Does mobile gaming make you a gamer?
Mobile Me & You Project (Gaming Community)Part III | “New Consumer Trends” — “Mobile Reputations” course | Panteion University
In a world that is constantly changing new trends are taking place. In the frame of our course “Mobile Reputations”, we, as students of the Panteion University, run a qualitative research in order to examine the use of mobile phones by Millennials. More specific we decided to focus on the gaming community and we managed to interview 12 persons, in order to meet the needs of our project.
In this part of our project you are going to read about two Millennials, Anastasis and Panagiotis. We are going to describe to you a typical day with their mobile phone, how exactly they are using it for work or entertainment and what is their bonding with it and the rest for their personality. We leave them up to you…
The first one is Anastasis. He is 19 years old and unemployed at the time. He deems himself a “die hard gamer”, so there is limited time in his daily routine for any other activity. The day for Anastasis begins with Instagram, which he heavily uses. He checks Messenger only if he gets any notification and he uses Facebook rarely, in order to get informed about the news. Also, he uses a variety of photo editing apps, because he really enjoys making awesome photos and uploading them on his Instagram account. Last but not least, he also uses his mobile phone for gaming, but we will examine this later in detail.
Anastasis told us that he would really struggle, if he had to live without his mobile phone for more than a day. He spends around five hours daily on the screen of his phone, but he strongly believes that he is not addicted to it. More specifically, he explained to us that it is the feeling of curiosity that makes him pick up his mobile phone, when he hears the notification of a new message or a new follow on Instagram. So, as he claims, “I am not addicted, but just curious”. He doesn’t prefer using his phone for organizing his routine (except for the alarm clock), but this is because he doesn’t lead a busy daily lifestyle. Furthermore, he made us clear that he uses a variety of electronic devices to complete a task, such as computer or mobile. For example, if he is somewhere away from home, he will use his mobile phone, as it is more portable and, thus, practical. However, if he is about to undertake a serious task, he will choose his PC, because of the bigger screen.
Moreover, even though he typically belongs to some communities he doesn’t feel like part of them. According to his words of course it is cool to chat with people all around the world for specific topics -that most likely your neighbor has no idea about- but if someone stops replying to his messages, he won’t feel offended, because he doesn’t know them in person. According to him, Instagram is the new Facebook and he prefers it for messaging than any other application, because as he told us “you can always delete a message that you shouldn’t have texted before the other person sees it”. He also shares content in multiple platforms, but again prefers doing it on Instagram. Why is that? Because Twitter in Greece almost doesn’t exist, and Facebook is going down, as he said. He has created a “professional” account on Instagram too, on which he posts screenshots from the famous game “Grand Theft Auto V” while playing on his console. As far as influencers are concerned, he underlined that their existence is completely unnecessary, as they don’t have any valuable information to provide. The thing is, that besides his belief, he does follow some public figures, like Mikeius and some other YouTubers that run gaming, unboxing or car related channels. Although most people deem them influencers, he is against the term. In addition to that he watches from his mobile phone videos on YouTube regarding games, in order to discover different aspects of a game that he is playing, or to decide which new release he is going to buy, or just to improve his skills on a specific game.
Now let’s focus on Panagiotis. He is 20 years old and a student at the University of Piraeus. Panagiotis has been playing occasionally videogames from the time he can remember himself. A typical day for him, on the other hand, starts with Facebook and Messenger. Instagram comes third and after that Gmail follows. He spends approximately seven to eight hours on his phone, but he admits that he has tried to reduce this time, after he realized how many hours he was wasting on his mobile. In the question how he would feel if he suddenly couldn’t use his phone anymore, he responded that he could easily live without it. He uses his mobile phone as an alarm clock to start his day, but he could also invest on a traditional alarm clock. Why is that? According to him your phone shouldn’t be inside your bedroom when you’re sleeping, because if you have a hard time falling asleep you will soon find yourself checking and scrolling on it in the middle of the night. On the other hand, if it is at the living room you won’t occupy yourself with it and you’ll sleep more easily.
In addition, he uses Facebook in order to get updated about his studies and Viber, so he can communicate with his colleagues. He told us that he feels part of a community, because he can talk and analyze specific topics with people all over the world and if there was no social media, he wouldn’t be able to do that. He rarely shares content, but when he does it is only on Facebook and Instagram. He follows influencers (related to gaming, sports and traveling) mainly via YouTube and believes that everybody has the chance to become one at these days. He told us that anyone that aims to become an influencer shouldn’t caught up on the numbers of his views and likes but focus on the quality content and credibility that he creates for his audience.
As far as the gaming part is concerned, both of them spend many hours of their day on playing. Anastasis spends around 7 to 8 hours per day on a console, while Panagiotis only 1 or 2 hours daily on his computer. Both prefer to spend 30 minutes per day on mobile games. Some of the mobile games that has managed to hold their attention till today are the strategic game “Sim City”, the football simulator “Dream League Soccer” and “Score Hero” and the racing game “Need for Speed No Limits”. They strongly believe that you can’t think of yourself as a gamer, if you only play games on your mobile phone. Although they like watching streaming or videos related to games on their mobile phone, they express a preference playing games on the other devices mentioned above. As most gamers, Anastasis and Panagiotis prefer playing during the night.
But why are they a little disappointed of mobile games? They claim that is extremely hard to find a decent gaming app and stick with it. They don’t think that much money is invested on mobile games, so they become boring and their content cannot hold users’ interest. Both have downloaded and played many gaming apps, but sooner or later they get bored and delete them. Actually, when they find a decent gaming app they love it at first, but their enthusiasm fades away day by day. The same is also happening usually with other apps.
So, these were two interviews by Anastasis and Panagiotis about the way they’re making use of their mobile phone daily. We got some serious insights from their points of view. We thank them for the time they devoted on us and we continue our research with three friends who are ready to tell us about their story. Keep track with us on part 4.
If you want to learn how this project got started and the methodology that we follow you can have a look at the following articles:
If you are looking for the other parts of the interviews about gaming check the links below:
To learn the results and the insights of our research you can check the links bellow. We also made a comparison with global trends.
Team: Antonis Katsis, Liana Kollia, Korina Simeonidou.
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou.
