intent focus on the device s screen. The degree to which the Nintendo DS affords a dedicated level of attention is echoed in the detailed ethnographic work of both Tobin (2013) and Szentgyorgyi, Terry and Lank (2008). Each study gives insights into the level of attention DS players give to their device during play sessions, the spaces in which play sessions occur, and ultimately some indication of how the Nintendo DS may be framed as a social platform. Szentgyorgyi, Terry and Lank (2008: 1463) interviewed nine DS players and observed and participated in three organised social events, revealing a practice they term renegade gaming. The term refers to the players reappropriation of contexts traditionally viewed as hostile to the practice of play. Their study notes the power that pick-up, ad hoc games have in pushing the social barriers of random multiplayer game play in public spaces. Szentgyorgyi, Terry and Lank situate such multiplayer gaming historically, and discuss the social organisation of multiplayer gaming on the DS. Very frequently, multiplayer games took place within socially organised contexts, despite the platform s ability to host multiplayer games with any compatible device. In his book, Portable Play in Everyday Life, Samuel Tobin (2013) addresses the nomadic nature of the Nintendo DS. Here, Tobin immerses himself in an online community of DS users located on Penny Arcade forums. In his study, Tobin cites numerous occasions in which 5

6 Nintendo DS players utilise their device on public transport. Portable play is everywhere but never total; it is opportunistic, nomadic, and dependent on other structures and other practices for its shape and possibilities (Tobin, 2013: 4). In fitting into a series of existing practices, the Nintendo DS has a certain invisibility. It is a device made for moments of transition, for moving through the city, for trains, buses taking advantaged of already established forms of urban mobility. Part of situating the device as nomadic means the DS has a degree of takenfor-granted-ness. Players reveal their classification of the Nintendo DS as a casual console, with players not self-identifying as gamers. This adds to the device s level of ubiquity, or as Tobin puts it, it hides in plain sight even for those who play with it (Tobin, 2013: 5). What these two case studies reveal are two different pictures of the Nintendo DS. On the one hand, the DS as a form of mediating planned social encounters it forms the means and basis in which players meet and engage. It is also portrayed as a somewhat ubiquitous device a taken-for-granted object used to occupy time within existing forms of urban mobility such as public transport. The Nintendo DS, with its ability to be closed and pause the game, with its seamless integration into the process of travel, and its role as the basis for conscious social encounters, is a device that situates itself within the existing structures of the player s life. It is a device that is able to always be present, yet not always engaged with. The Nintendo 3DS aims to occupy a similar position in the life of players. It is the argument of this paper that the choice to retain the hardware elements from the DS, as well as the inclusion of new software, emphasise the Nintendo 3DS as a ubiquitous device a device that functions best when it is within reach. Software Sorting The primary focus of this paper is the built-in software Streetpass and the means by which it sorts encounters, and in turn alters the player s / device owner s movements through urban environments. Streetpass is a defining function of the 3DS a platform that has expanded established social aspects from past Nintendo portable consoles. Streetpass activates when the player puts his or her device to sleep by closing the device. This will pause any active software on the device and uses significantly less battery. While asleep, the software passively shares information between users who are in close proximity. Customisable information such as name, a personal greeting, country, recently played software or game, is shared between proximate 3DS devices. Players are embodied by their self-created avatar, or 6

7 Mii. The device s Mii Maker allows players to design their own avatar, or to have one created based on a photo taken with the device s in-built camera. Players can further customise their Mii in terms of their shirt colour and, upon the competition of in-game quests, change the hat that their Mii will wear. Any information passed between players is represented in the form of these Miis, with the avatar entering the Streetpass Plaza, introducing themselves with a series of information inputs such as personal greetings or set information such as By the way, I like dogs. The Plaza houses all Miis met, each with their individual colours and hats. Streetpass functions not only as a means of sharing information, but also as a series of builtin games. The first two games available to players are Streetpass Quest (Find Mii in America), which later was upgraded to include a free sequel, as well as Puzzle Swap. Here, players exchange collected puzzle pieces in order to create 3D promotional images. Streetpass Quest involves moving through a series of dungeon rooms, using collected Miis from Streetpass encounters as soldiers who then battle monsters in order to save the players own Mii. With each room successfully completed there is a chance of earning a new, Nintendo themed, hat establishing their significance as a form of achievement. Players can also hire Wanderers using Play Coins a platform-specific currency that is accumulated at a rate of one coin per every hundred steps with a maximum of ten coins per day. Similarly, there is a maximum number of ten Streetpass visits before players will be required to engage with the software, resetting the number of current visits to zero. The resulting relationship between platform and software is that 3DS establishes itself as a device that must remain on hand it is an essential item to take out of the house in order to complete a series of quests. While Streetpass functions as passive software, seemingly invisible, the result of this background software is that the player must consciously move through environments in order to procure the most valuable encounters. The process by which Streetpass functions is similar to the process of software sorting a term coined by Stephen Graham (2005) to discuss the means by which software maintains and reinforces power relations in everyday life. Code, according to Graham, has a central role in organising the social and geographical inequalities present in advanced societies. While Graham s central argument that code is used to separate the privileged from the marginalised is not highly relevant to the Nintendo 3DS, the process of sorting people within urban environments based on software is highly relevant. Processes of inequality do exist within the example of the 3DS most obvious the cost of the device itself. While important to note, 7

