Pokémon GO
Posted: July 11th, 2016, 10:49 am
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.
(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.