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R. M. Branch et al. (eds.), Educational Media and Technology Yearbook, Educational Media and Technology Yearbook 42,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27986-8_9
Chapter 9
Accessing the Pokélayer: Augmented
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Pokémon Go
Pokémon Go, a mobile game in the long-running Pokémon franchise, released in 2016 to record downloads and media attention (Dogtiev, 2018; Hern, 2016; Hollister, 2017). Even for a game in the popular decades-old Pokémon franchise—itself a transmedia polyglot of video games, trading cards, toys, movies, and cartoons—this was unusual. As Pokémon Go beat Twitter in terms of total users in the first month (Hern, 2016), the news media breathlessly reported on quirky stories related to Pokémon Go (Lindh, 2016; Rocha, 2016). These ranged from anodyne stories about its ability to bring strangers together (J. Alexander, 2016) and marriage proposals (Fuller, 2016) to more sinister narratives about driving distracted users off cliffs (Rocha, 2016) and the discovery of dead bodies while playing (Lindh, 2016).
The features that made Pokémon Go distinct from other games in the franchise were also its selling point: the layering of game mechanics on top of the real world, through its combined use of GPS positioning and AR, transforming the “real world”
into the “Pokémon World” of the Pokémon mythos. Although designed, for the most part, to be played as a single-player experience, Pokémon Go achieved its fame as a multiplayer social phenomenon, driven by users accessing and exploring this data added to the physical world—this Pokélayer of game content—in proximity to one another. Effective play of the game involved leaving one’s surroundings and hunting for digital pocket monsters in the actual world, so there was a good chance that you might encounter other players along the way, at least in urban and suburban environ- ments (J. Alexander, 2016; Allen, 2016; Hern, 2016; Paavilainen et al., 2017).
Communities and events were organized around the game, and, in our research, players reported being able to identify fellow Pokémon Trainers on the streets. Even though its status as a global phenomenon was relatively brief, Pokémon Go retains an ardent player base and made a nostalgic impact on its players’ lives.
What does the player of Pokémon Go do in the game? Pokémon Go gives play- ers the opportunity to take on the role of a “real-life” Pokémon Trainer, the lead role of nearly every Pokémon game, video game or otherwise. The Pokémon Trainer’s job is to hunt, catch, train, and battle the many Pokémon creatures that wander into the Pokémon World. In Pokémon Go, the Pokémon (a Japanese slang for “pocket monsters”) “exist” in the real world through the implementation of augmented reality technology. Players interact with the creatures by locating them on Google Maps and catching or battling them via the app’s graphical overlay, which relies on the player’s phone camera and places computer-animated objects over the physical surroundings. The time of day, weather, and the physical environ- ment within which the player find themselves has actual gameplay consequences, affecting the types of Pokémon that appear around them (F. Alexander, 2016).
Players at the beach might encounter water-type Pokémon, while those traversing a park might encounter bug- or grass-type Pokémon. As players successfully catch and battle, they gain experience points, which contribute toward strengthening their Pokémon. Players also interact with so-called Pokéstops—often real-life landmarks such as statues, fountains, and historical markers—to earn useful items
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such as Pokéballs and Pokémon food. Players also can join one of three global teams, and it is not unusual for players to hunt Pokémon in groups, making the game experience a very social activity. Gyms were, until recently, the only spaces in which players interacted with one another, engaging in Pokémon battles to cap- ture these locations for their teams. Ingress, another location-based augmented reality game by Niantic, served as the foundation for much of Pokémon Go’s infra- structure, with both Pokéstops and Gyms corresponding to Ingress’s “portal” loca- tions (Turk, 2016).
Pokémon Go and the AR Experience
A noteworthy and related aspect of Pokémon Go’s success was, for many players, the introduction of AR. AR refers to a process wherein 3D spaces have been coated or layered with data, often visual, to produce a new way of experiencing both the physical and virtual space (Azuma, 1997; New Media Consortium, 2018). Though other games have featured AR elements, Pokémon Go is inarguably the most popu- lar AR game to date, if not one of the most popular mobile games of all time, AR or otherwise (Dogtiev, 2018; Hern, 2016; Hollister, 2017; Paavilainen et al., 2017).
