Pokémon GO

[Flabyo]

Yes, it's not out in the UK yet, but the design of this game has stirred some interesting thoughts about game designers and their duty of care to their players that might be fun to discuss.

(Yes, you can find the apk for the Android version if you really want to play now, but I wouldn't recommend it cause the malware people are all over that already. Wait for an official release)

As far as I can tell, the game encourages you to get outside and wander the streets trying to track down Pokemon. Certain public buildings are marked by the game as special locations where you can fight gym leaders or where rarer Pokemon are easier to find.

The positives are pretty clear, and easy to find evidence for online at the moment:

1) People who wouldn't normally exercise much are getting out of the house.
2) It's facilitating new situations for social interaction. i.e., its getting kids to meet new people and form new bonds.
3) It's *incredibly* meme-worthy.

But there are negatives, and they're not all ones that are immediately apparent from a surface examination of the game design.

1) Doing the things the game asks you to do is going to look suspicious to people who don't know what you're doing.

In the process of trying to track a Pokemon you're going to be walking back and forth along the same streets, you're going to walk in circles. You're going to do this with your phone out. Maybe you're playing together with some friends. Bunch of young kids, probably not a big deal.

Group of black teens? Now there's potential for misunderstandings.

2) The database of 'public spaces' the game uses to set up the gyms isn't 100% up to date.

That church the game wants you to go hang out near might not be a church anymore, it might be someones home. Think how you'd feel if suddenly people are pulling up outside your house in cars at all times of the day and night, looking at their phones, then driving off. That's going to impact your quality of life. What about your neighbours, what are they going to assume is going on? How often is someone going to complain to the police about it?

The developer has a process where people can report where the game has marked somewhere actively dangerous as a gym, but currently doesn't have the support capacity to deal with private home owners complaints.

3) The game has no way to know if the actual spot its spawned a Pokemon is somewhere safe to reach.

The game has disclaimers about 'watching where you're going' and 'respecting other peoples property', sure. Kids knocking on your door cause there's a pokemon in your back yard and they want to catch it sounds like a cute story, but there are people who would be genuinely spooked by having random strangers knock on their door like that.

And there's already lots of photos of it spawning pokemon in the middle of busy road intersections, off the edges of cliffs, in the middle of deep rivers... There's a certain inevitability in my mind that sooner or later someone is going to get themselves killed trying to reach a mon that's in a dumb place (this apparently has already happened a lot with Geocaching, which is a close analogue to this gameplay design).


So as a game designer I ask myself a few questions:

1) Did the developers consider these ethical and social issues when designing the game?

I'd like to think they did, but there are large cultural and societal differences between Japan and the west. Japan is a fundamentally safer place to walk the streets in, and while there is racial tension there it's not at anywhere near the levels of the US. Is there some naivety at play here? Perhaps.

2) Are the developers actually legally culpable for anything bad that happens to people playing the game? Are the developers legally responsible to homeowners that are being inconvenienced by the placement of AR interactions in the real world?

That's a difficult legal question, but one that will need to be answered if Augmented Reality apps do start to become big. AR has existed for a while now, but this is probably the first truly large scale test of one on the general population. There is no precedent.

3) How could the game design be changed to make it safer for people without removing the fundamental aspect of it that attracts players to it in the first place?

That I have no answer for.


Food for thought anyway. Game designers have a duty of care to their players, and it's always fascinating to me when new horizons open up and present new challenges.

[Craig]

Some interesting points there, I'll mull them over but I don't think there'll be a clear answer for a while.

A few things to mention; although it is coming from the Pokémon Company, from what I've read it's essentially the Niantic Labs game, Ingress with a Pokémon skin. It's on a much wider scale of popularity, but as this was initially an American game, I'm not sure it's fair to attribute the lack of safety concerns to Japanese naivety.

The other thing is that the many stories coming out right now of people waking into traffic or into lakes or into holes are likely exaggerated. There'll be a few cases, sure, but few and far between. People like to crap on new popular things, especially tech related, and act like the people enjoying it are idiots. It's like when sat navs first became widespread and everyone was laughing at idiots driving into rivers. Sure it probably happened a few times, but those instances were shared so widely to show "hey, I'm not like that idiot, I'd use a map/use my new toy responsibly.)

