Unblurring the boundary between daily life and gameplay in location-based mobile games, visual online ethnography on Pokémon GO

ABSTRACT

Observing blending of realities, daily life and gameplay in location-based mobile games is challenging. This study aims at observing this blending by targeting a vast number of images (N = 2432), which have been taken during gameplay of a well-known game, Pokémon GO. Images were collected from social media communities of Pokémon GO players in Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, and analysed using visual and online ethnography. To keep the sample size manageable for analysis, the images were collected only from Nordic Pokémon GO player communities in eight cities during 2016–2018. The findings show that the blending of daily life and gameplay is observable from the shared photos especially from the augmented reality screenshots which is why in this article the context of gameplay, both outdoors and indoors, in Pokémon GO is described in more detail than in previous studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Location-based mobile games
• social media
• visual ethnography

Acknowledgments

This research has been conducted following the ethical requirements established by Finnish advisory board on research integrity. The gathered material has been handled and informed consent from the participants was obtained in accordance with Finnish laws. Permission from the original copyright holders was obtained for publishing the images in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by PRINCE: [Grant Number 815362]; Reboot Finland IoT Factory supported by Academy of Finland 6Genesis Flagship: [Grant Number 318927].