Do digital games and play mean the same things for different people? This article presents the results of a three-year study in which we sought for new ways to approach digital games cultures and playing practices. First, we present the research process in brief and emphasise the importance of merging different kinds of methods and materials in the study of games cultures. Second, we introduce a gaming mentality heuristics that is not dedicated to a certain domain or genre of games, addressing light casual and light social gaming motivations as well as more dedicated ones in a joint framework. Our analysis reveals that, in contrast to common belief, the majority of digital gaming takes place between 'casual relaxing' and 'committed entertaining', where the multiplicity of experiences, feelings, and understandings that people have about their playing and digital games is wide-ranging. Digital gaming is thus found to be a multi-faceted social and cultural phenomenon which can be understood, practiced and used in various ways.

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Participatory policies seeking to foster active citizenship continue to be dominated by a territorial imagination. Yet the world where people identify and perform as citizens is spatially multifarious. This article engages with the tension between territorially grounded perceptions and relational modes of practicing political agency. Studying empirically the Finnish child and youth policies we address jointly the participatory obligations that municipalities strive to fulfill, and the spatial attachments that children and young people establish in their lived worlds. To this end we introduce the concept of lived citizenship as an interface where the territorially-bound public administration and the plurality of spatial attachments characteristic to transnational living may meet. We conclude by proposing a regrounding of lived citizenship in both topological and topographical terms as an improvement in theoretical understanding of mundane political agency and as a step towards more proficient participatory policies.

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