had an "AR FUN" app that came with my sony xperia m4 that edited dinosaurs and other nonsense into photos and videos in real time. deleted that junk and never looked back. I guess it's cool that people who were into pokemon cards now have a phone version, but I never liked pokemon and for me this is just like the bloatware that came with my phone.
"the newest way to get hit by oncoming traffic" Stephen Colbert
Pretty easy to guess what Guy Debord and cohort might have thought about the game, and probably AR and social media in general. Here's the first six 'theses' from 'Society of the Spectacle'. Emphasis is mine...
1.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
2.
The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.
3.
The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.
4.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
5.
The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of the world of vision, as a product of the techniques of mass dissemination of images. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated. It is a world vision which has become objectified.
6.
The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.
As much as I love the game (being a childhood fan of the original games), it's a fad. Most people I know turn the AR feature off to save battery, anyway.
archiwutm8, what's your pokedex looking like? So far i'm at 36 seen / 34 caught.
If i understand it correctly, a setup like pokemon leads to dismiss the environment. The environment merely serves as a context to be dismissed and differed until it is given value by a singular virtual vedette.
I am not necessarily saying it is in the nature of AR to do so; it would depend on the game...but, from the point of view of people concerned with environment, I think that much more interesting would be when AR is used to augment it (spnically, visually, etc), to make us notice it more, than to background it and devalorize it. Augmented reality rather than Artificial reality.
Quondam, I think it would be far more interesting if the pokemon-foraging happened through a reading of the semiotics of the place...rather than a contingent and convenient 'crowding'. In that sense, it would be like foraging for acorns, involving one in the process of reading the signs and opening up the environment both sensorially and cognitavely
chatter, I wouldn't necessarily call Pokemon Go a great AR game. The AR is good for snapping pictures of pokemon in interesting locations, but that's about it.
At its core it's a geocaching game with AR bolted on to the mechanic of catching pokemon. The main draw of the game is not the AR, but the excitement of exploring your surroundings for the chance of finding new creatures, using those creatures to capture locations, and of course catching em' all.
I don't think the game dismisses the environment at all. If anything it encourages people to go out of their way and notice their environment more. My little brother, who's not the outdoorsy type, went on a 7-mile hike looking for pokemon, and he didn't climb those boulders while staring at his phone the whole time.
Schoon...
"The environment merely serves as a context to be dismissed and differed until it is given value by a singular virtual vedette. "
Differed here is deliberately used. I would argue that crossing a terrain, looking out for the monsters that may be there or not, staring at your phone all the time, does not make one more observant of the environment itself, which is contingently(again, used deliberately: experiencing the place and/or learning about it is totally irrelevant) a host for these pop-ups. It would be different if the narrative of the search had to do intrinsicallly (ie beyond contingency and convenience) with the environment.
I guess I would find it much more interesting to pose questions about how, instead of irrelevant characters, we could employ such games to discover from within the environment itself, even a sort of playful anti-guide (unlike tripadvisor or yelp).
The goal to "make one more observant of the environment itself" using an AR phone game sounds like a lofty, abstract idea that doesn't have much base in practice.
Are you talking about educational purposes? As in location tags popping up in certain areas describing the buildings, ecosystem, and land formations of the area? That already exists.
Are you talking about entertainment applications; a narrative based solely on the surrounding environment? Would anyone even want to buy or download such a game, besides history and environmental enthusiasts?
Pokemon Go is successful at teaching people about their environment (as shown in the article tduds posted above) because it does so subtly, as a by-product of exploring for pokemon. Say what you will about how pokemon are "irrelevant creatures," but the brand name attracts the audience that a cut-and-dry geocaching app never could.
Do we even need AR to help connect with our environment? If that's your goal, turn your phone off and go for a walk.
Its the future - it will be used for wayfinding studies - Autodesk will buy it and it will be another plugin for Revit - accessed by Dynamo for creating forms that follow paths
Schoon "Pokemon Go is successful at teaching people about their environment (as shown in the article tduds posted above) because it does so subtly, as a by-product of exploring for pokemon. "
I was actually sitting next to this guy in the bus who was playing pokemon only 30 minutes ago. He hardly looked up from his phone which showed a flat green field divided by a grid of Streets. I mean, the entire trip, with quite scenic and varied views, he spent staring at the phone.He captured a pokemon who was lingering between the legs of one of the woman passengers; I seriously doubt if it would have made any difference to him whether she was an architectural landmark or a woman who probably had a right to not having phone cameras being directed where it was.
I doubt very much that pokemon is successful in teaching people about their environment; it seems about as successful as Grndr is in at eaching gay men urban planning.
Schoon "Are you talking about educational purposes? ...Are you talking about entertainment applications"
Yes, both. And not necessarily in a way that one might expect. In fact, it might be the very element of the unexpected, of catering to a wish to discover a place vis a vis elements that don't define it in a utilitarian sense.
Schoon: "a narrative based solely on the surrounding environment? Would anyone even want to buy or download such a game, besides history and environmental enthusiasts? "
Why are you being deliberately so unimaginative and putting up limits defined by what you perceive to be a status-quo? How boring at first it sounds at first and that someone would go hunting after insignificant self-referencing virtual marks scattered within a landscape ...and yet, obviously it is not boring for those who play it.
