It was stories like these that made me start to pay attention… I was curious to see how the game mapped itself onto reality, and how it chose its locations. Holocaust Museum was imploring its visitors to refrain from catching pokémon on the premises. – for allowing monsters to spawn in his backyard, thus enticing wave after wave of trespassers onto the property. In July, a New Jersey homeowner filed a lawsuit against the game’s creators – Niantic, Inc. Suddenly, any real world map could be transformed into a playable gamescape… but the gamification of urban geography is fraught with problems, both practical and ethical.Ī pokéstop pinned to a Soviet T-10 tank, in Kyiv, Ukraine.īack in the summer, when the game’s popularity was at its peak, I read stories in the press that highlighted some of these issues. When Pokémon Go took the world by storm in the summer of 2016, it represented more than just a mobile gaming trend: it heralded the widespread arrival of augmented reality gaming. My phone buzzed in my hand and our mutual target revealed itself: a wild Pikachu had appeared. I realised, suddenly, that we had come here for the same thing. For a moment I was alone and then a sudden movement caught my eye, and I saw him again – lurking behind the bins now, his hooded face lit from beneath by the pale blue light in his hands. Darkness swallowed the stranger, and when the lights returned he’d disappeared. The streetlight flickered once, twice, then died.
![exclusion zone game exclusion zone game](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D90Y9QlXYAAg7fA.jpg)
Nothing moved in the courtyard though – not even the stranger who had followed me here, his silhouette framed in the arch between the houses. Kyiv is a city of contrasts, and it doesn’t have an Off switch.
![exclusion zone game exclusion zone game](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/RTM0X0/exclusion-zone-is-a-prototype-of-the-game-stalker-shadow-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-is-a-prototype-of-the-game-stalker-shadow-chernobyl-RTM0X0.jpg)
Here the courtyard rang with the sound of traffic, carried above the houses from beyond: where sports cars raced each other down the six-lane tarmac of Lesi Ukrainky Boulevard and buskers played gypsy jazz to the crowds spilling out of late-night bars.