One instance where this game does differ from Ingress, and is perhaps most troubling from a ethical point of view, is that Pokémon is aimed at kids. Of course you wouldn't swim across a lake to an abandoned island to find a Pokémon but a ten year old wanting to show off in front of his mates? It's not so clear cut. Kids partake in a lot of risky behaviour with fewer precautions, so it does raise greater concerns when the product is aimed at them.

[Flabyo]

I think it's the sheer scale of this that makes it most interesting. There's never been an Augmented Reality app with even *close* to this DAU. (Oops, mobile gaming term, 'Daily Active Users'.)

Tracking shows it already has more DAU than Tinder in the US, and is close to overtaking Twitter.

Very few games ever reach that number of players, and so whatever issues may well be there will be magnified a hundred fold.

(I've heard anecdotes that Ingress had many of these issues too, but of course the plural of anecdote is not data, so hard to draw any conclusions)

[Craig]

Yeah I can totally see that. What may be fine for a relatively small user group can become a minefield when increased tenfold.

[Jusifer]

while I understand the view point of others and see that this might become a problem as it is in a way encouraging people especially children to go to places and attempt things that are not safe, it is in the end up to the individual to try these things even in the case of group pressure. i know it's not quite as simple as that and there are a lot of moral issues but i would like to think that people have more sense than to try to for example climb a mountain cliff for a virtual price if they do not have the proper training or gear to do so.

[Owen Ketillson]

One small note.

1) Did the developers consider these ethical and social issues when designing the game?

I'd like to think they did, but there are large cultural and societal differences between Japan and the west. Japan is a fundamentally safer place to walk the streets in, and while there is racial tension there it's not at anywhere near the levels of the US. Is there some naivety at play here? Perhaps.

Pokemon Go was developed by Ninatic Labs, a San Francisco/Seattle developer. So I don't think a Japanese perspective would account for this. You could make the same argument though that well-to-do silicon valley guys could be equally blind to this hazard though.

[Alex79]

There have already been reports of criminals using the app to lure people in to secluded areas to be robbed. How does this work, is it basically like Geocaching?

[MagicianArcana]

It's sort of like geocaching. But this requires you to pay more attention to your phone as Pokemon could be anywhere and seem to appear semi randomly. (But in certain locations you're more likely to find certain types)

But I'm no expert on this game. I downloaded it last night and was only able to catch a few Pokemon close to my apartment. The idea is really neat. My friends and I made plans to go on a hike this coming weekend and catch Pokemon while we're at it.

This seems like something that would be really fun with friends, but I wouldn't feel very comfortable on my own. But I do like the general idea behind it. It motivates you to go on walks and maybe learn a few things about your town by finding landmarks that serve as pokestops or gyms.

It is worrisome though that this game is inadvertantly leading some people into dangerous situations. I hope it doesn't get any worse. I suppose people just need to be mindful of their surroundings while playing. I'm not sure how the developers can help with that other than including reminders in the game like the one on the loading screen.

[Todinho]

Whatever the ethical considerations of the game may be it seems to be already serving Nintendo quite well: http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/11/12147 ... pokemon-go I think they delayed the releases in other countries to address some of these issues because for example if they would just release the game as is over here I can forsee some very unintended consequences.

[chase210]

I think its absolute rubbish personally. Glad its doing well I guess.

[Flabyo]

There have already been reports of criminals using the app to lure people in to secluded areas to be robbed. How does this work, is it basically like Geocaching?

Some locations are marked as 'Pokestops', players can attach a 'Lure' item to these that attracts more Pokemon to that location for a period of time. But a location with a lure active is visible to other players who can come over and benefit from the increased bounty too. The idea is that it'll get players to congregate in parks etc... to have fun together.

That's what was happening with the robbers. They were picking Pokestops in out of the way places, at night, and turning on a Lure. Then waiting for players to turn up to rob.

