The moral panic surrounding the launch of new media titles is not new, as I have discussed previously
when comparing the audience response of Disney’s film ‘Frozen’ to that
of the Disney ‘Davy Crockett’ film launched in the 1950s, but what is of
interest is the speed of this response, given that ‘Pokémon Go’ was
only launched a few weeks ago, on July 6th. The rapid take-up of the app
has occurred with little direct marketing.
For
the uninitiated, the free-to-play app draws on augmented reality
technology to enable players to capture and train virtual Pokémon
creatures, whose images pop up, overlaid on the ‘real’ world, on a
mobile device. Augmented Reality (AR) consists of a blend of the
physical world and the virtual world. In this blended reality,
three-dimensional images or environments are projected onto a physical
object or terrain, but users are not immersed in the same way as they
are with virtual reality experiences.
This is not the first app to use augmented reality to entice its users. We undertook a research study
on under 5’s use of tablet apps in the UK, in which children’s
engagement with augmented reality apps was examined. The research team
watched as children, enthralled, made the popular charity figure Pudsey
bear appear in 3D and dance to disco music using the Quiver app, or played with augmented reality animals that appeared in the ‘AR Flascards’ app. As we stated in a subsequent paper
from the study which reflected on play in the digital age,
“Contemporary play draws on both the digital and non-digital properties
of things and in doing so moves fluidly across boundaries of space and
time in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital era” (Marsh et
al., 2016). Augmented reality technology is still at an early stage of
development, but the hype surrounding it indicates that it has the
potential to excite and is a feature that is bound to become more
prevalent in the toy and game industry in the future.
The
‘Pokémon Go’ app is notable for its popularity across generations. It
appeals to those who collected the plastic Pokémon monsters in the
brand’s earlier incarnations, taking them back to a fondly remembered
childhood pastime. It could even remind them of previous GPS
location-based tagging games they may have played, such as ‘Foursquare’
(whose creator, Dennis Crowley, has said he is not at all bitter about the success of ‘Pokémon Go’).
Such nostalgic media practices are nothing new, as numerous scholars have noted,
but what makes this one particularly exciting for its adult fans is the
transformation of their childhood monsters into virtual characters that
live in their smartphone. The app is also drawing in a new Pokémon
audience, one that knows little about the original television animation,
video games or toys, launched initially in 1995. It offers
opportunities, therefore, for family play, as noted by commentators who are keen to identify the game’s positive elements in the face of all of the media panic. And, as some have asked, shouldn’t we be pleased that the game has got people off sofas and into their local environments?
Of
course, this calculated appeal to an intergenerational audience is one
that is already paying off, with the app becoming more successful on
launch than Candy Crush, and Nintendo, the original creators of Pokémon,
estimated
to be worth an additional $12 billion because of it. For both Nintendo
and Niantic, the company that created the app, the real value of the
game may not be in the microtransactions it embeds, with the possibility
to purchase in-game features, but in the potential commercial use of
the data it collects from the people who play it. This, as scholars of children’s media practices have pointed out in relation to other digital games, raises key questions about data privacy and children’s rights.
It
would seem, therefore, that the launch of ‘Pokémon Go’ has resulted in
the familiar tropes of panic and hype that surround many launches of new
games and toys. The longevity of the app is difficult to ascertain at
this point in time. When the excitement dies down, it remains to be seen
what the impact of the app will be on future markets for this kind of
game.
‘Pokémon
Go’ has succeeded because of its combination of GPS and augmented
reality technologies, linked to a very popular media brand that already
involved collecting items — thus, players enjoy the familiarity of
playing with the old alongside experiencing the excitement of engaging
with the new. It will be difficult for other game studios to copy that
specific dynamic, but no doubt there will be many attempts to do so, and
we could see location-based AR games becoming further intertwined with
popular culture as people search local communities for virtual
representations of toys, musicians, TV and film characters, media icons
and more.
In
time, apps may be made available that enable user-generated content, so
that the general public can leave their virtual wares in physical spaces
for others to gather. Given children’s appetite for media content
created by other children, that would undoubtedly be a popular type of
app, albeit one potentially fraught with all kinds of safety issues. It
will be incumbent upon researchers of children’s media use to trace the
risks embedded in such developments, but also to identify the
opportunities they present for engaging children and young people in
digital content creation.
Now, forgive me, but I really have to leave it at that and get ready to go to my local ‘Pokémon Picnic’ — who knows, I might catch an Articuno…
– Jackie MarshProfessor of Education, Chair of the DigiLitEY project.
