Abstract
The mobile gaming phenomenon Pokémon Go is one of the first successful mainstream games to feature augmented reality (AR) components, giving players the feeling of hunting Pokémon in real-life settings. Pokémon Go offers players access to “Pokélayer,” a game layer laid on top of the real world, combining GPS and an AR mode. This ability to turn daily activities into gameplay affords players the opportunity to live out their fantasy of being a Pokémon Trainer. The authors present findings from a phenomenological study with 30 participants showing the variant ways in which the Pokélayer and augmented reality’s capability for fantasy play emerged.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Alexander, F. (2016, August 3). Pokémon Go explained with Watson analytics. Retrieved 14 May 2018, from https://www.ibm.com/blogs/business-analytics/pokemon-go-explained-with-watson-analytics/
Alexander, J. (2016, July 8). Pokémon Go is turning strangers into the best of friends | Polygon. Retrieved 10 Aug 2016, from http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/8/12128468/pokemon-go-locations-gyms-friends
Allen, J. (2016, July 12). Pokémon Go is a barren wasteland if you live in the country | Polygon. Retrieved 10 Aug 2016, from http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/12/12150414/pokemon-go-nintendo-rural-country
Allison, A. (2006). Millennial monsters: Japanese toys and the global imagination. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Andronico, M. (2016, August 4). How to take awesome photos in Pokémon Go. Retrieved 14 May 2018, from https://www.tomsguide.com/us/how-to-take-photos-pokemon-go,review-3832.html
Azuma, R. T. (1997). A survey of augmented reality. Presence: Teleoperators & Virtual Environments, 6(4), 355–385.
Bainbridge, J. (2014a). Gotta catch “em all!” Pokémon, cultural practice and object Networks. The IAFOR Journal of Asian Studies, 1, 1–15.
Bainbridge, J. (2014b). “It is a Pokémon world”: The Pokémon franchise and the environment. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 17(4), 399–414.
Bogost, I. (2008). The rhetoric of video games. In The ecology of games: Connecting youth, games, and learning (pp. 117–140).
Caillois, R. (1961). Man, play, and games. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Play and intrinsic rewards. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 15(3), 41–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/002216787501500306
Dahlberg, K., Dahlberg, H., & Nyström, M. (2008). Reflective lifeworld research. Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur AB.
Dogtiev, A. (2018, May 4). Pokémon GO revenue and usage statistics (2017). Retrieved 11 May 2018, from http://www.businessofapps.com/data/pokemon-go-statistics/
Fuller, M. (2016, August 24). Gamer stuns girlfriend with Pokemon Go wedding proposal – but how did she react? – Mirror Online. Retrieved 14 May 2018, from https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/gamer-stuns-girlfriend-pokemon-go-8694746
GameXplain. (2015). Pokémon Go reveal trailer – Android & iPhone 2016. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abL399rWlDY
Henricks, T. S. (2010). Caillois’s “Man, Play, and Games”: An appreciation and evaluation. American Journal of Play, 3(2), 157–185.
Henricks, T. S. (2014). Play as self-realization: Toward a general theory of play. American Journal of Play, 6, 2.
Henricks, T. S. (2015). Play as experience. American Journal of Play, 8(1), 18.
Hern, A. (2016, July 12). Pokémon Go becomes global craze as game overtakes Twitter for US users. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/12/pokemon-go-becomes-global-phenomenon-as-number-of-us-users-overtakes-twitter
Hollister, S. (2017, July 6). The rise and not-quite-fall of Pokemon Go – CNET. Retrieved 11 May 2018, from https://www.cnet.com/news/pokemon-go-million-dollar-monthly-active-users/
Huizinga, J. (2014). Homo ludens Ils 86. New York: Routledge.
Kari, T. (2016). Pokémon GO 2016: Exploring situational contexts of critical incidents in augmented reality. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 9(3), 1–12.
Lee, K. (2012). Augmented reality in education and training. TechTrends, 56(2), 13–21.
