The following talk was presented at the public seminar series 'Media@Sydney', October 14, The University of Sydney, Australia

1. The University of Sydney Page 1
Playful and Playable
Locations
Rethinking Pokémon GO
and Ingress
Kyle Moore
PhD Candidate, Department of Media and
Communications
Twitter: @kylejmoore

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What is Pokémon Go?

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User Engagement Over Time
Source: Kawa and Katz (2016)

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Foundations of Location-Based Gaming
– Older games involved
checking in or broadcasting
of location
– Mobile interface, and using
material environment as the
site of play
– ‘Pervasive Game’ as
dominant early discourse
– ‘Blurring’ of boundaries
between play and non-play
– Smartphones with GPS and
location-aware capabilities
changes landscape
– Introduction of ‘augmented
reality’ in last few years

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Informed by On Going Doctoral Research
– Doctoral research, an
ethnography of Sydney-
based Ingress players
– Ingress, also developed by
Niantic Labs, while still a
subsidiary of Google
– Team-based
Resistance vs Enlightened
– Research explores the
sociocultural and material
circumstance underscoring
urban play

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‘Situated Play’
– The notion that all play is
underscored by socio-cultural
and material circumstance
– Draws from HCI ‘situated
actions’ (Suchman, 1987; 2007)
– ‘Situated Gaming’
– Yates and Littleton (1999);
gaming within ‘cultural
niches’
– Apperley (2010); tensions
between local and global
and embodied players within
this space
– See also Chess (2014) for
Ingress as regional and
global

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Location, Location,
Location
Representing, Interacting, and Playing
with Location,

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Representing Location: Maps

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Representing Location: Portals and Pokestops

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Capturing Location Vs Capturing Pokémon
– Each game presents a
different mode of engaging
with ‘location’
– Based around ‘capture’
– To capture and link
locations vs capturing
Pokémon
– Pokémon location based on
‘biomes’ – location is
variable, software-sorted,
and subject to updates
– Portal locations user-
generated submissions
approved via submission
criteria and process

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Software-Sorting Location
– Ingress Portals are user
generated – roughly 3,500
in Sydney and 200 on
Sydney University alone
– Data set of Portals subject
to algorithmic filtering based
on interaction and use
– Filtered Portal data base
becomes PokéStops and
Gym Locations
– Each hold specific value in
regards to resource
management and extraction
– See Graham (2005) for
software-sorting

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Portals and PokéStops: Location as Resource
Management
– Portals and PokéStops act primarily
as a mode of resource extraction
– ‘Spin’ PokéStops to gain items
Pokémon Go
– ‘Hack’ Portals to gain items in
Ingress
– Locations gain in-game value based
on these elements – strategic and
sociocultural value is not fixed, and
subject to ongoing negotiations

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Pokémon Gyms and PokéCoins
– Gyms and portals can be
‘captured’ – ownership
alters value of location
– Subject to change e.g.
team based territories
which become implicated
in larger social gaming
practices
– Gyms as a form of in-
game revenue – can gain
one PokéCoin per
Pokémon present at gym
once per day.

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Producing Location
Immaterial Labour of Ingress impacting
how we understand Pokemon Go and
value of location

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Crowdsourcing Portals
– With PokéStops as algorithmically filtered
Ingress Portals – the production of Portals
becomes important to understand Pokémon Go
– Portals are submitted via users – confirm
location, submit photo
– Portal criteria from Niantic Labs:
– A Location with a cool story, a place in history
of educational value
– A cool piece of art of unique architecture
– A Hidden gem or hyper-local spot
– Public libraries
– Public places of worship
– Cartographic practices of users are a form of
immaterial labour, mapping for Google and
Niantic
– Data sets of locations as valuable – as evident
by the release of Pokémon Go

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‘Cultural Heritage’ and Location
– Criteria of Portals works towards an idea of ‘cultural
heritage’
– Location-based gaming grounded in a perceived
authorship of what constitutes as culture
– Sites of historic or cultural importance become
legitimised and further valued via process of
incorporation into game
– Portal criteria and user submission present a form of
crowdsourced knowledge regarding ‘culture’ of location
– E.g. University of Sydney portal images portray a history
and focus on educational function of buildings
– Portraying specific functionality and tensions between
use of location

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The Cultural Value of Locations

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Contested Histories
– Alternative histories and forms of cultural heritage may
be told via street art (Moore, 2015a; Stark, 2016).
– Sites of contentious history, subject to colonisation,
preference specific landmarks and ignore traditional
landowners,
– e.g. Monuments to traditional landowners at Opera
House ignored, as are indigenous street art in favour of
game-focused murals in Glebe
– In game locations are not valuable as in game and
playable objects, but present a playful mode of engaging
with a cultural heritage.
– To read these locations critically, as produced via
immaterial labour is to challenge further legitimising
specific modes of reading place

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Curating and Editing Location
– With the success of Pokémon Go, there
is more chances to ‘edit’ the
representation of these locations
– Photo comps around recent global event,
Anomaly
– Removing PokéStops from Sydney parks
based on council and resident co-
operation and contacting Niantic
– There are implications here for who
‘owns’ and manages these spaces then
– ‘Public’ spaces digital overlays owned
and operated by proprietary companies

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Labour and Leisure
– To play Ingress and
Pokemon Go is to engage
with forms of play as a
mode of labour (playbour)
– Early communities as
‘valuable’ in re-thinking
modes of engaging with the
urban, foundation for further
re-reading of city spaces
– As such, we need to think
critically about who has the
time and means to engage
in such practices

