The Guardian view on Pokémon Go: augmented merchandising | Editorial
The streets are suddenly full of people ignoring obvious obstacles and dangers because they are playing a collective game on their smartphones. Poki(C)mon Go requires players to walk around looking through their smartphone cameras, waiting for them to show an image of a Poki(C)mon superimposed onto the real-world scene. The aim is to capture them with a phone gesture: there are 150 different varieties, some more common than others. The game has been a sensation in a sensational world (the games market worldwide grossed $6bn in May), putting 25% on the value of Nintendo, the company that owns Poki(C)mon, and downloaded so often in its first week that it is now on more smartphones than the dating app Tinder and has as many active users as Twitter. Yet, technically, it is unremarkable: what's interesting is what it tells us about ourselves, and about the economy that we work and play within.
To overlay reality with an imagined meaning, to blur the boundary between real and virtual worlds, is something we have always done. The technology has changed, but in London, for example, there is usually a queue at King's Cross station for the sign marking "Platform 93/4", from where the Hogwarts Express is supposed to leave - a collective fantasy almost entirely driven by print. Augmented reality has long been imagined in science fiction, written about and filmed. The smartphone gives it another technological expression but it can hardly be said to give it a new reality. What is novel about Poki(C)mon Go is that it has taken an existing game framework and plugged into a story, or a game, that many of the players have been familiar with since their childhood: the young adults playing on their smartphones now are those who played Poki(C)mon with cards and game consoles in their schooldays.
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