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Gaming 203The dominant discourse of this form of gaming is about boredom andfilling time. Digital games are used to pass the time when traveling on abus, car, or plane, or in other situations when there is little else to do. Forinstance, Nick, a sixteen-year-old black and Native American boy from LosAngeles who danah boyd (Teen Sociality in Networked Publics) interviewed,said, “If I’m bored, I play that little . . . it’s a little rocket gamewhere you shoot rocks. I play that. If I’m real bored and I really havenothing to do, that’s what I do.” Similarly, Natalie, an eleven-year-oldwhite fifth grader Heather Horst interviewed as part of her study on SiliconValley families, said: “I play with my Nintendo probably like a few timesa week probably. . . . Mostly on the weekends, because sometimes my weekendsare really busy, sometimes they’re not, but when they’re not busy, Iget kinda bored, so I just play.”This genre of gaming also can be used as something to focus on in asocial situation that a subject might find awkward. For instance, Monica,a Latina fourteen-year-old from Santa Rosa, California, who is part ofMatteo Bittanti’s “Game Play” study, said,Often, when I am waiting for a friend [in a public space] to show up I start playingpuzzle games on my phone, not because I particularly enjoy them, but because Idon’t like people staring at me. . . . In a sense, I am pretending to be busy, but it’seasier to fake this than, let’s say, a conversation.Portable gaming can occupy gaps in the day when one is out and about.Another teen whom boyd spoke with, Luke, a sixteen-year-old fromSan Francisco, said: “I always carry a [Nintendo] DS with me. It’s smallenough so that it can fit in [one of the pockets of] my jacket, alongwith one or two games.” In tandem with the evolution of portablemedia, gaming is starting to infiltrate more and more of the little gapsin everyday life.These examples also illustrate another key feature of gaming as killingtime: its solitary nature. Even when pursued in a social context, such as atthe Center (The Social Dynamics of Media Production) or when inhabitingpublic space, killing time by gaming involves carving out a one-on-onespace with the game. We see this in an example that Rachel Cody encounteredin her study of Final Fantasy XI. When members of a group are“camping,” or waiting for a monster to appear in a particular place, thereare often long stretches of waiting time. At these times, players would often