Liberati, N. (2017). Phenomenology, Pokémon Go, and other augmented reality games: A study of a life among digital objects. Human Studies, 1–22.
Lindh, C. (2016, July 11). What Pokémon GO has to do with armed robbery and a dead body – CNN.com. Retrieved 10 Aug 2016, from http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/11/tech/pokemon-go-crazy-events/
New Media Consortium. (2018, February). 2017 Horizon Report Wiki – Augmented reality. Retrieved 19 Feb 2018, from http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/Augmented+Reality
Niantic. (2018, May 11). The games redefining our reality. Retrieved 11 May 2018, from http://nianticlabs.com/products/
Oleksy, T., & Wnuk, A. (2017). Catch them all and increase your place attachment! The role of location-based augmented reality games in changing people-place relations. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 3–8.
Ortiz de Gortari, A. B. (2017). Empirical study on game transfer phenomena in the location-based augmented reality game. Telematics and Informatics, 35, 382–396.
Ortiz de Gortari, A. B., & Griffiths, M. D. (2015). Game transfer phenomena and its associated factors: An exploratory empirical online survey study. Computers in Human Behavior, 51(1), 195–202.
Paavilainen, J., Korhonen, H., Alha, K., Stenros, J., Koskinen, E., & Mäyrä, F. (2017). The Pokémon GO experience: A location-based augmented reality mobile game goes mainstream. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2493–2498). ACM.
Patten, F. (2004). Watching Anime, reading manga: 25 years of essays and reviews. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press.
Pokémon Go Live. (2017, October 11). Pokémon GO AR photo contest rules. Retrieved 14 May 2018, from https://pokemongolive.com/en/post/arphotocontest/
Rauschnabel, P. A., Rossmann, A., & tom Dieck, M. C. (2017). An adoption framework for mobile augmented reality games: The case of Pokémon Go. Computers in Human Behavior, 76, 276–286.
Rieber, L. P. (1996). Seriously considering play: Designing interactive learning environments based on the blending of microworlds, simulations, and games. Educational Technology Research and Development, 44(2), 43–58.
Rocha, V. (2016, July 14). 2 California men fall off edge of ocean bluff while playing “Pokemon Go” [News]. Retrieved 11 May 2018, from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-pokemon-go-players-stabbed-fall-off-cliff-20160714-snap-story.html
Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Squire, K., Jan, M., Matthews, J., Wagler, M., Martin, J., DeVane, B., & Holden, C. (2007). Wherever you go, there you are: Place-based augmented reality games for learning. In B. E. Shelton & D. Wiley (Eds.), The design and use of simulation computer games in education (Vol. 265, pp. 265–294). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Sutton-Smith, B. (2009). The ambiguity of play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Turk, V. (2016, July 13). What “Pokémon Go” owes “Ingress” – Motherboard. Retrieved 11 May 2018, from https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/4xa4gj/what-pokemon-go-owes-ingress
Vagle, M. D. (2014). Crafting phenomenological research. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, Inc.
van Manen, M. (1990). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of practice: Meaning-giving methods in phenomenological research and writing. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
Walker, A. (2016, July 9). “Pokémon Go” isn’t very good but it will be huge anyway | VICE | United States. Retrieved 10 Aug 2016, from http://www.vice.com/read/pokemon-go-isnt-very-good-but-it-will-be-huge-anyway
Woodie, A. (2016, August 1). What Pokémon GO means for big data. Retrieved 14 May 2018, from https://www.datanami.com/2016/08/01/pokemon-go-means-big-data/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jensen, L.J., Valentine, K.D., Case, J.P. (2019). Accessing the Pokélayer: Augmented Reality and Fantastical Play in Pokémon Go. In: Branch, R., Lee, H., Tseng, S. (eds) Educational Media and Technology Yearbook. Educational Media and Technology Yearbook, vol 42. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27986-8_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27986-8_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-27985-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-27986-8
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)