By Stefan Hall, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Media Production and Studies and associate professor of communication in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication at High Point University. Dr. Hall teaches courses primarily in game design and game theory.
In the short time since its release on July 6, the video game “Pokémon GO” has dominated the news media, eclipsing stories ranging from the current political campaigns to the shooting tragedies around the country and violence in our world.
So how could something so seemingly innocuous as a game become a major topic for everyone from gamers to people who don’t know Pikachu from Mario?
This is actually something that happens quite often in the history of the video game industry, making titles from “Pac-Man” to “Grand Theft Auto” part of common parlance, and even the “Pokémon” franchise itself is no stranger to the media spotlight.
Upon its initial release in February 1996, the “Pokémon” games for Nintendo’s Game Boy – a gaming platform considered on the decline at the time – built a slow but steady following that turned into an international craze, spreading from Japan to the United States and ultimately to the rest of the world.
Followed eight months later by the collectible card game, the frenzy over “Pokémon” grew into a franchise juggernaut, expanding to include television shows, theatrical films, stuffed animals, towels, lunchboxes, and pretty much anything that could be branded with “Pokémon” characters, generating what is estimated to be over $46 billion over the 20 years since its inception.
What seems to be garnering much attention with this particular entry in the “Pokémon” video game series is the way that the game is using Augmented Reality (AR) to encourage players to leave the confines of their homes and search in the real world for the Pokémon that are now present outside of the worlds in the games. People familiar with the series will note that this sort of hunting and social exchange is actually not exactly new, as the original “Pokémon” games encouraged players to link their Game Boys via a Game Link Cable to trade Pokémon creatures.
Where Nintendo is particularly succeeding with this game, however, is through the capacity of any player using any camera-enabled smart device (phone, tablet) to install the game and play it. Having Nintendo hardware is not required, and this is an important development in Nintendo expanding the audience for the intellectual properties. While Nintendo has long maintained very tight control over the relationship between their hardware and software, times have changed and the company is making steps to take advantage of technology changes that are altering the industry. Their experience with AR gaming on the 3DS handhelds has already given Nintendo considerable expertise in how to best deploy this particular innovation in gaming interactivity.
Innovation and interactivity are just a few concepts that my students in the Theory and Design of Games course at High Point University are faced with when it comes to thinking about the creation of games. While I present them with my own top 10 rules of game design, I also challenge them to create their own lists (and explain their rationale behind their decisions), and one common idea that appears quite often is the way that games encourage players to negotiate space.
From a chess board to a Texas Hold‘em table to a football field, games frequently use real or abstracted spaces in which the action of the game takes place. Think about the positions of the fans, the players, the coaches, and the referees around a basketball court. These are all stipulated by the rules of the game.
Now, for most video games, the “space” in which the game takes place is contained within the video field of the game, from the mazes in “Ms. Pac-Man” to the platforms and worlds of “Super Mario Bros.” to the universe itself in a galaxy-spanning series like “Halo.” A technology like AR, however, because it blends the space of the game by overlaying it onto what is typically non-game space (sidewalks, businesses, parks) presents some interesting, exciting, and challenging design choices for the creators precisely because an AR game will send players out to play the game.
This makes AR different from Virtual Reality (VR) where the players enter a completely rendered game environment typically through a special set of goggles or a visor that totalizes their visual field.
Combine the motivation to explore with the directive “Gotta catch ‘em all!” and the challenge to acquire all 151 Pokémon in “Pokémon GO,” and long-time fans and new players alike become highly motivated to congregate in public spaces and speak in the specialized terminology specific to the game, often to the bemusement – and sometimes anger – of passers-by and business owners. It’s not every day someone rushes into a coffee shop and exclaims, “I’m just here to find the dragon!”
In a fun way, “Pokémon GO” has subverted the normal rules of most game behavior, and specifically most video game behavior, by taking it out of private spaces and putting it into the public eye. With more than 21 million players in the US alone, the wonderful world of Pokémon trainers has become something a lot more commonplace, which is commensurate with the overall rise in prevalence of video game culture within society.