Pokémon GO: Mobile media play, place-making, and the digital wayfarer

This special commentary for Mobile Media and Communication seeks to put these divisive debates in context. Through the lens of Pokémon GO, we can understand and critically interpret a variety of issues involved in the politics and practice of playful mobile media. These issues move across debates around location-aware technologies in constructions of privacy (Coldewey, 2016; Cunningham, 2016), risk and surveillance (Machkovech, 2016; Mishra, 2016) to the role of mobile media in commodifying (Evangelho, 2016) and expanding the social, cultural, and creative dimensions of play (Isbister, 2016; Mäyrä, 2012). As the mobile media and game theorists in this commentary highlight, the game sits at the nexus of several technological and cultural trajectories: the playful turn; the ubiquity of location-based and haptic mobile media (and apps and games); innovative game design; the effects of digital mapping technologies; the intertwining of performative media games and art; our individual and collective memories of playworlds and transmedia universes; the increasing importance of issues concerning privacy and risk in public spaces; the ongoing augmentation of place and space; and the politics embedded in this hybrid experience of the lifeworld.