Pokemon Go is not just play--the game has had an impact on public spaces, social circles and technology, suggesting new ways of experiencing our world. This collection of new essays explores what Pokemon Go can tell us about how and why we play. Covering a range of topics from mobile hardware and classroom applications to social conflict and urban planning, the contributors approach Pokemon Go from both practical and theoretical angles, anticipating the impact play will have on our digitally augmented world.

This is the first of two comprehensive volumes that provide a thorough and multi-faceted research into the emerging field of augmented reality games and consider a wide range of its major issues. These first ever research monographs on augmented reality games have been written by a team of 70 leading researchers, practitioners and artists from 20 countries. In Volume I, the phenomenon of the Pokémon GO game is analysed in theoretical, cultural and conceptual contexts, with emphasis on its nature and the educational use of the game in children and adolescents. Game transfer phenomena, motives for playing Pokémon GO, players’ experiences and memorable moments, social interaction, long-term engagement, health implications and many other issues raised by the Pokémon GO game are systematically examined and discussed. Augmented Reality Games I is essential reading not only for researchers, practitioners, game developers and artists, but also for students (graduates and undergraduates) and all those interested in the rapidly developing area of augmented reality games.

What happens when a group of people see things that others do not and begin acting accordingly? The Augmented Reality of Pokémon GO: Chronotopes, Moral Panic, and Other Complexities explores this question by examining what happened after Pokémon GO, a smartphone augmented reality game, was released in July, 2016. The game overlaid the world of Pokémon onto the “real” physical world, drawing 30 million players in the first two weeks. Pokémon GO has created new ways of sensing the environment, reading things around us, walking the street, and dwelling in certain areas, i.e., inhabiting the world. Through detailed text analyses of the game and auto-ethnographies of the contributing authors’ experiences playing the game analyzed from anthropological perspectives, this volume provides nuanced analyses of this new way of relating to the world: the augmented reality world of Pokémon GO. Each chapter focuses on specific aspects of this new experience of the world: the cosmology of the world of Pokémon and the multifaceted ways we relate to our environment through Pokémon GO; the notion of space and time in Pokémon GO and its interface with that of real world as it guides our actions; the phenomenology of Pokémon GO in urban walking with its complex relationships to public space, “nature” as constructed through modernity, cell phone infrastructure, and urban landscapes where insects, animals, birds, human, history, transportation infrastructure, and trash all intermingle to create its ambiance; and the game’s link to the wider social issue as it gets appropriated for “friendly authoritarian” goals of civil society, imposing various ideologies and accruing commercial gains. Through “participant observation” —all contributors have been avid Pokémon GO players themselves—this volume offers snapshots of the Pokémon GO effect from its initial stage as a social phenomenon to Spring 2018.

Initially developed in Japan by Nintendo as a computer game, Pokémon swept the globe in the late 1990s. Based on a narrative in which a group of children capture, train, and do battle with over a hundred imaginary creatures, Pokémon quickly diversified into an array of popular products including comic books, a TV show, movies, trading cards, stickers, toys, and clothing. Pokémon eventually became the top grossing children's product of all time. Yet the phenomenon fizzled as quickly as it had ignited. By 2002, the Pokémon craze was mostly over. Pikachu’s Global Adventure describes the spectacular, complex, and unpredictable rise and fall of Pokémon in countries around the world. In analyzing the popularity of Pokémon, this innovative volume addresses core debates about the globalization of popular culture and about children’s consumption of mass-produced culture. Topics explored include the origins of Pokémon in Japan’s valorization of cuteness and traditions of insect collecting and anime; the efforts of Japanese producers and American marketers to localize it for foreign markets by muting its sex, violence, moral ambiguity, and general feeling of Japaneseness; debates about children’s vulnerability versus agency as consumers; and the contentious question of Pokémon’s educational value and place in school. The contributors include teachers as well as scholars from the fields of anthropology, media studies, sociology, and education. Tracking the reception of Pokémon in Japan, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Israel, they emphasize its significance as the first Japanese cultural product to enjoy substantial worldwide success and challenge western dominance in the global production and circulation of cultural goods. Contributors. Anne Allison, Linda-Renée Bloch, Helen Bromley, Gilles Brougere, David Buckingham, Koichi Iwabuchi, Hirofumi Katsuno, Dafna Lemish, Jeffrey Maret, Julian Sefton-Green, Joseph Tobin, Samuel Tobin, Rebekah Willet, Christine Yano

