What is Pokemon Go?
It is a huge multiplayer online GPS-dependent game app developed by Niantic that engages people to search areas to find Pokemon in the real world with the use of augmented reality (AR). It uses GPS coordinate to mark the location of various Pokemon within real-life views captured by the phones’ cameras. To play with this, we have to be physically near targets on the map to interact with them. Pokemon Go is already on pace to surpass Twitter in daily active users. But the app needs lots of permissions – location data, camera and more and that is where it open the gate to collect user enormous data. It’s done to make mass geolocation and its metadata collection fun from the primary market (18-30 who grew up with Pokemon) who will install it with a sense of nostalgia and then to engage them through Gamification principle.
How can I get the game?
So far Pokemon Go is launched only in the US and few other countries. You can download it from here. If you want to play in India you can follow this steps without worrying of any malware in APK-
Make a google account with Pin code and Phone number of US city or take help of your US friend.
Sign into google account through it on your android phone.
Open play store and switch google account there with the new one.
After that download the application Pokemon Go (Play Store).
Gamification + Geoinformatics!
One of the reason for Pokemon Go to be a monster hit is the combination of Gamification and Geoinformatics. You can read in the previous blog of mine about the things we can achieve after combining this two factor in the development. In short Gamification is the use of game thinking in non-game contexts to engage users and to increase users’ self-contributions. We loved games due to these game mechanics only. Whereas Geoinformatics is the technology which develops to discuss the problems of Geo-information.
So how this both are related in the app to support the company?
First of all, see how Gamification principle is applied in it –
When you will open the app for the first time, a little Pokemon will come near you to engage you to get up, collect it and move out of the room for more.
Pokemon in my Room
In-app purchases are there to buy things like poke-coins in-game to be ahead of your friends.
As certain locations offer bonuses and higher chances of catching rare species so everyone wants that and these places are nothing but may be the brand locations who gave money to companies so that user can buy something after moving there.
In app, Pokemon battle each other in a famous landmark in real life to let people go there
Some Geoinformatics thoughts behind it –
Pokemon map location data is actually the old data of Ingress app which is also made by same company.
A Geographic classification of an area was done based on climate, vegetation, and soil or rock type.
Which Pokemon would appear where depend on the natural habitat of the Pokemon. For example water Pokemon required whether there is a water body in an area and so on.
They can collect phone photos and exact GPS coordinated associated with it.
They may put the Pokemon at the points between which they want to find the shortest and safe path which will be given by us as user unconsciously.
By this, we can say that Gamification helps the user to engage with the apps and thus have fun and also helps the company in getting enormous data which can be used for various types of Geoinformatics analyses. So what do you think how will the company use this data?
I hope you enjoyed my article. If you want to ask me more about Geoinformatics or Gamification, then you are most welcome. 🙂 you can also check my site for useful knowledge of them http://www.ayushaggarwal.in/