Dreaming Music Video Treatment _ Project & Portfolio III
Pokémon GO and the Ludification of Culture
1. Pokémon GO and the
Ludification of Culture
Frans Mäyrä
Professor,
Information Studies and
Interactive Media
Game Research Lab,
SIS / TRIM
2. Breakthrough in game
culture
• Pokémon GO: phenomenally successful
mobile location-based game
• This July, there were 21 million daily
players in the USA (numbers sinking in
Autumn?)
• Over 500 million downloads
• Only in the Finnish ”Pokémon Go
Finland” Facebook group there are over
25 000 members
• Our new survey data: over 2500
respondents (forthcoming: who have
played the game, how much, which are
the main attraction factors of the game,
and the main negative aspects of it)
3. Explanations for the popularity?
- Just “animated collectible cards” about fictional pocket monsters?
- As a game, nothing fundamentally new? Simple game mechanics,
making use of touch screens and map data
- There has been hunting, collecting and tower defence type games, and
the Augmented Reality (AR) is rather casually implemented – the
Pokémon just appear floating in the screen (with camera and gyroscope)
- Possible explanations for the popularity can be searched from multiple
directions:
1. Sufficient technology can be found in almost every person’s pocket
2. Pokémon, as a ‘critical mass’ popular culture phenomenon, which
combines ‘cuteness’ and ‘fierceness’ and ‘harmlessness’ (whole family
entertainment)
3. Change of culture and society
- Preliminary analyses from our survey data confirm some of these (also:
negative experiences – tech failing, bad behaviour, dangers on street)
4. Research and
development of
location based games
• UTAgamelab started study of
pervasive play early
• In 2001 we studied Botfighters
by It’s Alive (Sweden)
• In Mogame project research
prototype of mobile multiplayer
game Songs of North, 2003-2004
• The Finnish game studio Grey
Area published Shadow Cities
(2010)
• Then, Ingress (Google Niantic,
2013)
5. Simplicity rules OK?
- The functional operation of technology does not yet
guarantee that the user experience and user needs
would have been successfully taken into consideration
- The playful and non-playful uses for location information
have been studied already for long
- In research and in early commercial games, some “truly
mobile”, movement based game types were tested (e.g.
street combat, various scavenger hunt types)
- Many of these earlier games were actually more multifaceted and
had more complex and interesting challenges than Pokémon GO – but
does that automatically mean that they were “better games”?
- Gameplay experience is derived from the sum total of interactions
between player, game, plus their cultural and social contexts
- Pokémon GO is not the best game for everyone, all the time, but by
studying it’s popularity we can learn something about cultural
ludification, and about the design of easily approachable AR
applications and services
6. Mixed realities in play and games
• Traditional game situation:
location, time and participants in
the game play are relatively fixed
and known
• The pervasive games and play
mix ludic fiction and everyday life
• There’s both potential for novel
experiences, for seeing daily
environments in a new light –
and for confusion, conflicts –
when the “magic circle” of play is
broken or extended
9. Sense of magic
entering the
everyday?
• Pokémon GO and other location based and pervasive games do not
completely make use of all technical possibilities of augmented reality
• The visions that are attached to these (e.g. Microsoft HoloLens, Magic
Leap) technologies are connected with the goal of completely seamless
combination of illusion with the physical reality
• For the daily reality of most people, this will be just a daydream for still a
long while – the promise is eternally tempting: to have something
completely magical, manipulation of reality, being at our disposal
• More modestly, it is apps & services like Pokémon GO,
Foursquare/Swarm, Google Maps that are sites where we will rehearse
and create norms and practices for combining immaterial data with
tangible environments in sensible ways
• Games have often been at the forefront when new technologies are
wanted to link with acceptable, attractive and usable modes of operation
and common practice
10. Skills with games
• In games, the learning by doing attitude is
central, as well as informal teams, and the
culture of networked information seeking and
sharing
• Ludic literacy includes understandings of (a)
technology, (b) culture, and (c) social
dimensions of games and play – capabilities to
step within game, interplay with others, and be
creative within those frames
• Culturally, there is an ongoing development
where games, play and playful communication
mix with other rhythms and practices of daily
lives
• The development is loaded with tensions:
participation in pervasive play and social
networks can both empower, as well as enslave
11. Community, communication,
ludic literacies
- Pokémon GO does not include player-to-player communication tools,
and three teams (Valor, Instinct, Mystic) are just loose alliances for
casual battles for the Gym domination
- Social media and physical encounters are, in fact, essential parts of
game play (and even shy people have reported making contacts to
others while playing Pokémon GO)
- Ludic literacy is a multifaceted phenomenon, and as games change,
also requirements for ludic literacy change and evolve
- Different games are available more and more, everywhere, and all
the time
- If there are no training for skills to be detached of communication
and play, the development can be enslaving rather than empowering
12. Challenge for information
and ludic literacies
”Hyper-reality”;
concept video by
Keiichi Matsuda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
13. Ludic society
• Academy of Finland funded research project
(LUDIC), examining three hypotheses:
– (1) “Ludic Age/Society” hypothesis (play
emerging as the dominant mode of
participation and creativity),
– (2) “Ludic Mindset” hypothesis (gameful and
active, problem-solving oriented attitude
becoming increasingly common, even
dominant), and
– (3) “Gamification Hypothesis” (gamefulness or
game-like elements will start to dominate also
product and service design, work, learning,
other purpose-oriented and utilitarian domains)
14. Entering Ludification
- Ludic Society, is a vision/hypothesis related to ludification –
of play becoming increasingly dominant as a mode of
participation in leisure, in communication, study, while at
work, or in maintenance of social relations
- The companion concept of Ludic Society is Playful Mindset:
how playfulness encourages testing, and creative problem-
solving – not only in entertainment games, but more
generally in everyday lives
- Gamification is a parallel concept, which highlights the
different ways in which games’ elements and gamefulness’
principles are utilized in designing services and products