Pokémon GO : Entering the Ludic Society

This essay discusses the significance of Pokémon GO within the framework of ludification in culture and society. Ludification is a useful, though somewhat ambiguous concept that relates to play and playful elements emerging in different areas of culture and society. Whereas gamification is focused on the application of game-like elements into nonentertainment applications, the focus of ludification is on the spread of play as a practice, playfulness as an attitude and the supposedly growing role of playful designs in our everyday reality. Even while digital games are played by millions, game cultures have remained in the margins of public life, to a certain degree. Pokémon GO is part of a new wave of phenomena that are about to change that situation. As a location-based game, it encourages people to play digital games out in the open, visiting public spaces in order to make use of their PokeStops, or to openly engage in Pokémon gym battles, in the city streets and squares.

While location-based mobile games have been technically feasible and implemented—both commercially and as research prototypes—for almost two decades already, none of the previous location-based or augmented-reality (AR) games have achieved comparable popularity. In the Nordic countries, Botfighters (2001) by the Swedish company It’s Alive provided one of the earliest location-based, mobile multiplayer experiences. The in-game actions were communicated with SMS text messages to the game server, and a website needed to be consulted (typically on a PC) for accessing a graphical view of the game (Sotamaa, 2002). Our research team at the University of Tampere implemented an early augmented-reality (AR) mobile game prototype The Songs of North in 2003 for the Nokia N-Gage handsets. In this pervasive game, players adopt the role of “city shamans” who explore an additional, fictional layer of their home city, occasionally engaging in battles with other shamans using spells that were “drummed” with physical keys into the phone, and its magic drum interface. The game relied mostly on listening to audio cues rather than on watching the screen, to minimize risks to mobile players while walking in busy streets (Ekman et al., 2005; Lankoski et al., 2004). Later, a Finnish game studio Grey Area took the AR city gaming concept to the touch screen era with their Shadow Cities (2010). Shadow Cities, in its turn, was major inspiration for Ingress (2012), which started as an internal project of google, later becoming the foundation on which Niantic, as a spinoff company implemented Pokémon GO (2016).

There are several technical reasons why many of these earlier location-based games did not become similar kind of popular phenomena as Pokémon GO. The data connections in phones were slow or missing, there were no reliable and precise ways of positioning the users before GPS became common, and interaction with keypresses did not allow similar flexible and enjoyable control schemes as touch screens did later. On the other hand, both Shadow Cities and Ingress were launched in situations where those technical bottlenecks were mostly resolved, and yet there was comparatively little interest. I propose that the phenomenal success of Pokémon GO is useful for understanding how digital games rely on the triangle of meaningful links between technology, gaming content, and culture. If any one of these areas is missing or meaningful connections fail, then the potential of digital games does not become realized.

The “augmented reality” (AR) component of Pokémon GO relies firstly on the (optional) use of camera and gyroscope that are used to visually overlay available Pokémon to the actual physical surroundings. For most players this gimmick wears off soon, and they focus on catching the Pokémon without AR. The basic premise of location-based and pervasive gaming nevertheless is at the heart of Pokémon GO, and for the majority of those millions of players who tested the game in July–August 2016, this was probably the first time they had experienced a digital game that mixes and overlays fictional reality with the physical reality, and makes use of city exploration as a key game play mechanic—a powerful combination that pervasive game research had explored and analysed in detail years before (Mäyrä & Lankoski, 2009; Montola, Stenros, & Waern, 2009). But why were millions of people suddenly attracted to pervasive gaming in 2016? Comparatively, the key changes in this popular new implementation related to the addition of a familiar, family-inclusive theme, and most importantly, drastic reduction in gameplay and rule complexity.

It is clear that the factors relating to the phenomenal popularity of Pokémon GO are multiple and interrelated in many ways. There are important background developments that link to certain cultural factors, which suddenly make it conceivable for large numbers of people, including also adults and not only children, to start walking out in public, visibly playing a digital game. Obviously, the cultural norms and the cultural status of video games and digital play are currently undergoing a change; rather than strictly confining play into the domain of leisure, the changing relationship between work and leisure allows more leeway (than in days dominated by industrial work, for example) for pervasive adult play and expressions of playfulness, particularly through their association with growing cultural importance put on creativity (e.g., Florida, 2004; Haworth & Veal, 2004). Saying that, it is also important to acknowledge that there are technical, commercial, and many other reasons that currently promote public game play and the move towards augmented reality. Streaming video services focused on game play and eSports tournaments are just another example of the growing public visibility of games and play. Pokémon is a notable brand, and with its large numbers of common and rare creatures, the Pokémon gaming content is naturally suitable for hunting, gathering, and collecting modes of city exploration. That Pokémon was first popular in the 1990s opened this new game also for cross-generational and nostalgic play: families could make it into a shared experience, where children were deepening their involvement in the transmedially based Pokémon franchise story world, whereas parents could reactivate their gaming capital from years past.

If we take seriously the hypothesis that we are entering the “Ludic Society,” or an “Era of Games” where play and associated ludic literacies become culturally dominant (Zimmerman, 2015), it is exactly phenomena like Pokémon GO that we should be paying close attention to. If interaction with simulations, dynamic systems, and rule-based manipulations of everyday information is to become common, there needs to be phenomena that bring people together to develop their understanding of what games are, what they can be used for, and also when and how to play, or not to play. Managing and mastering games that take place in multiple layers of reality and that can create conflicts with the social and cultural norms relating to proper behaviour in private and public places, in schools, libraries, or in cemeteries, for example, means they also function as training grounds for people to evolve ludic literacies. It should be noted that the manifestoes proclaiming the Era of Games or the emergence of Ludic Society can and should also be critiqued: it is, for example, clear that not all games are particularly “playful” (games can be extremely formal, noncreative, and based on aggressive competition, for example) and, that ludic activities and mindsets are by no means the sole property of games but can feature in many areas of everyday life (e.g., Stenros, 2015). Ludification is nevertheless useful as one lens into the ongoing cultural and societal changes.

Pokémon GO has encouraged not only physical exercise, but also public discussion about the role of games; it has also promoted the formation of informal knowledge communities to negotiate and create solutions for the associated multiple challenges. Some of these challenges relate to gaming technology, some to actual gaming content, whereas some relate to the social and cultural norms surrounding pervasive, mixed reality or augmented game play. As such, the ludic mindset and playful practices first developed while interacting with Pokémon GO may well provide the basis for more complex skill sets and cultural practices that will be needed in the next steps as we enter the Ludic Society. Potentially, games and play will in this broader ludification process have gradually more and more notable roles in informing our public and private behaviours, as well as in the practices of product and service design, work, learning, and multiple other areas of culture and society.