Mobile Gaming unites friends
Mobile Me & You Project (Gaming Community) Part IV |“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.
Let’s now see a couple of friends that described to us how they use their mobile phone daily and the kind of gamers they are. All of them are 24 years old. Dimitris Valasidis and Michalis Paragios are students at university of Piraeus as computer programmers and they are both working on their profession. The third one is Dimitris Pagidas, who has studied logistic at university of Patras. None of them is supposed to be a hard gamer, but they all play occasionally their whole life. So, let’s take them one by one.
The first one we are going to talk about is Dimitris Valasidis. He, as the rest of the guys, has an affair with his mobile phone and he begins his day with social media. He first checks his messenger and Facebook every morning for messages and notifications, while the rest of the day he loves scrolling on Instagram. He follows influencers that he considers they have a positive impact on people, like Antentokounmpo, and he loves uploading his favorite moments. However, he doesn’t use his phone only for entertainment, but for work as well. It helps him organizing his daily routine due to some apps, like alarm clock, skype, outlook and notes for saving passwords. His beloved application is Outlook, because he can schedule his meetings and keep himself updated as far as work is concerned. He also buys online gadgets and clothes by Ebay and Massimo Dutti, but he doesn’t use sharing platforms. At total, he claims that he uses his mobile around five or six hours per day. He may love it more than other gadgets, as it is portable and more accessible (vs a computer), but he supports that if he had to live without it he probably would feel free.
The next interviewer is Dimitris Pagidas. He also loves social media, as such apps are the first thing he opens in the morning and the last thing he checks before going to sleep. Instagram, Facebook, Email and YouTube are set at the top of his list. He uploads two or three stories every day and he always chat on messenger. He also follows influencers on such platforms who have a positive and interesting personality, like Iliana Papageorgiou. What’s more, he likes listening to music and communicating via Skype. He claims that he uses his phone for entertainment for a couple of hours, but especially when he feels lonely. However apart from entertainment, there are also some apps that help him organize his routine, such as the alarm clock and notes for saving passwords as well. He buys online gadgets and clothes by Ebay, Skroutz and Amazon, while he also uses sharing platforms. Concluding, he states that he makes an extreme use of his mobile phone, around twelve hours per day. Therefore, if somebody took it from him, he doesn’t think he could handle it. He actually responded “My phone is my life and I couldn’t handle it without it”.
Last but not least is Michalis. He opens social media and Slack every morning. Slack is his beloved application, as he is in contact with his colleagues all day. Apart from that, he uses Facebook in order to be updated about academic news and apps, like alarm clock, calendar and notes to organize his day. Therefore, he mostly uses his mobile phone for work and after that, entertainment comes. So, he likes watching his favorite series on Netflix, when being in local transportation, while in his free time he watches influencers on Instagram, such as Unboxoholics. He prefers influencers who have a sense of humor. Michalis, as well, buys online gadgets and clothes by Ebay, Skroutz and Amazon and he uses sharing platforms. Totally, he spends around 8 hours per day on his mobile phone and if somebody took it from him, he would feel lost. However, he doesn’t love his mobile more than other gadgets.
Since we got a complete idea of how they spend the day with their mobile phone, now let’s focus on the gaming part. They explained to us that they are 7 friends who manage to play all together every day a strategic game, named Clash of Clans. So, they devote around 1 or 2 hours per day on playing on their mobiles and just have fun together. More specifically, Dimitris Valasidis spends 1 hour, Dimitris Pagidas half an hour and Michalis around one or two hours per day. They are not addicted to mobile gaming, but they consider themselves gamers. Michalis also likes playing games on other gadgets as well, like computer or PlayStation for two to four hours per day. The rest of them remain only on mobile gaming at the time and only in they have plenty of free time, they will resort to other gadgets for gaming. This is because they find it more interesting to cooperate in a game via mobile from the comfort of their house, rather than playing on their own. As far as gamer-influencers are concerned, they claim that they don’t follow any, as they have learnt tactics on how to play strategic games from PC and PlayStation all these years. Therefore, no influencers are needed as they only play for having fun together and none of them has any professional expectations of it. Due to that they all feel always connected thanks to their mobile phones and that they share the same habits. At last, none of them uploads personal content on gaming platforms.
That’s all folks for today. These were three gamers friends that talked to us a little about their life. So, what we have learned today? Gaming is a perfect way to keep friends together and make them cooperate behind a common aim.
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 intrviews that we took check the links below:
For learning the results and insights of our research you can check them here. We also made a comparion with global trends.
Team: Antonis Katsis, Liana Kollia, Korina Simeonidou.
Professor: Betty Tsakarestou