I would see it the other way, that there are many many possibilities that could do with any number of things related to the environment: the kind of vegetation in a city, the combination of sounds peculiar to places , the sites where the number of crimes are highest, where people have sex in the open...etc, that could be worked within the narrative of a virtual hunt, a game
If you think you have the next big geocaching app idea, great! Go make it and change the social landscape. But when you do you'll have to define what it is you're actually talking about.
Frankly, you're imagining an immaterial idea for a game without knowing anything about game design, how games are actually produced, or the climate of the games audience.
My town (Longview, TX) has a typical downtown -- Business/Office traffic during the day and very little going on at night. Last night, I took my girls downtown around 7 to see if we could find some Pokemon, as there are quite a few Pokestops downtown. There were at least 200-300 people walking around downtown in the evening. It felt very alive. Our Main Street Committee is even sponsoring a Meet Up tomorrow night. Of course, this is probably short-lived at this intensity.
Ultimately, the intensity is the fad. I think this is introducing a whole new mobile experience, and will probably open the door to other similar type of experiences. I think it will fall back to a sustainable level, and we will see an uptick in engagement with environment over previous levels, but it won't be near the intensity that we are seeing right now.
I seriously question the value of this "engagement"
It's a fun game I started playing just because it was a much needed moment of brevity in some seriously dark news streak. Kind of fun to stick your head in the sand while you walk around. But I don't think I have ever seen less of the city I was walking in while playing this game.
I think Colbert called it the best new way to get hit by a car. And I certainly feel like it has made the pedestrians of my city way more unpredictable. walking down the sidewalk is crazy right now. you never know who is going to just stop in the flow of traffic to catch a Pokemon and no one is looking at anything but their phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERWcdOOr1A8Ok, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, but...do you guys remember when all of the kids would line up for an hour at the mall to wait for a new shipment of Pokemon cards?? They would play Pokemon on their pixelated Gameboys for hours traveling through some Pokemon universe slowly accumulated more and more Pokemon, each step of the way training their creatures to do more advanced tricks and evolve. We fed them, fought with them and nurtured them back to health. Then, we grew up.
So I'm an adult now and so are my friends. Some have grown up to become associates at Goldman Sachs, others went to Princeton to get masters degrees in Renaissance history, others are grinding through the 9 to 5 in cities across the world.
However, the moment our furry little friends from childhood came back and showed up in our living rooms, on our beds, in our car and at neighborhood parks, we all came out and gathered as communities to embrace our common childhood friends.
It's not about environment. It's about embracing our past and feeling connection to our communities again. It's nice to walk out again and start conversations with strangers. Just a "hey guys, there's a Pincer over by the library!" is enough to connect.
When we hear about a rare Pokemon lurking around, it's like we suddenly hear that someone has hidden holographic cards for us somewhere nearby...but we have to be quick or it might run away.
Jean you sum it up well, and I like the "hey, we have real jobs now and go to fancy schools"....but I'm going to be real fucking negative on all this shit, fair warning.
I'm in a part of the world (right now) that only got electricity a wee bit from here in the 1960's. IIreland, believe it or not, obviously not all of Ireland, just various pockets of what the earth looked like thousands of years ago, so they filmed Star Wars there. I declined my data plan, but kept phone and text while on vacation here. It's been nice to not be in the "virtual world" which oddly enough pays my bills. My kids celtic mood ring would show me this "virtual world" causes stress. i'm an architect, besides site visits, nothing I do is REAL.
Call my world a "thread" of "virtual existence".
Checking in on emails, I peak at the subject lines hoping to avoid anxiety, didn't tell all the clients I was on vacation...
my oldest daughter, at 8 years old, a major minecraft junkie has been comparing actual castles to minecraft castles and why minecraft is better...nevermind smelling burnt peat from the bogs. smell is not virtual yet, ha!
in the bus down a windy hill, the bus driver (surely for fun) puts on the front camera. my daughter decides the video screen is more important than looking left out the window. Instead of looking out the window, look at a video screen.
so I imagined a world of kids, like this shit (pokemon), instead of driving looking through the windshield, you're a better driver with a fucking video screen. Your steering wheel will have a screen on it, nevermind looking out the windshield.
didn't help I'm reading what is turning out to be a bunch of garbage - David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules not sure how this ended up in the philosophy section, hardly rigid, hardly deep thinking, hardly any resolve, but VERY observational....i'll save that rant for another time...but what was clear
out in this part of Ireland, tour driver says, only 3 baptisms in this area this year, only 1 kid off to the national college, everyone is leaving for opportunity (in the "virtual world" to create their own "thread") and these at 70% vacation homes are and will be eventually; a ghost town.
out there, without a data plan, with only connection to yourself, humans and planet earth the thread of "virtual reality" flowing on, here, anywhere, is mind boggling stupid when you think about (i'll give Graeber that on general Bureaucracy, and consider Twitter and Facebook (for example) social Bureaucracy)
so here's the negativity - people vacation, take short breaks to enjoy reality, but spend most their time in their heads (threads). social media is not social, it's in your heads.
final negativity - some guy was reading a newspaper the other day in the subway (back in NYC), the cartoon was a guy on a laptop with the angle of death (as IS IS (being x being is not being ideology) sucking the guy into the laptop to his death. The future is Pokoemon Go and random mass shootings. That's the future.
but don't worry, we'll track your thinking through digital Bureaucracy and eventually we'll know what google searches, what minecraft games, videos, archinect posts, yadada will indicate when you became radicalized.
when you didn't mind your fucking gap (reality/virtual)- Bureaucracy of social media will ensure this.