There were reports yesterday that the iOS version of the app was asking for blanket Google account access rather than just the elements it needed. In theory that meant the app could send mail from your account, access your google docs etc... It was an error, and an update will correct that. Until then Google have simply changed the permissions their side. Easy mistake to make, but one that a developer with their experience shouldn't.

One thing I have noticed is that people are being *very* defensive of *any* criticism of the game on twitter.

[Flabyo]

This is the kind of thing I was worried might happen.

A small quiet suburban neighbourhood is overrun by thousands of people every night because the game has decided there are rare pokemon there.

The police can't really do much, so the residents are taking their own action. It's small stuff like water balloons, because Australia, but you can see other neighbourhoods elsewhere in the world might have more severe reactions.

For example

Its a fascinating social phenomena. There will be papers written on this.

Also: People will die.

[Alex79]

Got this today as it's had an official UK Android release. Found one on my desk at work then haven't found any more. Got beeped at the traffic lights because I was checking for Pokémon and didn't see the light go green. I'm not proud of that. >_<

[NokkonWud]

What is this Pokemon Go?
I've never heard of it. You'd think people would be talking about it on Social Media or something!

[Todinho]

On the topic Superbunnyhop did a great analysis on the Success of Pokemon Go and what it means to Nintendo,a bit of a more cynical look then most people are having now especially on a businness sense but very interesting:

[Flabyo]

So the massive increase in Nintendo's share price off the back of this has started to walk back. Hard.

Turns out investors didn't know Nintendo don't actually own Pokemon, and so are not actually getting the bulk of the money from this into their own coffers until Nintendo pointed it out to them.

It's still a good indicator that the two big mobile games in development that Nintendo will fully own, Animal Crossing and Fire Emblem, could perform well. So I don't expect all the gains to slide, but it shows that investors are not always the brightest.

[Craig]

Since this launched where I live now I've actually ran into something the first post described.

I live in a residential area, but there's a church just opposite me which is a Pokéstop. This is really convenient for getting poke balls without leaving the couch.

But the other night we were arrive home close to midnight, and there was a guy waiting outside our house. Sure enough, I check as I go inside and someone has set off a lure. I wasn't that bothered, but if I were a woman walking home by myself, I'm not sure I would've been so pleased.

It's a tricky issue. How do you promote a game based on social gathering while ensuring that gathering doesn't infringe on those who don't want to play.

[Beck]

I've been playing Go with my wife, we both grew up on the games and cartoon so it's a great blast of nostalgia. We have two dogs so are out quite regularly with them, pokemon go has become part of the walks for us.

I really like the premise and it's been really cool having a game to play with the wife, she hasn't done much gaming since a teenager and I find it difficult trying to get her to engage with games. It has been cool finding Pokestops, which are points where you can get free items such as pokeballs are often on points of interest such as universities or historical monuments. Often we have been unaware of what a monument is or that they exist so exploring our city has been fun and interesting.

Unfortunately, most of the pokemon are caught from pokestops by placing lures, lures last 30 minutes and attract pokemon to the pokestop. This has lead to people finding a spot of 2-3 pokestops in close facility and camping out for hours on end. I don't enjoy that at all, when I think of hunting pokemon I think of exploring. I took my dogs out the other night for our routine walk and only 2-3 pokemon appeared, in comparison had I sat at a pokestop I would of encountered 15-20 pokemon in the same time period.

I don't think I will be playing GO for much longer as it's getting a little thin in terms of content, hopefully another dev will expand the concept as I think it's a great type of game.

[Jusifer]

do you guys think that if another game with similiar gameplay would come out it would even grace the hights that pokemon go did even if it offered something new and was way better than pokemon go? or is the main reason it got big thay it is pokemon?

[Craig]

Well you can look at their previous game, ingress, to see how well it did before the Pokemon branding. I had never heard of it, but apparently it had a pretty big following.

I'm sure there'll be some imitators soon now that it's a phenomenon, but there are only a handful of brands I can see taking the world like Pokemon. Harry Potter and Star Wars possibly. But Pokemon being set in the "real world" kind of gives it more of a plausibility for lack of a better word.

They could release an unlicensed version of Pokemon Go with ten times the features but I don't think it'd take off in nearly the same way.