8 such arguments surrounding a divide between access to such a luxury technology are beyond the scope of this platform-specific discussion of the Nintendo 3DS and social encounters. What is relevant is how encounters within this privileged group are sorted via software via a number of categories, and the implications this has for moving through urban environments. Similar arguments of software-mediated sociability are echoed by Apperley and Leorke (2013) in their discussion of cybercafés and the ios game Shadow Cities. In shifting locations of public play from the fixed location of the cybercafé to mediated urban environments, playful encounters move from embodied interactions to software-sorted encounters, creating a segregation of the public not purely grounded in space. Ultimately, the public are sorted into players and non-players, and the sense of affinity through social media that is praised by Andy Merrifield (in Apperley and Leorke, 2013) is, to a degree, lost in this separation. While there may be a chance of socially rejuvenating the urban experience, this only occurs in a select group of individuals within the public. In regards to this, Apperley and Leorke reinforce Jason Farman s (2012) argument, that the commodification of playful behaviour runs the risk of reducing the player to merely an object within a network. Similar concerns arise from the categorisation process that occurs and which sorts encounters between 3DS owners within urban environments. With the Nintendo 3DS, embodied encounters are mediated by software, sorting the players from non-players. When a player with Streetpass enabled passes another player, information is exchanged and sorted completing the software-mediated encounter. With this first categorisation certain encounters, namely encountering other device owners, are immediately sorted as more valuable. Within the category of player, encounters are sorted into various degrees of usefulness. Usefulness is based on the extent to which an encounter can assist in the progress of Streetpass games such as Streetpass Quest or Puzzle Swap. For instance, Puzzle Swap has two colour-coded puzzle pieces, blue pieces that can also be randomly purchased with Play Coins, and pink pieces which can only be obtained through Streetpass. Plaza visitors who have new pink pieces will be viewed by the player as more valuable the more pieces a player has the more valuable they can be seen as, and the more sought after further encounters with this player will be. Those who contain no new puzzle pieces will be categorised by the player as not valuable at all. 8

9 Streetpass Quest and Streetpass Quest II further categorise players based on their selfselected coloured shirt, as well as the number of previous encounters. All visitors start at level one, with their level and attack strength increasing with each new encounter until the final level of seven is reached. Shirt colours dictate special abilities, and in the sequel, allow for similar colours to be paired into teams. The process of sorting encounters via software means that these categorisations, level based on encounters and shirt colour, become important for the player viewing the encounter as valuable. To encounter the same Mii multiple times is to increase their value and allow for potential planning in order to successfully pass through rooms within the game. Further value is added to players who have a similar library of games with Streetpass functions and information sharing built into games such as Animal Crossing: New Leaf and Bravery Default. In these cases, in-game information is shared and can be utilised as extra content within the games. This process of sorting encounters based on value results in a distinct engagement with urban environments, different to more common forms of locative media. Mobile games and applications, such as Google s popular alternate reality game Ingress and social application Foursquare work via a process of layering information over urban environments. The urban environment is represented to the user or player via maps, with points of interest or value visually located within the proximate area. The user or player plays with these locations; the location itself is encoded via software and becomes a key component for these forms of mediated play. With the Nintendo 3DS, the urban environment is not represented, and systems of value are mediated by the software, as well as encoded by the player. The player is trained by software to seek highly valuable encounters, and based on previous encounters and movements through space will begin to associate certain locations game stores, train stations, and so forth with flows of people who are more likely to own a device. Unlike Ingress or Foursquare, Streetpass is platform specific for the Nintendo 3DS a device that lacks the culturally constructed ubiquity of a smartphone. Nintendo uses Streetpass to not only give value to encounters, but also value to the device there is purpose for the device to be at hand beyond the immediate act of digital game play within moments of transition. While games such as Ingress and Shadow Cities seek to transform urban environments into a space for play, and enable players to playfully engage with representations of location, the Nintendo 3DS and Streetpass instead ask the player to consistently engage with and maintain their device giving value to the device beyond its primary role as a gaming console. 9