Pokemon Go is not the future. It's broken all records these past several days because this is the most nostalgia-driven and accessible product the Pokemon Company (and Nintendo at large for that matter) has ever released. Its the perfect example of a company hitting an IP's major demographic exactly where they live (their cell phones).
The content of Pokemon Go is nothing remarkable. Beyond this initial spike of mass nostalgia, the app will slowly dribble down to normal levels of usage.
I'm off for a pint as well. Maybe I'll find some new Pokemon on the way...
Just got back from a twenty mile trail ride in the Santa Monica mountains on a Saturday. There were kids, walking, in the landscape, way further from the trailheads than I've ever seen them. I'm astonished - any smartphone app that can get people outside is okay by me.
olaf, cities form around commerce. port cities were huge when that was the only way to move goods. when they built the railroad, cities formed around train stops. when they built the interstate, those cities centers moved out to the interstate exit. today, if you want to buy a pair of jeans, you don't go to the port to get the jeans off a boat. you don't go to the train station. you don't even go to the big box store on the interstate. you go to amazon, and in order for amazon to work, you need ups and a data stream. those cities won't continue to exist without the infrastructure they need for regular daily commerce to function.
lots of people felt bad when they lost their local hardware stores and their local downtown emptied after the interstate brought in walmart and home depot. the same arguments were made, where the personal interaction was gone and all that. we can't go back though.
i guess for jean, nostalgia means pokemon. for you it means life before internet?
Agreed Schoon- I read somewhere that Niantec actually released another augmented reality game, upon which Pokemon Go was built. It never did as well. I don't think the technology is the main reason people play, though it's pretty amazing.
Janosh - it's great. I've been trying to get my boyfriend to go see the De Young and Ocean Beach ever since we moved up to the bay. It took a single article talking about how Golden Gate Park and SF's beaches were swarming with rare Pokemon to convince him to make a trip with me.
tintt- babyyyy steps.
curtkram- i'm sure subconsciously, that's part of it. it's hard to draw a fair comparison, but I think it's also a reminder of the magic we felt when we could first discover another world with another purpose. Not sure if you guys were into Sim City, but playing Pokemon would be like a kid version of that. On a deeper level, the nostalgia possibly comes from a time when technology and globalization were first shaping us. From Pavlov's perspective, maybe we were conditioned from an early age to catch 'em all?? It's just a reflex now.
...any smartphone app that can get people outside is okay by me.
that's a fucked up statement, but I get it.
I think we're just having fun with it. There's nothing to really read into. It's just nostalgic..
fun, nothing to read into it, just like madness, nothing to read into it.
curt - I got ya, but commerce will eventually be a port in everyone's mind. currency will be thought. you will have to share anything real as long as the last of the super rich let their real estate be shared.
AR with nostalgia, not sure why i didn't think of that one.
what about Leisure Suit Larry for the looser - AR chicks at the bar, but they are not really there and they would never even respond to your lame questions.
List of banned episodes
EP038
Known as the "seizure episode", this episode has been banned worldwide after airing only once in Japan. One particular scene of this episode had a series of flashing lights, which caused a total of approximately 685 Japanese children, 375 girls and 310 boys to be sent to the hospital with symptoms of epilepsy. The show went on hiatus for four months, delayed the episodes Holiday Hi-Jynx and Snow Way Out!, and cancelled the airing of the New Year's Eve special. The episode also forced the producers to go back through the previous episodes and dim the lighting on them so as not to cause an accident of this magnitude again. As a result of this episode, Porygon and its evolutions, Porygon2 and Porygon-Z, have not made any appearances in the anime since EP038 except in brief cameos.
List of unaired episodes
It's New Year's Eve! Pocket Monsters Encore
This episode was scheduled to be broadcast December 31, 1997, between Holiday Hi-Jynx and Snow Way Out!. However, following the EP038 incident, the schedule was re-organized and this episode was never actually aired. No trailer for this episode has ever been seen, nor is any further information known apart from its Japanese title.
AG101 (unaired)
This episode was scheduled to be broadcast on November 4, 2004. However, not long before, a devastating earthquake struck Japan. Believing it would have been insensitive to air an episode about earthquakes mere weeks after the disaster, it was pulled from the air. The episode and the moves Earthquake, Fissure and Magnitude were subsequently banned. Because the episode never aired, Barboach instead debuted in The Great Eight Fate!, but not in a major role.
BW023 (unaired) and BW024 (unaired)
This two-part saga of Team Rocket facing off with Team Plasma was postponed due to the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan almost a week before the first half was supposed to air. They were expected to air at a later date because of their significance to the series and TV Tokyo's word on the matter. As the episodes have yet to air in Japan, dubs of the episode have yet to be shown around the world. While the episodes were simply skipped in Japan, the Pokémon Company International edited the dubbed version of A Venipede Stampede! to remove the cliffhanger ending that set up the story, and all regions aired Battling for the Love of Bug-Types! followed by Emolga the Irresistible! instead. As of Team Plasma's Pokémon Power Plot!, it appears these episodes have been retconned out of continuity, making it unlikely that they will ever air or be shown in a normal manner.