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The Politics of Public
Play
Play can no longer be thought of
frivolous, outside the everyday, but rather
as tied up with the politics of everyday
public space

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Everyday Mobility
– Moving through public
space – safety as a concern
– Those who are able to
move freely – fluid work
schedules
– Those who work in ‘portal
dense’ areas – regular meet
ups in CBD areas
– Built environment density,
access to transport, etc all
contribute to uneven power
distributions within
community
– Being critical of ‘the urban’
in urban play

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Survey of Player Demographics
Winegarner (2015) surveyed 1,250
Ingress players via Facebook, G+,
in game communication, and
regional/local hangouts

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Everyday Locations and Routines
– No specific ‘marginalisation’
occurred during fieldwork
– ‘Outside’ life, e.g. everyday
social and domestic
responsibilities come into
play
– Portals at playgrounds –
intersection of children’s
free play and parents desire
to play Ingress
– ‘Walkies’ missions to
incorporate daily routine of
dog walking in to play

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‘Walkies’ Missions in inner west
Socio-Cultural Functions of Location
– In performing everyday
routines alongside play, in-
game locations take on and
reflect broader socio-
cultural functions of space
and place
– Parks as place of public
leisure, for child and also
animal play – mapped to
become grounds for digital
play
– Function of parks based on
broader socio-economic
boundaries of ‘suburbs’

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Socio-Cultural Functions of Location
– Suburbs, regions, and modes of
engaging with structures
surrounding place and space
– E.g. CBD lunch time gatherings
as reflection of greater mobility
and built environment density
– Inner suburbs leisure revolving
around access to adequate
transport
– Outer suburbs spread,
inaccessible, located in
traditional spaces of play e.g.
parks

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Examining Clusters
– Clusters of portals often
submitted around socio-
cultural points of meeting
– Cafes, bars as primary sites
of gathering
– With Ingress – focus on
stillness and staying in one
location
– With Pokémon Go – focus
on proximity to Stops, but
fluid to engage with variable
location of hidden Pokémon

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Problems of ‘Clusters’
– Broader implications of
‘leisure’ and space – a park
is for play – but mobile
mediated play – to the
extent it has been enacted
becomes problematic
– Modes of engaging with
public space – sitting still vs
wandering around
– Public space vs commercial
space of the game –
tensions emerge around
appropriate use and
function of space made
visible by excess use

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Farms, Fracks, and Lures
– Clusters also have specific
economic functions
– Resource management intersects
with socio-cultural functions of
space
– Attention has been given to in-app
purchasing for Pokémon Go
– Lures: lure Pokémon to location
– Fracks: multiplies resources
extracted
– Farms: social gathering with
purpose of resource extraction and
trade

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Pay to Play, Pay to Stay
– Farms – specific socio-
economic practice dealing with
everyday routines and functions
of space – e.g. in CBD for city
workers
– Fracks and lures, in application
purchases
– Rather than moving through
space, exchange of currency for
resources and ability to ‘sit still’

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Socio-Economic Value of Locations

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Conclusion: Playful and Playable Locations
– Locations are simultaneously playful and playable
– Playful, in the sense that they we playfully engage with
locations – location as linked to fluid construction of
space and place – it is ‘at play’ and fluid
– Playable, in that they become encoded into the game
process, becoming objects of socio-economic function
towards the game’s goal
– Playful and playable are subject to broader socio-cultural
and material circumstance that constitute ‘the urban’
– However, our incorporation via play, as a practice,
results in new means of understanding the urban and the
conditions that produce it.

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References
– Apperley, T. (2010). Gaming Rhythms: Play and Counterplay from the Situated to the Global. Amsterdam: Institute
of network cultures.
– Chess, S. (2014). Augmented regionalism: Ingress as geomediated gaming narrative. Information, Communication
& Society, 17(9), 1105–1117.
– Graham, S. D. N. (2005). Software-sorted geographies. Progress in Human Geography, 29(5), 562–580.
– Katz, L., & Kawa, L. (2016, August 22). The three charts that show that Pokemon Go is in decline. Retrieved
October 14, 2016, from http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/pokemon-go-is-in-decline--these-charts-
tell-the-story-20160822-gqyo61.html
– Moore, K. (2015a). Painting the Town Blue and Green: Curating Street Art through Urban Mobile Gaming. M/C
Journal, 18(4). Retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1010
– Moore, K. (2015b). Playing With Portals: Rethinking Urban Play with Ingress. Analog Game Studies, 2(7).
Retrieved from http://analoggamestudies.org/2015/11/playing-with-portals-rethinking-urban-play-with-ingress/
– Shaw, A. (2012). Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity. New Media & Society,
14(1), 28–44.
– Stark, E. (2016). Playful Places: Uncovering Hidden Heritage with Ingress. In M. Willson & T. Leaver (Eds.),
Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The Changing Gaming Landscape. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
– Suchman, L. (2006). Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions (2 edition). Cambridge ; New
York: Cambridge University Press.
– Suchman, L. A. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge
University Press.
– Winegarner, B. (2015, September 19). The 2015 Ingress demographic survey. Retrieved from
https://medium.com/@beth_winegarner/the-2015-ingress-demographic-survey-6e7181790069#.oqensfmm8
– Yates, S. J., & Littleton, K. (1999). Understanding Computer GameCultures: A situated approach. Information,
Communication & Society, 2(4), 566–583.