Mobility.

Playfulness.

Hybrid Spaces.

Games are pervasive activities in human culture. The strong success of video and computer games during the last 20 years can make us forget that the physical environment has always been the primary playful space. But if computers helped take games to digital spaces, the popularity of mobile technologies takes them back to the physical. The pervasiveness of mobile phones, which allow us to walk around urban spaces connected to the Internet and each other, encourages the creation of a new type of game arena that takes place simultaneously in physical and digital spaces. In these games, communication, collaboration, and interaction occur in a combination of the physical and the virtual—in hybrid spaces.

The Mobile Gaming Research Lab (MGRL) at North Carolina State University (NCSU) promotes interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research on games in general and on mobile games in particular. Housed in the Department of Communication, the MGRL focuses on the conceptualization and development of games that mix physical and digital spaces: hybrid reality games, location-based mobile games, urban games, pervasive games, mobile games, and augmented reality games.

In a broader perspective, our researchers are also interested in theorizing and developing any type of playful and ludic activity, from physical and tabletop games, to early videogames and recent MMORPGs, as long as they relate to social practices, to the creation of social networks, and to educational applications.

The MGRL’s main goals are to:

• Contribute to the interdisciplinary and inter-institutional research on games, and specifically mobile games.
• Offer interdisciplinary graduate and undergraduate courses for communication majors, and in collaboration with other departments.
• Contribute to the development of mobile and location-based games for uses in educational settings.

NCSU is academically and geographically suited to the development of such an interdisciplinary field as game studies. The strength of the on-campus communication, media, computer science, design, and engineering curricula allows for a truly collaborative approach to the developing field of game studies. Additionally, the university is located next to Research Triangle Park, a premier site for technology research and development.