Pokémon Go as distributed imagination
Pokémon Go as distributed imagination
The appeal of Pokémon Go is in large part due to the game’s introduction of locative augmented reality (AR) 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 non-actual actions and characters – from elaborate fantasy worlds spun off in talk and gesture from play with dolls, building blocks or tree stumps and manhole covers (Factor 2004), the fleeting moments of jokes, songs and daydreams (Opie 1993), to intimate relationships with a precious toy or imaginary friend (Winnicott 1974). Over recent decades these processes have been mechanized and monetized by commercial children’s toy and media culture, not least in the transmedia system of Pokémon itself. What can critical attention to imagination and technology in pre- and post-digital play tell us about the hybrid realities of Pokémon Go today?
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Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
January 2017
Giddings, Seth
7d18e858-a849-4633-bae2-777a39937a33
Abstract
The appeal of Pokémon Go is in large part due to the game’s introduction of locative augmented reality (AR) 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 non-actual actions and characters – from elaborate fantasy worlds spun off in talk and gesture from play with dolls, building blocks or tree stumps and manhole covers (Factor 2004), the fleeting moments of jokes, songs and daydreams (Opie 1993), to intimate relationships with a precious toy or imaginary friend (Winnicott 1974). Over recent decades these processes have been mechanized and monetized by commercial children’s toy and media culture, not least in the transmedia system of Pokémon itself. What can critical attention to imagination and technology in pre- and post-digital play tell us about the hybrid realities of Pokémon Go today?
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Giddings - Pokémon Go as distributed imagination.pdf
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Accepted/In Press date: 15 October 2016
e-pub ahead of print date: 28 November 2016
Published date: January 2017
Organisations:
Winchester School of Art
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Local EPrints ID: 402883
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/402883
ISSN: 2050-1579
PURE UUID: 71f137cc-73b9-438c-9721-6df17eeb8d54
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Date deposited: 17 Nov 2016 16:00
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 06:04
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