Pokemon GO, Eleven Days Later
It is not a game without flaws. So many flaws! The fact that it crashes frequently is amazingly annoying, and it is not improved by the fact that I have to reboot my phone in order to get a good, clean start. My phone has been badly behaved, lately, so it doesn't always reboot cleanly. This may or may not be the fault of Pokemon GO. There are all sorts of issues with the game mechanics, I suppose. I am not a gamer, and cannot evaluate this.
The thing about it, though, is that for eleven days in a row, it has gotten me to take at least one ten-minute walk. I am walking a kilometer or two more per day than I ever did, before. Now, a kilometer is about 1300 steps, so vastly short of that 10,000 steps that everybody was all het up about some years ago. But that's still 1500 to 2000 more steps than I would have taken without it. This can't be a bad thing. (Ok, the tripping over curbs, that is a bad thing. But I'm getting better at avoiding that.)
I've seen several think pieces on Pokemon GO which hold forth in alarm about various aspects of the game. It's possible they get more sensible several paragraphs in, but I tend to bounce out after the first paragraph or two sound the alarm about how there are fewer Pokestops in poor neighborhoods because poor neighborhoods have less public art and fewer institutions. I think that there is an interesting article to be written, here, but the ones I've bounced out of all seem to think that the problem is Pokemon GO, rather than the fact that too many of our people live in poor neighborhoods with few amenities. Pokemon GO could provide an interesting lens into what is where and why, but it is not the problem, guys. You know what other neighborhoods are vastly impoverished when it comes to Pokestops? Rich, white suburbs. There was a fascinating article I saw a link to a while back (on Making Light, maybe) about mapping the elevators in New York City. And a map showing the presence of elevators does, indeed, provide an fascinating look into population density and wealth distribution in the city. But no one was suggesting that the presence or absence of elevators was, in fact, the problem.
The other thing I've seen in my Twitter stream is a friend concerned about the ableist aspects of Pokemon GO. I'm not really sure how to think about this. My friend is a very smart person, who has done a lot of really useful and creative thought about inclusivity and ableist assumptions. But for me, Pokemon GO is largely a very inaccurate pedometer with a stellar reward system. For me, it's not really a competitive game. I've fought a couple of gym battles, and man, that's boring. I like collecting the pretty little monsters, and I like evolving them. I like walking to the Pokestops and spinning the disks to get prizes. I like being encouraged to go to places I don't normally go to get rarer Pokemons. I like the fact that I'm becoming more sedentary and less sessile. For me, an older, very out of shape person, it doesn't feel coercive or alienating. I'm very aware that a lot of players are way ahead of me, because they have more time and more energy and can walk a fuck-ton farther than I can, but I don't find that upsetting. However, I may be missing something important. I do very much think that inclusivity is how we build humane, resilient systems. But I'm not sure how to design a walking app that doesn't, in the end, privilege people able to walk.
The thing about it, though, is that for eleven days in a row, it has gotten me to take at least one ten-minute walk. I am walking a kilometer or two more per day than I ever did, before. Now, a kilometer is about 1300 steps, so vastly short of that 10,000 steps that everybody was all het up about some years ago. But that's still 1500 to 2000 more steps than I would have taken without it. This can't be a bad thing. (Ok, the tripping over curbs, that is a bad thing. But I'm getting better at avoiding that.)
I've seen several think pieces on Pokemon GO which hold forth in alarm about various aspects of the game. It's possible they get more sensible several paragraphs in, but I tend to bounce out after the first paragraph or two sound the alarm about how there are fewer Pokestops in poor neighborhoods because poor neighborhoods have less public art and fewer institutions. I think that there is an interesting article to be written, here, but the ones I've bounced out of all seem to think that the problem is Pokemon GO, rather than the fact that too many of our people live in poor neighborhoods with few amenities. Pokemon GO could provide an interesting lens into what is where and why, but it is not the problem, guys. You know what other neighborhoods are vastly impoverished when it comes to Pokestops? Rich, white suburbs. There was a fascinating article I saw a link to a while back (on Making Light, maybe) about mapping the elevators in New York City. And a map showing the presence of elevators does, indeed, provide an fascinating look into population density and wealth distribution in the city. But no one was suggesting that the presence or absence of elevators was, in fact, the problem.
The other thing I've seen in my Twitter stream is a friend concerned about the ableist aspects of Pokemon GO. I'm not really sure how to think about this. My friend is a very smart person, who has done a lot of really useful and creative thought about inclusivity and ableist assumptions. But for me, Pokemon GO is largely a very inaccurate pedometer with a stellar reward system. For me, it's not really a competitive game. I've fought a couple of gym battles, and man, that's boring. I like collecting the pretty little monsters, and I like evolving them. I like walking to the Pokestops and spinning the disks to get prizes. I like being encouraged to go to places I don't normally go to get rarer Pokemons. I like the fact that I'm becoming more sedentary and less sessile. For me, an older, very out of shape person, it doesn't feel coercive or alienating. I'm very aware that a lot of players are way ahead of me, because they have more time and more energy and can walk a fuck-ton farther than I can, but I don't find that upsetting. However, I may be missing something important. I do very much think that inclusivity is how we build humane, resilient systems. But I'm not sure how to design a walking app that doesn't, in the end, privilege people able to walk.