Banned episodes in the English dub
Six episodes have been banned in the United States.
List of banned episodes
Note: the reasons given below may not have been corroborated officially.
Beauty and the Beach
This episode was initially banned when the episodes were first dubbed for airing in the United States. During 2000, the episode was finally dubbed and aired twice before disappearing once again. It was banned because James wore an inflatable body suit to give him large breasts in order to win a beauty contest. An elderly man also stares at Misty's breasts, and in the original Japanese says that he will be looking forward to having fun with her in a few years. It also appears to be retconned out of continuity with the English dub, although Brutella is seen in the following episode.
EP035
This episode was banned due to the prevalent usage of handguns throughout the episode. The Safari Zone warden points a gun at Ash's head, and even shoots the gun at Team Rocket. The banning of this episode left a major plot hole and a continuity error in the English dub, as this was the episode where Ash captured all 30 of his Tauros. As this is the Safari Zone episode, it also makes the Safari Zone unseen in the English anime, though it is mentioned in the two episodes that took place before it.
Holiday Hi-Jynx
After this episode aired, a woman named Carole Boston Weatherford wrote an article stating that Jynx, which was featured prominently in the episode, is a negative stereotype of African-Americans related to characters in The Story of Little Black Sambo. Soon afterward, the episode was pulled from rotation and is not believed to have aired since 2000. Despite this, the episode was available on VHS, and was also available on the original Indigo DVD boxset (however, it is not on the current box set). It is no longer mentioned on Pokémon.com, but was (albeit lacking pictures of Jynx) before April 2013. Also, it was added to the rotation on Boomerang in 2011, and still was included in Cartoon Network's online streaming services. Additionally, no restrictions were placed on this episode in Europe. This episode has also been banned in South Korea. This episode is still banned even after the Japanese re-airing of the Christmas Eve episode of Pokémon Smash!, in which Jynx was recolored to match what she currently looks like in the Pokémon games.
Stage Fight! and The Mandarin Island Miss Match
These Orange Islands episodes were banned since April 2013 simply because of a small cameo by Jynx. They are not available on Netflix and are no longer even mentioned on Pokémon.com. They also are not available on the re-release of the Orange Islands DVD box set. They are also banned in India.
EP250
This episode was also banned due to the large focus on Jynx. Unlike the previous episodes, this one has never aired in English. Due to the episode not having the redesigned Jynx with purple skin, it was banned and has never been seen outside of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
Banned episodes in South Korea
These episodes were banned from airing in South Korea, causing South Korean continuity errors in the anime's run. Generally the banned episodes contained overt references to Japanese culture; however, the last banned episodes occurred during Advanced Generation. Furthermore, episodes EP260 to EP274 simply were never aired.
isn't most of this parody! there were actual Christian sites, less dramatic that essentially said same thing, and not Parody, that one religion in a certain country that will go unnamed because you know making fun of stupidity in that is a culture, is wrong these days (trending)...
so I saw a bunch of NYU numbskulls standing in a circle looking at their phones, tapping frantically, talking about funny named creatures, but no eye contact
....if I wasnt on my way home and smelled funny like a homeless man, I would of jumped in the middle of their circle of numbskulls and dropped my pants.
Pokemon Go
AR goes mainstream. It's the future.
had an "AR FUN" app that came with my sony xperia m4 that edited dinosaurs and other nonsense into photos and videos in real time. deleted that junk and never looked back. I guess it's cool that people who were into pokemon cards now have a phone version, but I never liked pokemon and for me this is just like the bloatware that came with my phone.
"the newest way to get hit by oncoming traffic" Stephen Colbert
Someone needs to write that article.
And in our fad-following image based society, it's a fad.
Pretty easy to guess what Guy Debord and cohort might have thought about the game, and probably AR and social media in general. Here's the first six 'theses' from 'Society of the Spectacle'. Emphasis is mine...
1.
In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.
2.
The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.
3.
The spectacle presents itself simultaneously as all of society, as part of society, and as instrument of unification. As a part of society it is specifically the sector which concentrates all gazing and all consciousness. Due to the very fact that this sector is separate, it is the common ground of the deceived gaze and of false consciousness, and the unification it achieves is nothing but an official language of generalized separation.
4.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images.
5.
The spectacle cannot be understood as an abuse of the world of vision, as a product of the techniques of mass dissemination of images. It is, rather, a Weltanschauung which has become actual, materially translated. It is a world vision which has become objectified.
6.
The spectacle grasped in its totality is both the result and the project of the existing mode of production. It is not a supplement to the real world, an additional decoration. It is the heart of the unrealism of the real society. In all its specific forms, as information or propaganda, as advertisement or direct entertainment consumption, the spectacle is the present model of socially dominant life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choice already made in production and its corollary consumption. The spectacle’s form and content are identically the total justification of the existing system’s conditions and goals. The spectacle is also the permanent presence of this justification, since it occupies the main part of the time lived outside of modern production.
The AR world tends to be envisioned as dystopic for a reason.
But I maintain my long-running prediction that it is the future of architecture.
