Pokémon fetishism and colonisation of hybrid space
(Or how Marx ruined the fun of playing Pokémongo for me)
Hybrid space as a media platform
A year ago when we made #nevicata14 project — temporary pedestrian configuration of Castello square in Milan for the period of EXPO 2015 — we managed to double the available budget thanks to its appeal to the manufacturers and suppliers of its elements. One part of it was of course guaranteed by central location and visibility of physical space itself, but there was also a huge contribution based on the fact that we created not just physical architectural installation, but a hybrid space — #nevicata14 existed online long before being constructed physically, all the features and daily uses of it were documented on the website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Youtube, which obviously guaranteed very much expanded visibility also for the brands that participated in its creation.
That’s when we started to understand how hybrid space (i.e. a social space existing both in physical and digital domains) provides new business model for the public space in general — with additional digital layer it gives opportunities to have real return of investments and to sustain itself.
Brands are constantly in search for the new marketing frontiers and space becomes a new one, not just as a room to put billboards in, but as a field for the curated experiences which bring people to have first-hand contact with brand.
At the same time with #nevicata14, new Darsena (former port of Milan) was opened after reconstruction with Vodafone holding strategic position there (after sponsoring about third of reconstruction). During EXPO Vodafone was physically present there with the shop (afterwards transformed into a cafe), huge media screen, their WiFi network, and a program of very popular events. Darsena was never conceived as a hybrid space, but became one for a while.
It’s amazing to think how much easier our work for reactivation of piazza Castello could be if there was already Pokémongo and we could use lure module at pokéstops to attract more people catching them all =) We already knew about and tried Ingress at the moment, but it never was mainstream enough to try building any communication based on it. Now with Pokémongo going viral we can see also some hints of possible future dark scenarios involving hybrid space.
Pokémongo
Pokémongo has finally made the dream of augmented reality popular, usable and present around all of us bringing new dimension to urban hybrid space. It definitely brought some positive aspects.
People started walking around more, and walking is good for personal health, for new social encounters, for local businesses, and many other city life aspects. (At least recent Arup’s report says so=)) But walkability is not about just a physical geometric design of sidewalks and squares accommodating pedestrians, it has emotional aspects — people should be willing to walk in the entertaining environments, while now cities represent more of what Jane Jacobs called Great Misfortune of Boredom. And that’s what Pokémongo helped with by adding new layer of entertaining reality above incredibly boring and monotonous streets that we have in most of the cities. We were all explorers and hunters once upon a time, but live the routines of everyday now. This perfectly fits with the reported dream of pokémon creator to stimulate kids to go and search for some creatures in the urban environment lacking natural species like insects that he was passionate about collecting as a kid.
It is also amazing to see new layer of social life in the city. Normally you would need to make some complex social media research to understand what happens around, analyzing messaging patterns, cellphone activities, hashtags, etc, with Pokémongo you open the map and see some pokéstops being constantly surrounded with flying rose petals meaning that people bother putting their lure modules to attract pokémons, you see fights in gyms, you see that your pokémon never stays in gym for long — meaning someone comes almost immediately after you and to defeat them in the same gym. This is a new layer of location based social interactions adding life and excitement to the spaces, even if it does not necessary lead to direct contact between players (though often it does).
Controversies:
No phenomenon that big as Pokémongo come without some questionable aspects, lots of them were discussed before:
1. Inequality of spaces is not being compensated with Pokèmongo even if it perfectly could do that
Form the very beginning of use of the app it was obvious to me how central areas of the city with a lot of activities, architectural details, etc, have also a lot of pokéstops and pokémons around, while peripheries are deserted. Turns out that the inequality in Pokémongo was already studied and is claimed to be a result of inheritance of info from its predecessor — Ingress which had its portals transformed into Pokéstops and gyms. Apparently Ingress had a crowd-sourced map and that crowd was not very diverse leaving out a lot of places in the cities around the world .
For example it is very evident in comparison of two university campuses of Politecnico di Milano — Central Leonardo campus with a lot of engineers and edifice made by renowned architects has a lot of activity, instead Bovisa one located in the periphery and dedicated to design is almost deserted.
2. Fluidity of boundaries in hybrid space
This aspect was very well demonstrated in lots of media as people were trespassing private property boundaries and even state borders. Another side of it is the ethics and politics of hybrid space mapping as in case of pokémons in the Holocaust memorial, churches, etc. Apparently we still agree on giving priority to the physical space which use should be respected, but it’s not necessary going to be same in the future.
3. Manipulations of the crowds
The most black-mirror-ish concern about Pokémongo was about its capability to be used in a dangerous way in order to bring people to one place with the evil intentions. This is obviously possible, but apparently social media was already functioning this way before.
Commercialization of Hybrid Space
Privatization:
What wasn’t discussed that often though is the aspect of the commercialization of space which happens in augmented reality of Pokémongo. On one level players occupy the public urban spaces while walking around following pokémons, but at the same time they are absorbed by this virtual private and commercial additional layer which brings some paradoxes into regular way that things usually work. For example, if some private actor wants to bring a lot of people in one public space in the city (especially for some commercial and profitable to them activity) they usually have to organize it all very carefully, warn authorities to provide safety, and most of all — pay for the occupation of public property. Pokémongo instead can put a rare pokémon in any place and see people arriving from all around.
Pokémongo doesn’t pay for occupation of the physical public space, but creates a new hybrid physical-digital, public-private space which is not being regulated in any way (yet).
Centralization of profit:
Pokémongo also provides the opportunity for local businesses to attract people through the virtual layer. For example, if some business has pokéstops close to it, they can activate the special lure module (which can be bought for the money in shop) which would attract pokémons and people catching them . Otherwise they also test the sponsored locations — in Japan 3000 of McDonalds restaurants were supposed to become pokégyms. The issue here is that if before those local businesses had to do some marketing through the local boards and other channels stimulating local economy, now their best marketer is the Pokémon Company, Niantic and Nintendo getting profits from all over the globe. This is a new form of digital (or electronic) colonialism taking over physical spaces (as it also already happening with Airb’n’b though).
“New technologies from games to the internet of things are integrating every aspect of our lives into a global network that serves monopoly capitalism… its us being captured in an inescapable web of technological consumerism.”:
Obscuring relations with space:
To sum up the things happening with people trespassing borders, not being aware of strangers around robbing them, lose the sense of time and danger — it can be said that Pokémongo (and augmented reality) together with making people use the physical space more, also obscures the relations to the space itself as well as the (economic) relations between the various actors involved and the process of value production. That’s the case of Pokémon fetishism as a branch of commodity fetishism in hybrid space. Huge part of Pokémongo value is built on the use of the public urban space as its field, not just on the use of nostalgic Pokémon brand together with emergent technology at the right time. But how is that role of public space acknowledged and what return does it get except for growing profit to small businesses while Nintendo enjoyed explosion of its market value?
Henri Lefebvre has noted the leap of the productive forces moving from the production of commodities in space to production of space itself, which couldn’t reach the conscious production state while space was being traded and sold parcel by parcel. Now we’re dealing with even messier situation of hybrid space production, to which not just physical space regulations logic should be applied, but some ideas similar to those of redemocratization of overly centralized world wide web and net neutrality as well as attention to the balance of monopolistic private and public forces involved. But now I have to go evolve some Eevees *_*
