Behavioural science and Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go runs on the curiosity of players’ willingness to go outdoors and explore what’s out there to be caught.

      

Don’t be surprised if you are caught unaware by people on the street paying more attention to their phones than to their surroundings—they are most likely engaged in a desperate bid to catch a (potentially rare) Pokémon at a local chowk.

A paradox of augmented reality, Pokémon Go is the latest mobile game offering from Niantic Inc., a company owned by Alphabet (formerly Google), The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, the Japanese video game giant responsible for everything from popular consoles to iconic games (Mario, The Legend of Zelda).

Pokémon Go is yet to release in India, but has been released in Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK and Japan on iOS and Android. Not ones to be left behind in the Internet mania over the game, Indians have downloaded and installed it nonetheless.

The genesis of Pokémon (the concept, not the fictional creatures) came originally from Game Freak and what is now known as the Pokémon Company in 1995, and centres around a quest known to this writer: research.

Indeed, the primary purpose of Pokémon Go is to assist researchers in Pokémon (Pokémon Studies, if you will) by catching as many varieties as possible. Rewards can be gained through battles with other Pokémon (at gyms run by powerful trainers), in which the victorious Pokémon gains “experience points” and eventually evolves into a higher version of itself with greater combat ability.Pokémon Go uses real-time geospatial data to place Pokémon in the players’ immediate environments—this could either be your house, a grocery shop, your office or any other place.

This brings us back to the augmented reality paradox that can be ascribed to Pokémon Go. People have been found to pay less attention to their immediate surroundings (the real ones) and more to the “reality” that is created within the game.Given that the game has high realism and has become transcendentally popular (more active time used than WhatsApp, Instagram and Tinder), it would be only natural to view the behaviour of Pokémon Go players from the lens of behavioural science.

First, what might be an underlying “human” factor behind the success ofPokémon Go even before a global launch? The theory of human motivation suggests that innate curiosity is parallel to basic physiological needs (such as hunger, thirst, sex and sleep). Such curiosity has foundations in evolutionary theory, which encourages (or perhaps compels) us to explore a little further than what we already know. Pokémon Go runs on the curiosity of players’ willingness to go outdoors and explore what’s out there to be caught. The interface further informs users about nearby Pokémon, but does not signal the precise location—implying that you would have to physically travel for yourself to find out. The “Nearby” feature allows a user to discover which Pokémon are lurking around your area and local place of worship (and these are commonly designated as Poké Stops, where one can recharge their supply of Poké Balls and other resources).Lastly, the Pokémon franchise has been around for the past two decades, continually churning out new interfaces and merchandise. This may lead to high subjectivity in valuations of Pokémon.

Even as eager fans await the official release of Pokémon Go in India, there is little that can stop the onslaught of success that the game has achieved thus far. 

With such wild popularity come wildly speculative conspiracy theories, but we all know now that there’s only one purpose to life: we gotta catch ’em all!