Pokemon Go could be the biggest thing since Facebook
Last weekend, I ventured halfway across the country to play a mobile game.
It’s no secret that Pokemon Go is making ripples in culture, gaming, and society in the summer of 2016. But having followed hundreds of gamers in a mass exodus out of Korea’s capital this weekend to collectively fulfill our childhood dreams, I dare to put together this sort of conclusion:
Pokemon Go could be the biggest thing since Facebook.
Throughout the course of history, when met with the introduction of a new form of technology or system, humanity either chose to let that innovation find its place within our already existing lives, or chose to adapt our lives to it. For example, if we think about the world before and after timekeeping we come to two very different ways of life. Before time was first kept, the day was viewed simply — day and night. But once split into hourly dividends, life began to adapt and the world functioned differently. We would calculate how long it took to travel, how long we worked, and what time we had to eat. Simply put — we changed to make way for time.
This can be applied to all the major technological advances over the course of history: tools of communication, forms of travel, and arguably the biggest innovation of human history — the Internet.
Now augmented reality has really hit the ground running, and though it might be a premature thought, I think Pokemon GO easily marks the beginning of a new era for gaming.
During the rise of Facebook in the late 00’s, we saw a change in the way human culture functioned on a global scale. Everything shifted, from the way we shared moments in life to how we interacted with others. We took our real lives and moved it all into the virtual realm of cyberspace.
With Pokemon Go, we are now seeing the beginning of changes on similar scale. Not just in terms of the viral nature of the mobile app that is taking the world by storm, but also in the way that it’s already beginning to make ripples in culture. We now have a virtual world layered upon our real world, and it’s not just any virtual world, but one that millions of people had been dreaming of for the past 20 years. It supplied a nostalgic need that many forgot they had and is beginning to shape the world through the generations of fanatics that are playing it. And it hasn’t even been released globally yet.
While I took the day trip to Sokcho — the only part of Korea where Pokemon Go is currently available due to a regional blocking flaw — to gain insight on the matter and fulfill the void left by childish desire in my heart, I quickly noticed even the small impacts that this game was beginning to make on media ecology.
City officials had already installed new wifi and charging stations around the city in major areas. In addition, there are Pokemon tour guides of the city and almost all the tourist spots of the city have activated lure modules throughout the day. Children are offering to walk your eggs using their hoverboards for money and businesses are also hosting events throughout the day to attract as many Pokemon trainers as possible — and this is all in a country that doesn’t even have native access to the app yet!
When I was younger and obsessed with these monsters, my mother firmly believed it was just a phase in my life that would pass, as many parents did. Currently, many are still dismissing this app as just another viral mobile game that’s changing landscape of games with the introduction of AR, but while that may be true — when was the last time you saw something viral literally shape the cities around you?
