Non players’ embodied practices of engagement in videogaming

Using technology in interaction means actively manipulating a technological device while interacting with others, but it can also refer to a situation where one person is employing a technological device in the presence of others and therefore in a potentially interactive situation. This is, for instance, the case when one acts on a screen in the presence of other physically co-present participants. Our paper deals with a particular situation of co-presence and technology use: a couple is sitting side by side on the sofa in the living room, one is playing a single-player adventure game on a large TV screen, the other is playing another game on a tablet. For about 40 years, the concept of “active spectators” developed in media sciences has highlighted the fact that spectators “do” something. But, few studies have dealt with the interactional practices used to display this “activeness”. This paper explores the construction of spectatorship with a special focus on spectating videogaming as a particular way of using technology in the sense of spectating at what is being done with a technological device. We propose a micro-analysis of the above-mentioned gaming-situation in order to show how the non-player’s engagement in the player’s gaming is co-constructed by both participants. A particular focus was placed on gaze and gaze shifts as a resource to display togetherness and potential availability.