Fuck you guys, POKEMON IS LIFE.
Cool stuff.
Future of architecture? no way, architects are like stuck in the 50s. Construction and engineering maybe yeah.
I do not pokemon, but from what I've seen, it does not look dystopic. It looks like cuddly little cartoon animals.
My husband came home from work yesterday and said there were 3 pokemon in the backyard. Is it like geocaching? I like geocaching.
As much as I love the game (being a childhood fan of the original games), it's a fad. Most people I know turn the AR feature off to save battery, anyway. archiwutm8, what's your pokedex looking like? So far i'm at 36 seen / 34 caught.
Schoon I'm level 14 with 55 caught and seen.
If i understand it correctly, a setup like pokemon leads to dismiss the environment. The environment merely serves as a context to be dismissed and differed until it is given value by a singular virtual vedette. I am not necessarily saying it is in the nature of AR to do so; it would depend on the game...but, from the point of view of people concerned with environment, I think that much more interesting would be when AR is used to augment it (spnically, visually, etc), to make us notice it more, than to background it and devalorize it. Augmented reality rather than Artificial reality.
Quondam, I think it would be far more interesting if the pokemon-foraging happened through a reading of the semiotics of the place...rather than a contingent and convenient 'crowding'. In that sense, it would be like foraging for acorns, involving one in the process of reading the signs and opening up the environment both sensorially and cognitavely
Hot damn, archiwutm8!
chatter, I wouldn't necessarily call Pokemon Go a great AR game. The AR is good for snapping pictures of pokemon in interesting locations, but that's about it.
At its core it's a geocaching game with AR bolted on to the mechanic of catching pokemon. The main draw of the game is not the AR, but the excitement of exploring your surroundings for the chance of finding new creatures, using those creatures to capture locations, and of course catching em' all.
I don't think the game dismisses the environment at all. If anything it encourages people to go out of their way and notice their environment more. My little brother, who's not the outdoorsy type, went on a 7-mile hike looking for pokemon, and he didn't climb those boulders while staring at his phone the whole time.
I read this over breakfast today: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3061718/pokemon-go-is-quietly-helping-people-discover-their-cities
Schoon... "The environment merely serves as a context to be dismissed and differed until it is given value by a singular virtual vedette. " Differed here is deliberately used. I would argue that crossing a terrain, looking out for the monsters that may be there or not, staring at your phone all the time, does not make one more observant of the environment itself, which is contingently(again, used deliberately: experiencing the place and/or learning about it is totally irrelevant) a host for these pop-ups. It would be different if the narrative of the search had to do intrinsicallly (ie beyond contingency and convenience) with the environment. I guess I would find it much more interesting to pose questions about how, instead of irrelevant characters, we could employ such games to discover from within the environment itself, even a sort of playful anti-guide (unlike tripadvisor or yelp).
That would bring it closer to situationism
The goal to "make one more observant of the environment itself" using an AR phone game sounds like a lofty, abstract idea that doesn't have much base in practice.
Are you talking about educational purposes? As in location tags popping up in certain areas describing the buildings, ecosystem, and land formations of the area? That already exists.
Are you talking about entertainment applications; a narrative based solely on the surrounding environment? Would anyone even want to buy or download such a game, besides history and environmental enthusiasts?
Pokemon Go is successful at teaching people about their environment (as shown in the article tduds posted above) because it does so subtly, as a by-product of exploring for pokemon. Say what you will about how pokemon are "irrelevant creatures," but the brand name attracts the audience that a cut-and-dry geocaching app never could.
Do we even need AR to help connect with our environment? If that's your goal, turn your phone off and go for a walk.
I wrote a fun and engaging app to help people appreciate door hardware more but it never took off.
Its the future - it will be used for wayfinding studies - Autodesk will buy it and it will be another plugin for Revit - accessed by Dynamo for creating forms that follow paths
Schoon "Pokemon Go is successful at teaching people about their environment (as shown in the article tduds posted above) because it does so subtly, as a by-product of exploring for pokemon. "
I was actually sitting next to this guy in the bus who was playing pokemon only 30 minutes ago. He hardly looked up from his phone which showed a flat green field divided by a grid of Streets. I mean, the entire trip, with quite scenic and varied views, he spent staring at the phone.He captured a pokemon who was lingering between the legs of one of the woman passengers; I seriously doubt if it would have made any difference to him whether she was an architectural landmark or a woman who probably had a right to not having phone cameras being directed where it was.
I doubt very much that pokemon is successful in teaching people about their environment; it seems about as successful as Grndr is in at eaching gay men urban planning.
Schoon "Are you talking about educational purposes? ...Are you talking about entertainment applications"
Yes, both. And not necessarily in a way that one might expect. In fact, it might be the very element of the unexpected, of catering to a wish to discover a place vis a vis elements that don't define it in a utilitarian sense.
Schoon: "a narrative based solely on the surrounding environment? Would anyone even want to buy or download such a game, besides history and environmental enthusiasts? "
Why are you being deliberately so unimaginative and putting up limits defined by what you perceive to be a status-quo? How boring at first it sounds at first and that someone would go hunting after insignificant self-referencing virtual marks scattered within a landscape ...and yet, obviously it is not boring for those who play it.
