Mindtrek 2016 keynote talk sides.

1. Pokémon GO and the
Ludification of Culture
Frans Mäyrä
Professor,
Information Studies and
Interactive Media
Game Research Lab,
SIS / TRIM

2. Breakthrough in game
culture
• Pokémon GO: phenomenally successful
mobile location-based game
• This July, there were 21 million daily
players in the USA (numbers sinking in
Autumn?)
• Over 500 million downloads
• Only in the Finnish ”Pokémon Go
Finland” Facebook group there are over
25 000 members
• Our new survey data: over 2500
respondents (forthcoming: who have
played the game, how much, which are
the main attraction factors of the game,
and the main negative aspects of it)

3. Explanations for the popularity?
- Just “animated collectible cards” about fictional pocket monsters?
- As a game, nothing fundamentally new? Simple game mechanics,
making use of touch screens and map data
- There has been hunting, collecting and tower defence type games, and
the Augmented Reality (AR) is rather casually implemented – the
Pokémon just appear floating in the screen (with camera and gyroscope)
- Possible explanations for the popularity can be searched from multiple
directions:
1. Sufficient technology can be found in almost every person’s pocket
2. Pokémon, as a ‘critical mass’ popular culture phenomenon, which
combines ‘cuteness’ and ‘fierceness’ and ‘harmlessness’ (whole family
entertainment)
3. Change of culture and society
- Preliminary analyses from our survey data confirm some of these (also:
negative experiences – tech failing, bad behaviour, dangers on street)

4. Research and
development of
location based games
• UTAgamelab started study of
pervasive play early
• In 2001 we studied Botfighters
by It’s Alive (Sweden)
• In Mogame project research
prototype of mobile multiplayer
game Songs of North, 2003-2004
• The Finnish game studio Grey
Area published Shadow Cities
(2010)
• Then, Ingress (Google  Niantic,
2013)

5. Simplicity rules OK?
- The functional operation of technology does not yet
guarantee that the user experience and user needs
would have been successfully taken into consideration
- The playful and non-playful uses for location information
have been studied already for long
- In research and in early commercial games, some “truly
mobile”, movement based game types were tested (e.g.
street combat, various scavenger hunt types)
- Many of these earlier games were actually more multifaceted and
had more complex and interesting challenges than Pokémon GO – but
does that automatically mean that they were “better games”?
- Gameplay experience is derived from the sum total of interactions
between player, game, plus their cultural and social contexts
- Pokémon GO is not the best game for everyone, all the time, but by
studying it’s popularity we can learn something about cultural
ludification, and about the design of easily approachable AR
applications and services

6. Mixed realities in play and games
• Traditional game situation:
location, time and participants in
the game play are relatively fixed
and known
• The pervasive games and play
mix ludic fiction and everyday life
• There’s both potential for novel
experiences, for seeing daily
environments in a new light –
and for confusion, conflicts –
when the “magic circle” of play is
broken or extended

7. Reality is always
mixed?
- As outlined in our research, the pervasive game can last long, or be
an intermittent, additional “layer” in everyday life
- The sites of pervasive play are not clearly marked or defined, the
ingame/outgame mix
- Also that which/who is participant of game, and those who are
excluded, and who can thereby not be addressed in game need to
be reconsidered
- One of the favourite concepts in game studies has been “Magic
Circle”, which is most useful when the reality of play/game is
something clearly demarcated and separate from other social
frames
- Pervasive play requires more developed capacities to negotiate the
relationships between play and non-play
- Historically, we have always been living in a “mixed reality”:
knowledge, concepts, notions, myths are all immaterial reality that
mixes and has an effect on how we perceive, experience and orient
into our worlds
”Kullervo Departs for the War”, by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1901)
©Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives.
Photo: Jouko Könönen Antti Kuivalainen

