wwjv | pokemon ‘ go
+ Virtual world opens doors to eternal reality
The global popularity of Pokémon Go is a great opportunity for Christians, writes MARK HADLEY, who are in the unique position of knowing both what someone is actually searching for, and where they can get it
He was a young man in his 20s, arm snugly around his girlfriend’s waist, walking through the park on a fair-weathered Sunday afternoon. It was a scene that could have been repeated in any of a thousand parks that day. And yet there was something strange about the way he was walking. Sure, he was looking at his mobile phone as they wandered along – nothing unusual there – but the way he suddenly changed directed, stopped, and started swiping at the screen madly gave him away. He was another Pokémon Go player in a world that has gone mad for Pikachu and all his creature cousins. If you’ve recently found yourself on the outside, looking in, then let me provide a quick precis of what’s happening. In July, game developers Niantic released a free-to-play game that utilises the cameras and GPS systems on mobile phones to create an augmented reality. Players can now immerse themselves in one of game-giant Nintendo’s most popular fantasy worlds. Pokémon Go allows players to look through their cameras and search and collect the cute imaginary creatures they see around them. They can evolve their discoveries, trade them with the people they meet, even 30
set them battling in any number of virtual gyms via a system so simple a six-year-old could master it. Not that I’m passing judgment – how could I? I was in the park that day alongside my own sixyear-old, hunting Duodos and Kinglers. The young man and I spotted each other at roughly the same moment, laughed in a friendly way, and returned to the alternate universes we were wandering through. Before long, friends were passing on stories of their own computer-generated interactions. Pokémon hunts between floors in office buildings were connecting city workers more used to mutely passing each other than saying hello. Twenty-something meet-ups were turning into impromptu adventures in once-ignored suburbs. A colleague told me about a friend who just felt the urge to go hunting Pokémon one evening. He wandered into a dark, deadend street, where he found “a bunch of randoms” sitting in cars. A week earlier this might have been a scene of trepidation; this night it ended in new friendships and a conversation that stretched over an hour. Individually considered, these sorts of incidents don’t sound like much of a
Pokémon Go is clearly the tip of an electronic iceberg. The App had at least 21 million active users after the first week of release, and it’s only the first of many virtual reality and augmented reality games on the way.