I would see it the other way, that there are many many possibilities that could do with any number of things related to the environment: the kind of vegetation in a city, the combination of sounds peculiar to places , the sites where the number of crimes are highest, where people have sex in the open...etc, that could be worked within the narrative of a virtual hunt, a game
If you think you have the next big geocaching app idea, great! Go make it and change the social landscape. But when you do you'll have to define what it is you're actually talking about.
Frankly, you're imagining an immaterial idea for a game without knowing anything about game design, how games are actually produced, or the climate of the games audience.
My town (Longview, TX) has a typical downtown -- Business/Office traffic during the day and very little going on at night. Last night, I took my girls downtown around 7 to see if we could find some Pokemon, as there are quite a few Pokestops downtown. There were at least 200-300 people walking around downtown in the evening. It felt very alive. Our Main Street Committee is even sponsoring a Meet Up tomorrow night. Of course, this is probably short-lived at this intensity.
Ultimately, the intensity is the fad. I think this is introducing a whole new mobile experience, and will probably open the door to other similar type of experiences. I think it will fall back to a sustainable level, and we will see an uptick in engagement with environment over previous levels, but it won't be near the intensity that we are seeing right now.
I seriously question the value of this "engagement"
It's a fun game I started playing just because it was a much needed moment of brevity in some seriously dark news streak. Kind of fun to stick your head in the sand while you walk around. But I don't think I have ever seen less of the city I was walking in while playing this game.
I think Colbert called it the best new way to get hit by a car. And I certainly feel like it has made the pedestrians of my city way more unpredictable. walking down the sidewalk is crazy right now. you never know who is going to just stop in the flow of traffic to catch a Pokemon and no one is looking at anything but their phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERWcdOOr1A8Ok, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned this yet, but...do you guys remember when all of the kids would line up for an hour at the mall to wait for a new shipment of Pokemon cards?? They would play Pokemon on their pixelated Gameboys for hours traveling through some Pokemon universe slowly accumulated more and more Pokemon, each step of the way training their creatures to do more advanced tricks and evolve. We fed them, fought with them and nurtured them back to health. Then, we grew up.
So I'm an adult now and so are my friends. Some have grown up to become associates at Goldman Sachs, others went to Princeton to get masters degrees in Renaissance history, others are grinding through the 9 to 5 in cities across the world.
However, the moment our furry little friends from childhood came back and showed up in our living rooms, on our beds, in our car and at neighborhood parks, we all came out and gathered as communities to embrace our common childhood friends.
It's not about environment. It's about embracing our past and feeling connection to our communities again. It's nice to walk out again and start conversations with strangers. Just a "hey guys, there's a Pincer over by the library!" is enough to connect.
When we hear about a rare Pokemon lurking around, it's like we suddenly hear that someone has hidden holographic cards for us somewhere nearby...but we have to be quick or it might run away.
It's part of Nintendo's nostalgia campaign, I'm betting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/16/technology/nintendo-nes.html?_r=0
Jean you sum it up well, and I like the "hey, we have real jobs now and go to fancy schools"....but I'm going to be real fucking negative on all this shit, fair warning.
I'm in a part of the world (right now) that only got electricity a wee bit from here in the 1960's. IIreland, believe it or not, obviously not all of Ireland, just various pockets of what the earth looked like thousands of years ago, so they filmed Star Wars there. I declined my data plan, but kept phone and text while on vacation here. It's been nice to not be in the "virtual world" which oddly enough pays my bills. My kids celtic mood ring would show me this "virtual world" causes stress. i'm an architect, besides site visits, nothing I do is REAL.
Call my world a "thread" of "virtual existence".
Checking in on emails, I peak at the subject lines hoping to avoid anxiety, didn't tell all the clients I was on vacation...
my oldest daughter, at 8 years old, a major minecraft junkie has been comparing actual castles to minecraft castles and why minecraft is better...nevermind smelling burnt peat from the bogs. smell is not virtual yet, ha!
in the bus down a windy hill, the bus driver (surely for fun) puts on the front camera. my daughter decides the video screen is more important than looking left out the window. Instead of looking out the window, look at a video screen.
so I imagined a world of kids, like this shit (pokemon), instead of driving looking through the windshield, you're a better driver with a fucking video screen. Your steering wheel will have a screen on it, nevermind looking out the windshield.
didn't help I'm reading what is turning out to be a bunch of garbage - David Graeber's The Utopia of Rules not sure how this ended up in the philosophy section, hardly rigid, hardly deep thinking, hardly any resolve, but VERY observational....i'll save that rant for another time...but what was clear
out in this part of Ireland, tour driver says, only 3 baptisms in this area this year, only 1 kid off to the national college, everyone is leaving for opportunity (in the "virtual world" to create their own "thread") and these at 70% vacation homes are and will be eventually; a ghost town.
out there, without a data plan, with only connection to yourself, humans and planet earth the thread of "virtual reality" flowing on, here, anywhere, is mind boggling stupid when you think about (i'll give Graeber that on general Bureaucracy, and consider Twitter and Facebook (for example) social Bureaucracy)
so here's the negativity - people vacation, take short breaks to enjoy reality, but spend most their time in their heads (threads). social media is not social, it's in your heads.
final negativity - some guy was reading a newspaper the other day in the subway (back in NYC), the cartoon was a guy on a laptop with the angle of death (as IS IS (being x being is not being ideology) sucking the guy into the laptop to his death. The future is Pokoemon Go and random mass shootings. That's the future.
but don't worry, we'll track your thinking through digital Bureaucracy and eventually we'll know what google searches, what minecraft games, videos, archinect posts, yadada will indicate when you became radicalized.
when you didn't mind your fucking gap (reality/virtual)- Bureaucracy of social media will ensure this.
i'm going to go have a Pint.
