The Geography of Pok\'emon GO: Beneficial and Problematic Effects on Places and Movement

TL;DR

This study examines how Pokémon GO influences geographic patterns of place and movement, revealing biases, mobility shifts, and safety risks, with implications for designing more equitable location-based games.

Contribution

It provides a large-scale analysis of Pokémon GO's geographic effects, highlighting biases and mobility changes, and suggests design strategies to mitigate geographic inequalities.

Findings

Reinforces existing urban and demographic biases

Induces large-scale shifts in human mobility patterns

Identifies geographically-linked safety risks

Abstract

The widespread popularity of Pok\'emon GO presents the first opportunity to observe the geographic effects of location-based gaming at scale. This paper reports the results of a mixed methods study of the geography of Pok\'emon GO that includes a five-country field survey of 375 Pok\'emon GO players and a large scale geostatistical analysis of game elements. Focusing on the key geographic themes of places and movement, we find that the design of Pok\'emon GO reinforces existing geographically-linked biases (e.g. the game advantages urban areas and neighborhoods with smaller minority populations), that Pok\'emon GO may have instigated a relatively rare large-scale shift in global human mobility patterns, and that Pok\'emon GO has geographically-linked safety risks, but not those typically emphasized by the media. Our results point to geographic design implications for future systems in this space such as a means through which the geographic biases present in Pok\'emon GO may be counteracted.