8. The future: AR, MR, VR?
• As digital information and
functionalities are combined with
physical objects and environments,
new opportunities are opened
• Also: new opportunities for confusion
& conflict?
• Augmented or mixed reality as the
opposite developmental direction to
virtual reality (VR)
• Information realised as an element of
“actionable reality”, hopelessly in a
seamless manner
• More generally: games are providing a
low threshold for developing the
“future language” of mixed reality
technologies and services
Photos © Magic Leap, Wired, FastCompany & Forbes

9. Sense of magic
entering the
everyday?
• Pokémon GO and other location based and pervasive games do not
completely make use of all technical possibilities of augmented reality
• The visions that are attached to these (e.g. Microsoft HoloLens, Magic
Leap) technologies are connected with the goal of completely seamless
combination of illusion with the physical reality
• For the daily reality of most people, this will be just a daydream for still a
long while – the promise is eternally tempting: to have something
completely magical, manipulation of reality, being at our disposal
• More modestly, it is apps & services like Pokémon GO,
Foursquare/Swarm, Google Maps that are sites where we will rehearse
and create norms and practices for combining immaterial data with
tangible environments in sensible ways
• Games have often been at the forefront when new technologies are
wanted to link with acceptable, attractive and usable modes of operation
and common practice

10. Skills with games
• In games, the learning by doing attitude is
central, as well as informal teams, and the
culture of networked information seeking and
sharing
• Ludic literacy includes understandings of (a)
technology, (b) culture, and (c) social
dimensions of games and play – capabilities to
step within game, interplay with others, and be
creative within those frames
• Culturally, there is an ongoing development
where games, play and playful communication
mix with other rhythms and practices of daily
lives
• The development is loaded with tensions:
participation in pervasive play and social
networks can both empower, as well as enslave

11. Community, communication,
ludic literacies
- Pokémon GO does not include player-to-player communication tools,
and three teams (Valor, Instinct, Mystic) are just loose alliances for
casual battles for the Gym domination
- Social media and physical encounters are, in fact, essential parts of
game play (and even shy people have reported making contacts to
others while playing Pokémon GO)
- Ludic literacy is a multifaceted phenomenon, and as games change,
also requirements for ludic literacy change and evolve
- Different games are available more and more, everywhere, and all
the time
- If there are no training for skills to be detached of communication
and play, the development can be enslaving rather than empowering

12. Challenge for information
and ludic literacies
”Hyper-reality”;
concept video by
Keiichi Matsuda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs

13. Ludic society
• Academy of Finland funded research project
(LUDIC), examining three hypotheses:
– (1) “Ludic Age/Society” hypothesis (play
emerging as the dominant mode of
participation and creativity),
– (2) “Ludic Mindset” hypothesis (gameful and
active, problem-solving oriented attitude
becoming increasingly common, even
dominant), and
– (3) “Gamification Hypothesis” (gamefulness or
game-like elements will start to dominate also
product and service design, work, learning,
other purpose-oriented and utilitarian domains)

14. Entering Ludification
- Ludic Society, is a vision/hypothesis related to ludification –
of play becoming increasingly dominant as a mode of
participation in leisure, in communication, study, while at
work, or in maintenance of social relations
- The companion concept of Ludic Society is Playful Mindset:
how playfulness encourages testing, and creative problem-
solving – not only in entertainment games, but more
generally in everyday lives
- Gamification is a parallel concept, which highlights the
different ways in which games’ elements and gamefulness’
principles are utilized in designing services and products

15. Message of
Pokémon GO
• Winter is coming…
• Yet: combining everyday reality
with fantasy elements, and structures that both challenge and
reward, has proved to be motivating
• Technologies of today can indeed help people to help themselves:
to step outside, to develop their (and their families’ and friends’)
mental, social and physical wellbeing
• Pokémon as a media phenomena opens doors: the next
generation of games and services will go even further, and into
new directions
• Augmented Reality is early in development: the information
services, social media, communicational AR services, commercial,
advertisement services will change our world
Photo © www.FandomPlanet.com

16. Thank you!