I think we're just having fun with it. There's nothing to really read into. It's just nostalgic..
Well said Jean.
Pokemon Go is not the future. It's broken all records these past several days because this is the most nostalgia-driven and accessible product the Pokemon Company (and Nintendo at large for that matter) has ever released. Its the perfect example of a company hitting an IP's major demographic exactly where they live (their cell phones).
The content of Pokemon Go is nothing remarkable. Beyond this initial spike of mass nostalgia, the app will slowly dribble down to normal levels of usage.
I'm off for a pint as well. Maybe I'll find some new Pokemon on the way...
Just got back from a twenty mile trail ride in the Santa Monica mountains on a Saturday. There were kids, walking, in the landscape, way further from the trailheads than I've ever seen them. I'm astonished - any smartphone app that can get people outside is okay by me.
It would be cool if someone could make an app that gets you points for pulling weeds or picking up litter! <-- feel free to steal that idea.
olaf, cities form around commerce. port cities were huge when that was the only way to move goods. when they built the railroad, cities formed around train stops. when they built the interstate, those cities centers moved out to the interstate exit. today, if you want to buy a pair of jeans, you don't go to the port to get the jeans off a boat. you don't go to the train station. you don't even go to the big box store on the interstate. you go to amazon, and in order for amazon to work, you need ups and a data stream. those cities won't continue to exist without the infrastructure they need for regular daily commerce to function.
lots of people felt bad when they lost their local hardware stores and their local downtown emptied after the interstate brought in walmart and home depot. the same arguments were made, where the personal interaction was gone and all that. we can't go back though.
i guess for jean, nostalgia means pokemon. for you it means life before internet?
Agreed Schoon- I read somewhere that Niantec actually released another augmented reality game, upon which Pokemon Go was built. It never did as well. I don't think the technology is the main reason people play, though it's pretty amazing.
Janosh - it's great. I've been trying to get my boyfriend to go see the De Young and Ocean Beach ever since we moved up to the bay. It took a single article talking about how Golden Gate Park and SF's beaches were swarming with rare Pokemon to convince him to make a trip with me.
tintt- babyyyy steps.
curtkram- i'm sure subconsciously, that's part of it. it's hard to draw a fair comparison, but I think it's also a reminder of the magic we felt when we could first discover another world with another purpose. Not sure if you guys were into Sim City, but playing Pokemon would be like a kid version of that. On a deeper level, the nostalgia possibly comes from a time when technology and globalization were first shaping us. From Pavlov's perspective, maybe we were conditioned from an early age to catch 'em all?? It's just a reflex now.
...any smartphone app that can get people outside is okay by me.
that's a fucked up statement, but I get it.
I think we're just having fun with it. There's nothing to really read into. It's just nostalgic..
fun, nothing to read into it, just like madness, nothing to read into it.
curt - I got ya, but commerce will eventually be a port in everyone's mind. currency will be thought. you will have to share anything real as long as the last of the super rich let their real estate be shared.
AR with nostalgia, not sure why i didn't think of that one.
what about Leisure Suit Larry for the looser - AR chicks at the bar, but they are not really there and they would never even respond to your lame questions.
accidents, crimes, deaths linked to pokemon GO. http://www.syracuse.com/us-news/index.ssf/2016/07/pokemon_go_dangerous_every_crime_accident_death_shooting_linked_to_game.html
this one is funny. https://youtu.be/6-RerthVB54
I played a few hours of Pokemon Go today with my brothers when they came to visit. Tons of fun! Lots of Magikarp at the Yards Brewery.
