The Geography of Pok'emon GO: Beneficial and Problematic Effects on Places and Movement

The widespread popularity of Pok'emon GO presents the first opportunity to observe the geographic effects of location-based gaming at scale. This paper reports the results of a mixed methods study of the geography of Pok'emon GO that includes a five-country field survey of 375 Pok'emon GO players and a large scale geostatistical analysis of game elements. Focusing on the key geographic themes of places and movement, we find that the design of Pok'emon GO reinforces existing geographically-linked biases (e.g. the game advantages urban areas and neighborhoods with smaller minority populations), that Pok'emon GO may have instigated a relatively rare large-scale shift in global human mobility patterns, and that Pok'emon GO has geographically-linked safety risks, but not those typically emphasized by the media. Our results point to geographic design implications for future systems in this space such as a means through which the geographic biases present in Pok'emon GO may be counteracted.