There was a day earlier this week that I spent entirely outside. I walked close to 17 miles and scaled close to 2,000 feet in vertical elevation. I also played video games the entire time, thus disproving everything my mother had ever told me about modern entertainment.
Last week, a former Google startup called Niantic, using the best of “real-time geospatial querying and indexing techniques,” managed to turn the clock back to 2003.
Classified as an “augmented reality” game, Pokemon Go has turned College Park into a local center of a worldwide network of virtual activity. Legions of slowly-shuffling college students triangulate virtual Pokemon all over campus. Campus landmarks, repurposed as hotspot locations to visit in the game, have been getting more attention than ever before — surely, the class of 1991 didn’t anticipate that a quarter of a century later, their class gift would be a hub of Pokemon activity on Hornbake Plaza.
Already more popular than Tinder, Pokemon Go owes its success to a couple of keystones. The nostalgia factor is a huge driver — us early 20-somethings grew up with the original games (and show). The real-world augmented reality aspect is a great application of complex technology to entertainment. The social side of the game is a novelty too: There’s a sort of sheepish kinship in bumping into another player of what is, let’s face it, a children’s game.
Things took on a different complexion this Tuesday, however. Around 9p.m., a robbery with an “implied weapon” happened. Soon thereafter, two more were called in, and the “implied weapon” became a black handgun.
This is serious: For the morally deficient opportunist, herds of distracted kids walking around with their phones up is too good to pass up. This isn’t a one-off event either — it’s been happening around the country. One presumes it’s only a matter of time until something truly drastic happens. Remember that a fair contingent of the user base for this game is around ten years old. If we are fortunate, it won’t be a child’s kidnapping that forces a policy change.
Pokemon Go has quite literally changed the game. As with any novel technology, there are kinks to work out. One of the most appealing aspects of the game — that it makes players go outside — comes with the caveat that the real world can be a scary place.
Pokemon Go is fundamentally different than a stationary console game, and that brings a different set of requirements: attention to one’s surroundings and basic application of common sense. With those in hand, the game is a fresh take on a nostalgic childhood keystone. Without them, the risks are unsustainably high.
It’ll be interesting to see the lifespan of this recent cultural juggernaut. One hopes that Pokemon Go is remembered as a groundbreaking foray into augmented reality, instead of a dangerous dive into the reality of urban crime.
Jack Siglin is a senior physiology and neurobiology major. He can be reached at jsiglindbk@gmail.com.