Israeli Army Identifies a New Threat: 'Pokemon Go' http://mobile.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/01/world/middleeast/ap-ml-israel-pokemon-go.html?_r=0
Iranians hunt Pokemon despite ban http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranians-hunt-pokemon-despite-ban/
On July 20, Saudi Arabia's top clerical body renewed a 15-year-old edict that the Pokemon game franchise is un-Islamic. http://m.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-News/Iran-becomes-first-country-to-put-a-stop-to-Pokemon-Go-463493
List of banned episodes EP038 Known as the "seizure episode", this episode has been banned worldwide after airing only once in Japan. One particular scene of this episode had a series of flashing lights, which caused a total of approximately 685 Japanese children, 375 girls and 310 boys to be sent to the hospital with symptoms of epilepsy. The show went on hiatus for four months, delayed the episodes Holiday Hi-Jynx and Snow Way Out!, and cancelled the airing of the New Year's Eve special. The episode also forced the producers to go back through the previous episodes and dim the lighting on them so as not to cause an accident of this magnitude again. As a result of this episode, Porygon and its evolutions, Porygon2 and Porygon-Z, have not made any appearances in the anime since EP038 except in brief cameos. List of unaired episodes It's New Year's Eve! Pocket Monsters Encore This episode was scheduled to be broadcast December 31, 1997, between Holiday Hi-Jynx and Snow Way Out!. However, following the EP038 incident, the schedule was re-organized and this episode was never actually aired. No trailer for this episode has ever been seen, nor is any further information known apart from its Japanese title. AG101 (unaired) This episode was scheduled to be broadcast on November 4, 2004. However, not long before, a devastating earthquake struck Japan. Believing it would have been insensitive to air an episode about earthquakes mere weeks after the disaster, it was pulled from the air. The episode and the moves Earthquake, Fissure and Magnitude were subsequently banned. Because the episode never aired, Barboach instead debuted in The Great Eight Fate!, but not in a major role. BW023 (unaired) and BW024 (unaired) This two-part saga of Team Rocket facing off with Team Plasma was postponed due to the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan almost a week before the first half was supposed to air. They were expected to air at a later date because of their significance to the series and TV Tokyo's word on the matter. As the episodes have yet to air in Japan, dubs of the episode have yet to be shown around the world. While the episodes were simply skipped in Japan, the Pokémon Company International edited the dubbed version of A Venipede Stampede! to remove the cliffhanger ending that set up the story, and all regions aired Battling for the Love of Bug-Types! followed by Emolga the Irresistible! instead. As of Team Plasma's Pokémon Power Plot!, it appears these episodes have been retconned out of continuity, making it unlikely that they will ever air or be shown in a normal manner. Banned episodes in the English dub Six episodes have been banned in the United States. List of banned episodes Note: the reasons given below may not have been corroborated officially. Beauty and the Beach This episode was initially banned when the episodes were first dubbed for airing in the United States. During 2000, the episode was finally dubbed and aired twice before disappearing once again. It was banned because James wore an inflatable body suit to give him large breasts in order to win a beauty contest. An elderly man also stares at Misty's breasts, and in the original Japanese says that he will be looking forward to having fun with her in a few years. It also appears to be retconned out of continuity with the English dub, although Brutella is seen in the following episode. EP035 This episode was banned due to the prevalent usage of handguns throughout the episode. The Safari Zone warden points a gun at Ash's head, and even shoots the gun at Team Rocket. The banning of this episode left a major plot hole and a continuity error in the English dub, as this was the episode where Ash captured all 30 of his Tauros. As this is the Safari Zone episode, it also makes the Safari Zone unseen in the English anime, though it is mentioned in the two episodes that took place before it. Holiday Hi-Jynx After this episode aired, a woman named Carole Boston Weatherford wrote an article stating that Jynx, which was featured prominently in the episode, is a negative stereotype of African-Americans related to characters in The Story of Little Black Sambo. Soon afterward, the episode was pulled from rotation and is not believed to have aired since 2000. Despite this, the episode was available on VHS, and was also available on the original Indigo DVD boxset (however, it is not on the current box set). It is no longer mentioned on Pokémon.com, but was (albeit lacking pictures of Jynx) before April 2013. Also, it was added to the rotation on Boomerang in 2011, and still was included in Cartoon Network's online streaming services. Additionally, no restrictions were placed on this episode in Europe. This episode has also been banned in South Korea. This episode is still banned even after the Japanese re-airing of the Christmas Eve episode of Pokémon Smash!, in which Jynx was recolored to match what she currently looks like in the Pokémon games. Stage Fight! and The Mandarin Island Miss Match These Orange Islands episodes were banned since April 2013 simply because of a small cameo by Jynx. They are not available on Netflix and are no longer even mentioned on Pokémon.com. They also are not available on the re-release of the Orange Islands DVD box set. They are also banned in India. EP250 This episode was also banned due to the large focus on Jynx. Unlike the previous episodes, this one has never aired in English. Due to the episode not having the redesigned Jynx with purple skin, it was banned and has never been seen outside of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Banned episodes in South Korea These episodes were banned from airing in South Korea, causing South Korean continuity errors in the anime's run. Generally the banned episodes contained overt references to Japanese culture; however, the last banned episodes occurred during Advanced Generation. Furthermore, episodes EP260 to EP274 simply were never aired.
Pokémon Creator Admits Games are Anti-Christian, Aimed Towards Satanists. http://www.p4rgaming.com/pokemon-creator-admits-games-aimed-towards-satanists/
http://blackbag.gawker.com/pokemon-go-is-a-government-surveillance-psyop-conspirac-1783461240 Pokemon is a government surveillance psyop.....ok my work is done here. LOL....History Channel I am waiting, PM me!
Olaf just a heads up, P4R is an onion-esque satire site.
That seizure episode is real though, I only knew about it once the Simpsons parodied it:
isn't most of this parody! there were actual Christian sites, less dramatic that essentially said same thing, and not Parody, that one religion in a certain country that will go unnamed because you know making fun of stupidity in that is a culture, is wrong these days (trending)...
is Pokemon replacing the spiritual with the virtual? zombie apocalypse - end times baby end times.
so I saw a bunch of NYU numbskulls standing in a circle looking at their phones, tapping frantically, talking about funny named creatures, but no eye contact ....if I wasnt on my way home and smelled funny like a homeless man, I would of jumped in the middle of their circle of numbskulls and dropped my pants.
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