Pokémon GO as distributed imagination. (January 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Giddings, Seth
• Other Names: Hjorth Larissa guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Mobile media & communication. Volume 5:Number 1(2017:Jan.)
• Page Start: 59
• Page End: 62
• Publication Date: 2017-01
• Subjects: children's mobile media -- distributed imagination -- everyday technoculture -- Pokémon GO -- postdigital play; Mobile communication systems -- Periodicals; 384.53
• DOI: 10.1177/2050157916677866
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2050-1579

Abstract

The appeal of Pokémon GO is in large part due to the game's introduction of locative augmented reality to popular media culture, as players' mobile phones summon virtual creatures and overlay them on the immediate environment. The significance of this novel device (within popular children's culture at least) is open to question however. The workings of imagination in children's lives have always populated mundane experience with nonactual actions and characters, and these processes have been mechanized and monetized by commercial children's culture over decades, not least in the transmedia system of Pokémon itself. What can critical attention to imagination and technology in pre- and postdigital play tell us about the hybrid realities of Pokémon GO today?