The AR aspects of Pokémon Go were forthright: the game developer, Google spi- noff Niantic Labs, proclaims itself an AR company on its website: “Niantic’s real- world AR platform is designed to enable users to interact in shared worlds seamlessly blended with the real world” (Niantic, 2018). Though Pokémon Go does not explic- itly spell out what “AR” means, the game does not avoid mentions of augmented reality. In fact, when capturing Pokémon, the game defaults to “AR Mode,” meaning the Pokémon, when encountered, will actually appear where the player is pointing the mobile device’s camera. This means that Pokémon might appear on the player’s couch, bed, car, or pet, to name a few locations, all while the player tries to catch them by tossing Pokéball traps. Even though the AR Mode drained the battery faster, some participants reported that the AR Mode helped them to better connect to the fantasy and generally encouraged them to play the game more. While “aug- mented reality” or “AR” might not have been the participants’ first terms to describe the Pokémon Go experience, some participants did note how effective the AR por- tion of the game was in increasing their connection to playing Pokémon Go. Beyond the specific “AR Mode,” Pokémon Go also adds another layer of game and play space onto real life with its map integration. When opening the game, gone are the street names and houses one might see on a Google Earth overlay, replaced with Pokéstops, gyms, and rustling Pokémon surrounding the player. This map provides a look inside the Pokémon World of Pokémon Go, the Pokélayer that sits on top of our own physical surroundings.
For many years now, AR has been a part of the technological landscape in a vari- ety of ways, including education and training (Lee, 2012). For example, Squire et al. (2007) discuss augmented reality, its use in educational games, and the devel- opment of a framework for understanding how ideas related to fantasy, place, and
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subject matter interact within such settings: “if fantasy is a key element of games, we argue that educators can benefit by leveraging what is fantastical about particular academic domains (such as history or science)” (p. 292). In our work, we are inter- ested in how fantasy and AR emerge in user experiences of the game Pokémon Go.
Even given the recency of Pokémon Go, there has been some research related to the experience of playing (Kari, 2016; Paavilainen et al., 2017) including a concep- tual, phenomenological piece by Liberati (2017) that analyzes the experience philo- sophically. Game transfer phenomena (or GTP), a curious effect in which players experience “nonvolitional phenomena such as altered perceptions, automatic mental processes, and involuntary behaviors” (Ortiz de Gortari & Griffiths, 2015, p. 195), has been studied in relation to location-based augmented reality. Ortiz de Gortari (2017) found, among other results, that Pokémon Go players’ immersion connected to the experience of GTP. It was also found that:
Playing PoGo with sound was weakly positively correlated with forgetting what is happen- ing around oneself while playing, losing track of time, looking for a Pokémon outside the screen and having the sensation that a Pokémon is physically present.
Using the AR function was only correlated with forgetting what is happening while playing and as expected it was correlated with looking for a Pokémon outside the screen, but surprisingly it was not correlated with having the sensation that a Pokémon was physi- cally present. (p. 394)
Oleksy and Wnuk (2017) investigated aspects of player and place in location- based augmented reality games with a specific focus on Pokémon Go, concluding that “AR applications have the potential to ‘gamify’ the reality around us, which can alter attitudes towards places of playing. Simply put, it is not important where you play; rather, the place of playing becomes important to you” (p. 7). Together, the work of Ortiz de Gortari (2017) and Oleksy and Wnuk (2017) seem to suggest that immersion and connections to place may be a part of the Pokémon Go experience for some players. Finally, Rauschnabel, Rossmann, and tom Dieck (2017) “used the example Pokémon Go as a study context” for their theoretical investigations of AR games, finding that aspects such as enjoyment, nostalgia, and physical activity
“drive users’ attitudes toward playing Pokémon Go” (pp. 281–283).