From mobile phones to consoles, tablets and PCs, we are now a generation of gamers. The PlayStation Dreamworld is – to borrow a phrase from Slavoj Zizek – the pervert's guide to videogames. It argues that we can only understand the world of videogames via Lacanian dream analysis. It also argues that the Left needs to work inside this dreamspace – a powerful arena for constructing our desires – or else the dreamworld will fall entirely into the hands of dominant and reactionary forces. While cyberspace is increasingly dominated by corporate organization, gaming, at its most subversive, can nevertheless produce radical forms of enjoyment which threaten the capitalist norms that are created and endlessly repeated in our daily relationships with mobile phones, videogames, computers and other forms of technological entertainment. Far from being a book solely for dedicated gamers, this book dissects the structure of our relationships to all technological entertainment at a time when entertainment has become ubiquitous. We can no longer escape our fantasies but rather live inside their digital reality.

An engaging look at how mobile games are increasingly part of our day-to-day lives and the ways that we interact across real as well as digital landscapes. We often play games on our mobile devices when we have some time to kill--waiting in line, pausing between tasks, stuck on a bus. We play in solitude or in company, alone in a bedroom or with others in the family room. In Ambient Play, Larissa Hjorth and Ingrid Richardson examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives. They show that as mobile games spread across different genres, platforms, practices, and contexts, they become an important way of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. We are digital wayfarers, moving constantly among digital, social, and social worlds.

From issues of racism to the severity of concussions to celebrity endorsements, the sports industry continues to significantly impact society. With the rise of eSports and its projection as the next billion dollar industry, it is vital that a multifaceted approach to sports research be undertaken. On one side, businesses are continually offering new methods for marketing and branding and finding the best ways to enhance consumer engagement and the consumer experience. On the other side, there has been progress and new findings in the physical fitness and training of the athletes themselves along with discussions on their psychology and wellbeing. This two-tiered approach to analyzing sports and eSports from a practical business perspective, along with a lens placed on the athletes themselves, provides a comprehensive view of the current advancements, technologies, and strategies within various aspects of the sports and esports industry. Research Anthology on Business Strategies, Health Factors, and Ethical Implications in Sports and eSports covers the latest findings on all factors of sports: the branding and marketing of sports and eSports, studies on athletes and consumers, a dive into the ethics of sports, and the introduction of eSports to the industry. This wide coverage of all fields of research recently conducted leads this book to be a well-rounded view of how sports are functioning in modern times. Highlighted topics include branding tactics, consumer engagement, eSports history and technologies, ethics and law, and psychological studies of athlete wellness. This book is ideal for sports managers, athletes, trainers, marketers, brand managers, advertisers, practitioners, stakeholders, researchers, academicians, and students interested working in the fields of sports medicine, law, physical education, assistive technologies, marketing, consumer behavior, and psychology.

The iPhone represents an important moment in both the short history of mobile media and the long history of cultural technologies. Like the Walkman of the 1980s, it marks a juncture in which notions about identity, individualism, lifestyle and sociality require rearticulation. this book explores not only the iPhone’s particular characteristics, uses and "affects," but also how the "iPhone moment" functions as a barometer for broader patterns of change. In the iPhone moment, this study considers the convergent trajectories in the evolution of digital and mobile culture, and their implications for future scholarship. Through the lens of the iPhone—as a symbol, culture and a set of material practices around contemporary convergent mobile media—the essays collected here explore the most productive theoretical and methodological approaches for grasping media practice, consumer culture and networked communication in the twenty-first century.

This collection explores the politics of game play and its cultural context by focusing on the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing from micro ethnographic studies to macro political economy analysis of techno-nationalisms and transcultural flows of cultural capital, it provides an interdisciplinary model for thinking through the politics of gaming.