Pokémon GO, the augmented reality game, has taken over the world’s mobile phones. Why?
A brief history of Pokémon
In case you haven’t caught on, Pokémon GO is a free-to-play location-based augmented reality mobile game, based on the 90s media franchise Pokémon. The original offering included a Game Boy game, a trading card game, a cartoon for TV, plus all kinds of merchandising imaginable.
The point of both Pokémon and Pokémon GO is to collect and train Pokémons: a wide range of fantasy creatures designed in a loose Japanese cartoon tradition, forerunners of today’s more complex emoji, if you like. As the trainer of Pokémons your aim is to complete your Pokédex and use your team of Pokémons to fight other trainers in non-lethal battles.
Pokémon GO: place and quest
With Pokémon GO, the original game and franchise has made the intuitive leap to smart-phones. The key to GO is that Pokémons can now be sought and found in real places, where pictures can be taken of the Pokémon character ‘on location’ and shared with anyone. Other players can be found at designated PokéStops and together you can join Gyms to a whole lot of gaming together.
The phenomenal success of the initial Pokémon GO release is due to an almost perfect mix of simple ingredients:
- The gaming itself is easy but charmingly addictive and universal;
- Searching for new characters hiding in real places turns the gaming experience into a real-world quest;
- The free-to-play app lures gamers into a universe of enticing upgrades only available with in-app purchases
Getting gamers to move
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Pokémon GO is that it forces gamers to get off the couch, to go outside and potentially talk to strangers – the very things screen-based gaming had mostly eradicated from the idea of ‘play’ since coming into our lives in the 80s (Wii, also a Nintendo game, excluded)
It is perhaps to early to say, but maybe games like these will help stem the obesity epidemic that has gripped populations all over the world, but mostly in the US and Europe. Nintendo and Niantic creators of Pokémon GO, certainly want to be seen to push this agenda, with a lot of the advertising for the game focusing on being outdoors:
Augmented reality goes mainstream
Overnight the somewhat complicated concept of ‘augmented reality’ has also gone mainstream. This will save a whole industry a lot of time and money having to explain a proposition that was difficult to bring to life without showing and having people use the actual products.
It will also help make these companies a lot of money, as witnessed by the staggering amounts of in-app purchases done in Pokémon GO since its release
Children again, outdoors
But mostly Pokémon GO will let us all become children again. In these trying times it will let us rediscover what it is like to be enthusiastic, on the move, outside. The endearing innocence of the game and the simple pleasures it offers might inspire whole new generations to really appreciate the actual places they inhabit and visit.
Now that is a gaming revolution I can sign up for.