166 Environments of intelligence
Although the relevance of the variables in question is restricted to the game – a
kind of restriction that will apply to any clearly circumscribed practice – they are
constitutive of the players’ behaviours within that context. The information and
interaction opportunities provided by the game do not concern the external environment in which players are moving but are informational with respect to the
contents of the game, which may but need not be partly sensitive to conditions
at the concrete location of the player. One is supposed to perceive his or her surroundings differently in a gaming situation, in some cases turning everyday objects
into elements of the game, thus temporarily redefining their meaning and function.
The virtual overlay to the real world introduced by the game, by creating domains
of artificial information that supplement and partly displace those of natural information, structures the players’ behaviours in a straightforwardly embodied sense.
The most successful commercial application sharing the features of MMMOGs
described and discussed for the GeoBashing prototype, and adding more features
to the game, is Pokémon Go (Economist 2016; Kohler 2016). The first significant
difference to the former game is the inclusion of AR elements (discussed further
in the next section) in the gaming display instead of purely GPS-based challenges.
One AR-involving gaming mode consists of finding and capturing variously shaped
Pokémons that are trackable in the environment on the basis of GPS data, and that
are visible on the smartphone display as embedded in the player’s surroundings by
virtue of a camera-based see-through function: looking at some spot through the
display, the player will see the Pokémon as a moving virtual item in his or her surroundings, and he or she has to capture it by hitting it with a virtual ball. A second
gaming mode consists in finding so-called “Pokéstops” that offer gaming resources,
again on the basis of GPS data. These stops are landmarks or more innocuous
objects with an AR overlay that have to be physically approached in order to collect
the resources. A third AR- and GPS-based gaming mode consists in finding “gyms”
where to “fight” other players by proxy of the Pokémons captured to date. Here, the
trial of strength is based on the number, kind and rarity-related power of Pokémons
collected. Intriguingly, the kind of Pokémons one has available for capturing covaries with variables in the external environment: for example water Pokémons are
found near water, or fire Pokémons in hot places. Gaming strategies might involve
seeking out particular, and particularly rare, Pokémons in the appropriate places. In
most respects, gameplay and player’s behaviours are supposed to be analogous to
what was observed with respect to GeoBashing, from the modes – and sometimes
physically dangerous excesses – of immersion to the options of teaming up vs.
competing in the accomplishment of gaming tasks, with one issue gaining more
prominence: it has been reported that Pokéstops can be found having been set up
in places, such as cemeteries or Holocaust memorials, in which mobile gaming
will appear inappropriate (Akhtar 2016; Peterson 2016), prompting the provider to
remove the gaming items and make the respective areas unavailable to gameplay,
and prompting calls for codes of ethics for AR games (Cross 2016).
In the case of Mixed Reality Games, the issue of convergence and isomorphism
of the information provided is fairly complex: informational relations pertaining to the virtual realm, that is the game, interact with natural information for
Although the relevance of the variables in question is restricted to the game – a
kind of restriction that will apply to any clearly circumscribed practice – they are
constitutive of the players’ behaviours within that context. The information and
interaction opportunities provided by the game do not concern the external environment in which players are moving but are informational with respect to the
contents of the game, which may but need not be partly sensitive to conditions
at the concrete location of the player. One is supposed to perceive his or her surroundings differently in a gaming situation, in some cases turning everyday objects
into elements of the game, thus temporarily redefining their meaning and function.
The virtual overlay to the real world introduced by the game, by creating domains
of artificial information that supplement and partly displace those of natural information, structures the players’ behaviours in a straightforwardly embodied sense.
The most successful commercial application sharing the features of MMMOGs
described and discussed for the GeoBashing prototype, and adding more features
to the game, is Pokémon Go (Economist 2016; Kohler 2016). The first significant
difference to the former game is the inclusion of AR elements (discussed further
in the next section) in the gaming display instead of purely GPS-based challenges.
One AR-involving gaming mode consists of finding and capturing variously shaped
Pokémons that are trackable in the environment on the basis of GPS data, and that
are visible on the smartphone display as embedded in the player’s surroundings by
virtue of a camera-based see-through function: looking at some spot through the
display, the player will see the Pokémon as a moving virtual item in his or her surroundings, and he or she has to capture it by hitting it with a virtual ball. A second
gaming mode consists in finding so-called “Pokéstops” that offer gaming resources,
again on the basis of GPS data. These stops are landmarks or more innocuous
objects with an AR overlay that have to be physically approached in order to collect
the resources. A third AR- and GPS-based gaming mode consists in finding “gyms”
where to “fight” other players by proxy of the Pokémons captured to date. Here, the
trial of strength is based on the number, kind and rarity-related power of Pokémons
collected. Intriguingly, the kind of Pokémons one has available for capturing covaries with variables in the external environment: for example water Pokémons are
found near water, or fire Pokémons in hot places. Gaming strategies might involve
seeking out particular, and particularly rare, Pokémons in the appropriate places. In
most respects, gameplay and player’s behaviours are supposed to be analogous to
what was observed with respect to GeoBashing, from the modes – and sometimes
physically dangerous excesses – of immersion to the options of teaming up vs.
competing in the accomplishment of gaming tasks, with one issue gaining more
prominence: it has been reported that Pokéstops can be found having been set up
in places, such as cemeteries or Holocaust memorials, in which mobile gaming
will appear inappropriate (Akhtar 2016; Peterson 2016), prompting the provider to
remove the gaming items and make the respective areas unavailable to gameplay,
and prompting calls for codes of ethics for AR games (Cross 2016).
In the case of Mixed Reality Games, the issue of convergence and isomorphism
of the information provided is fairly complex: informational relations pertaining to the virtual realm, that is the game, interact with natural information for