Pokemon Go

[Wowbagger]

Dez has mentioned this weird phenomenon to me. He is an aficionado. He has just taken the dog out for an extra walk in pursuit of this craze. He took this photo.



He tells me that all those people were in the park for precisely the same reason that he was - Pokemon Go.

I don't understand.

[Basil]

I s'pose it's rather good that 'puter games are encouraging people out of their bedrooms.

[Tim Hall]

Ob xkcd:

[Kim]

It's like Pokemon, but you do it in the big blue room where you might get mugged / discover a body / sexually assault other players / be run over by a bus / etc.

It's like Ingress without all those complicated SQL commands.

It's like Geocaching without the Tupperware.

It's like Strava for poor people who can't afford bikes.

[Mr Larrington]

They showed a picture on the news of the motor-car of some USAnian bell-end who had wrapped it round something solidly immovable while playing Pokémon Go at the wheel.  I applauded.

[Wobbly John]

I noticed more morons checking their phone while at the wheel on yesterday's commute home (and that's in the Fens!) I thought it was just a random, bad day.

...but if they were Poking their mons (or whatever the terminology is ), that's a worrying development. 

There ought to be a law against it or summut...

[Wowbagger]

I noticed more morons checking their phone while at the wheel on yesterday's commute home (and that's in the Fens!) I thought it was just a random, bad day.

...but if they were Poking their mons (or whatever the terminology is ), that's a worrying development. 

There ought to be a law against it or summut...

POTD for that! Sheer clarse!

[Riggers]

Are these people the new 'trainspotters' of our time?

[caerau]

I wonder when Doom-go is going to come along...

[mrcharly-YHT]

I wonder when Doom-go is going to come along...

I'm perplexed it hasn't come along already. Along with zombie defence. Imagine defending your office building/home against a zombie horde.

[Wascally Weasel]

I wonder when Doom-go is going to come along...

I'm perplexed it hasn't come along already. Along with zombie defence. Imagine defending your office building/home against a zombie horde.

We call that 'meetings'.

[simonp]

Apparently there was a Pokemon on my arm in the living room.

Is this some kind of mass delusion phenomenon?

[DrMekon]

Got approached to input into a piece about it in relation to physical activity

http://www.techinsider.io/pokmon-go-may-fight-childhood-obesity-better-than-the-white-house-2016-7

I think it's a good thing, but they didn't include any of my concerns. I was asked...

Could Pokemon Go have any lessons for public policy makers? In what ways?

It should be said, Pokemon Go has not been subject to rigorous evaluation. It may be that any effects it has are short lived; that there are unintended consequences (my son skipped a taekwondo class to play Pokemon Go); the effects may only be there for specific subpopulations that are already well served, and thereby increase health inequality; there may be spatial patterning in effects which moderate the health benefits (through air pollution, etc). As such, I think policy makers should draw on high quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials, rather than change policy based on widely hyped games. That said, I think the approach of making physical activity extrinsically rewarding in the short term may promote initiation of behaviour change, and review evidence (Amireault et al, 2012) suggests that motivation and goals are relatively strongly associated with physical activity maintenance. As such, scaffolding the initiation and maintenance of health behaviours until the intrinsic rewards emerge would appear a sensible approach. The relative failure of the developers game that came before Pokemon Go (Ingress) suggests that the fact game leverages a franchise that is held dear by such a wide age span could be responsible for the reported reach of the app. As such, public policy makers may need to learn from Niantic (the developers) and find a loved game world that the public value sufficiently to care about leveling up in that world enough to change their real world behaviour.

[L CC]

Relative Failure of Ingress? Tell that to the millions of people playing.

[Kim]

Relative Failure of Ingress? Tell that to the millions of people playing.

Obxkcd:

[D.A.L.E.]

It's brilliant man.

I don't think I've walked so much in all my life.

When you have caught a Pokemon, it shows you the GPS location of where it was caught. I'm going to use it as proof of passage.

[Karla]

It's like Ingress without all those complicated SQL commands.

It's Ingress made acceptable to non-geeks.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Relative Failure of Ingress? Tell that to the millions of people playing.

Is it millions? Or millions of pints drunk by players? We seemed to spend as much time drinking in a pub as we did playing.

[Chris S]

Relative Failure of Ingress? Tell that to the millions of people playing.

Is it millions? Or millions of pints drunk by players? We seemed to spend as much time drinking in a pub as we did playing.

Part of the game innit? Find a pub with portals in range - stick on hack mods, get pissed  . There are drinking games, natch.

Keeping it OT - fboab introduced me to Ingress as something to do when I was out walking - and it worked, we've both walked much more as a result of playing Ingress. Looks like Pokemon Go will have a similar effect on the masses who play it - if not more so in fact, it looks like it's harder to play from (say) the back of a bike, compared to Ingress. I may give PG a try.

[mrcharly-YHT]

My impressions so far - you can't just spot a portal and head for it - pokemons pop up at random. So walking is more practical than cycling. However you can 'bait' stations to draw pokemons, which is handy if a pub happens to have a station.

Capturing pokemons involves a characteristic finger flip gesture, so it is really, really easy to spot people who are playing.

[D.A.L.E.]

I've been playing it on a bike this week but it's designed to be used while walking - in order to hatch eggs, you need to walk X far. Even going well slow on the bike doesn't fool my iPhone into thinking I'm walking.

[Dez]

I've been playing it on a bike this week but it's designed to be used while walking - in order to hatch eggs, you need to walk X far. Even going well slow on the bike doesn't fool my iPhone into thinking I'm walking.

Quite often, walking doesn't fool my iPhone into thinking I'm walking. I walked probably 4 or 5 km before my first 2km egg hatched.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Yes, I had the feeling that the location wasn't as accurate as it is in Ingress. A bit odd, that, given that Niantic wrote both games.

[Lady Cavendish]

I've been walking loads more than usual to hatch my eggs.

It's also got my teenagers actually off their backsides too.

[caerau]

Got approached to input into a piece about it in relation to physical activity

http://www.techinsider.io/pokmon-go-may-fight-childhood-obesity-better-than-the-white-house-2016-7

I think it's a good thing, but they didn't include any of my concerns. I was asked...

Could Pokemon Go have any lessons for public policy makers? In what ways?

It should be said, Pokemon Go has not been subject to rigorous evaluation. It may be that any effects it has are short lived; that there are unintended consequences (my son skipped a taekwondo class to play Pokemon Go); the effects may only be there for specific subpopulations that are already well served, and thereby increase health inequality; there may be spatial patterning in effects which moderate the health benefits (through air pollution, etc). As such, I think policy makers should draw on high quality systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomised controlled trials, rather than change policy based on widely hyped games. That said, I think the approach of making physical activity extrinsically rewarding in the short term may promote initiation of behaviour change, and review evidence (Amireault et al, 2012) suggests that motivation and goals are relatively strongly associated with physical activity maintenance. As such, scaffolding the initiation and maintenance of health behaviours until the intrinsic rewards emerge would appear a sensible approach. The relative failure of the developers game that came before Pokemon Go (Ingress) suggests that the fact game leverages a franchise that is held dear by such a wide age span could be responsible for the reported reach of the app. As such, public policy makers may need to learn from Niantic (the developers) and find a loved game world that the public value sufficiently to care about leveling up in that world enough to change their real world behaviour.

Jeez, my bullshit-ometer just went off scale.