Hong Kong and Insect Rhetoric: The Spatial Politics of Pokémon GO

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Davies Hugh
2020 DiGRA ’20 – Proceedings of the 2020 DiGRA International Conference: Play Everywhere

During Hong Kong’s 2019 street protests, images of Pokémon became a recurring motif. What accounts for the presence of this videogame franchise figure among the anti-extradition demonstrators? Establishing Pokémon as a lens through which spatial politics can be viewed, this paper examines the sociocultural, economic and geographic tensions in Hong Kong through this popular Nintendo franchise. Charting the emergence of insect rhetoric as an invective in that city, the contours of the anti- extradition crisis are charted at the intersections of language, identity, space and nostalgia. Drawing extensively on reportage of protest movement, this paper concerns itself with how digital platforms enact, elaborate and represent spatial politics and activism in both virtual and embodied worlds.

 

Middle-aged Players’ Memorable Experiences with Pokémon GO

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Koskinen Elina Alha Kati Leorke Dale Paavilainen Janne
2019 DiGRA '19 - Proceedings of the 2019 DiGRA International Conference: Game, Play and the Emerging Ludo-Mix

As the first location-based augmented reality game to gain mainstream popularity, Pokémon GO also reached an older demographic of players that have traditionally played less and whose play experiences are under-researched. In this article, we present the findings of a qualitative survey study (n=349) focusing on the middle-aged (40–65-year-old) Pokémon GO players’ memorable experiences from the time when the game’s popularity was at its peak and its player base likely most diverse. We analyzed the open-ended survey responses with thematic analysis, resulting in 7 categories and 88 thematic codes. The categories constructed were Game Play & Game Content, People & Sociability, Location, Circumstances & Context, Negative Events, Feelings and Other Codes. Through our analysis and findings, we provide insights to understand the play experiences of middle-aged players through Pokémon GO. These findings also capture the memorable moments of a massive, unique social phenomenon at its peak from the perspective of a traditionally overlooked demographic.

 

The Space Between Debord and Pikachu

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Davies Hugh Innocent Troy
2017 DiGRA '17 - Proceedings of the 2017 DiGRA International Conference

In the heady discourse following the launch of Pokémon Go, many of the game’s influences, histories and precursors were forgotten or over-looked. Against the newness in which Pokémon Go is often framed, this article re-contextualises its history examining comparable practices and recalling the games evolution from earlier locative applications developed by Google to the experimental games of the modernist Avant Garde to which it has been compared. Central to this paper is discussion of the opportunities in the pervasive game development process for encoding and recoding the city by balancing in-game content with the nuances of the urban landscape in which it is played. While Pokémon Go has been revelatory in bringing awareness of pervasive gaming into the mainstream, this discussion of location-based games, public art projects, and playful approaches to urban exploration aims to fill gaps in the history of the field, and offer new possibilities for future game design and analysis.