10 Indeed, with Streetpass, players are, as Farman (2012) states, reduced to a set of objects. The player, embodied by the Mii, becomes a set of encoded information that is sorted via software, and also by the players themselves, as either an object of value or no value. There are direct implications here for the way in which players thus engage with urban environments. The quest to complete the goals within Streetpass games become a quest to find valuable encounters within urban environments, with the result often being that certain locations within said environments are deemed more valuable than others. Planning Encounters While ethnographic studies into the Nintendo reveal the device s integration into daily routines and movements through urban environments, the Nintendo 3DS, in part due to Streetpass, requires new forms of social engagement within urban environments. While little study into the 3DS has been conducted, games journalist Mark Serrels (2011a, 2011b) provides valuable insight into the process of valuing locations and altering urban mobility in order to collect Streetpass hits. He points out that after receiving 3DS he noticed: Some subtle lifestyle changes morning routines altered, travel paths changed. Each time I went to a train station, I d walk up and down the platform, dangerously close to large groups of commuters. I d stand next to escalators, attempting to make e-contact with the most people in the most concentrated fashion. (Serrels, 2011a) Reflecting about his own games to movement through urban environments, Serrels embarked on the quest to collect fifty Streetpass hits in a single day. The locations visited on this quest reveal some insight into the value of certain locations videogame stores, moving through train carriages, the domestic airport. While videogame retailers proved helpful for gaining quantity of encounters, there is the high probably of valuable re-encounters with staff members. Serrels modified use of public transport is significant differing from the dedicated practices of Nintendo DS players discussed in Tobin s (2013) study. Tobin reveals certain insights into how portable device players engage with urban environments. He applies metaphors used by Ito, Okabe and Anderson (in Tobin, 2013: 87) used to describe the way in which portable objects are used to manage presence in urban environments. The metaphors of camping, cocooning and footprints represent ways of 10

11 packing one s pockets, backpack, purse and so forth before entering urban environments. Tobin puts forth that cocooning is the most appropriate for Nintendo DS players on subway systems it implies the establishment of semi-private micro-spaces that operate to produce an alteration in attention (Tobin, 2013: 88). Similarly, the metaphor of camping is useful, illustrating the way in which portable players temporarily establish semi-domestic spaces. What is integral is the attention players have to packing, and thinking about which spaces, and how these spaces, will be occupied. Players, of both the Nintendo DS and 3DS, are required to consciously pack their device, making sure the battery is sufficiently charged to last movement through urban environments. What these discussions of planned urban mobility suggest is that the Nintendo 3DS, and moreover Streetpass, are not as passive as they seem. There is logic to sorting, and to moving through locations that may be deemed by the player as more valuable. Before entering urban environments, the player thoughtfully packs their belongings, and plans routes that will be most valuable for their progress within the applicable forms of software. Conclusion While software is integral to encounters that occur through the Nintendo 3DS, the process in which these encounters occur is not passive. There is a level of agency on the part of the player in terms of establishing what they view as the most valuable locations within their movements through the city, and in terms of which Miis will be subjectively more valuable for their progress through the goals of any number of games. In establishing such systems of value, the Nintendo 3DS is able to reconfigure movements through urban environments sorting encounters as the player engages with the space of the city. To some extent, the process is problematic, and reductive of urban social encounters creating a process in which people moving through or occupying space is framed as either valuable or not. Embodied interactions and forms of play are de-emphasised, creating new software-mediated encounters. While the Nintendo 3DS is indeed a platform that affords social interactions, the overall goal of Streetpass may be viewed as problematic, and even reductive to the social and embodied practices associated with the console s predecessor, the Nintendo DS. 11

12 References Apperley, T., & Leorke, D (2013). From the cybercafé to the street: The right to play in the city. First Monday. Farman, J (2012) Mobile Interface Theory. Routledge. Graham, S. D. N (2005). Software-sorted geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 29(5), McCrea, C (2011). We play in public: The nature and context of portable gaming systems. Convergence: The International Journal of Research. Serrels, M. (2011a) A 3DS, Street Pass And The Last Train To Bombay - Part 1 [WWW Document]. URL (accessed ). Serrels, M. (2011b) A 3DS, Street Pass And The Last Train To Bombay - Part 2 [WWW Document]. URL (accessed ). Szentgyorgyi, C., Terry, M., & Lank, E (2008). Renegade gaming: practices surrounding social use of the Nintendo DS handheld gaming system. Of The SIGCHI Conference on Human. Tobin, S (2013). Portable Play in Everyday Life. Palgrave Macmillan. Verhoeff, N (2010). Theoretical Consoles: Concepts for Gadget Analysis. Journal Of Visual Culture, 8(3),