#  Pokémon GO to Pokémon STAY: How Covid-19 Affected Pokémon GO Players

John Dunham  Niantic x RIT Geo Games and Media Research Lab, Rochester
Institute of TechnologyUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Konstantinos Papangelis  Niantic
x RIT Geo Games and Media Research Lab, Rochester Institute of TechnologyUSA
<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Samuli Laato  University of TurkuFinland ,  Nicolas LaLone
University of Nebraska OmahaUSA<EMAIL_ADDRESS>,  Jin Ha Lee  University
of Washington, SeattleUSA and  Michael Saker  City, University of London UK

(2022)

###### Abstract.

Since its creation, the Location-Based Game (LBG), Pokémon GO, has been
embraced by a community of fans across the world. Due to its recency, the
impact of COVID-19 on the community of Pokémon GO players is underexplored. We
address how COVID-19 has impacted the players of Pokémon GO by building upon
existing work focusing on player gratifications and impacts in Pokémon GO.
Through semi-structured interviews, we provide a snapshot of the state of LBG
play during unprecedented times. These player testimonies demonstrate (1) the
importance of in-person socialization to LBG, (2) additional ways players use
the game as a coping mechanism, and (3) how intentionality mediates player
perceptions of people-place relationships. In demonstrating these behaviors,
we provide a glimpse of how a game that forces players to explore the world
around them changed when going outside with friends became a source of danger.

Location-based Games, Pokémon GO, COVID-19

††copyright: acmcopyright††journalyear: 2022††journal: TOCHI††price:
15.00††isbn: 978-1-4503-XXXX-X/18/06††ccs: Human-centered computing Human
computer interaction (HCI)††ccs: Human-centered computing Collaborative and
social computing

##  1\. Introduction

Location-Based Games (LBG) are at the intersection of digital and physical
spaces. LBG are played on mobile devices, with digital assets overlaid on
digital maps of physical environments. Importantly, for the players of these
games, this imposition results in an augmented reality (AR) in that they
adjust the meanings associated with physical spaces through a playful internal
context. LBGs have become a prominent aspect of the mobile gaming market in
recent years. Pokémon GO (Niantic, 2016), for instance, has roughly 603
million players worldwide and has exceeded more than one billion dollars in
sales in 2020 alone (Chapple, 2020a; Statista, 2020). Concurrent to its record
number of players, the COVID-19 global pandemic has dramatically affected how
nearly everyone interacts with the space around them. Stay-at-home orders,
social distancing, and the transition to fully digital workplaces have had a
marked effect on well-being and how people perceive the spaces around them
(Ahmed et al., 2018; Bliss and Martin, 2020; Ettman et al., 2020).

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced human cultures to rethink how they navigate
human spaces (Ettman et al., 2020; Prime et al., 2020). The restructuring of
everyday life began with local, state, and national government bodies passing
stay-at-home orders and mask-wearing to ”flatten the curve” and not overwhelm
supply chains and hospital systems. For example, in the United States, stay-
at-home orders to slow the spread of COVID-19 in all but seven states,
resulting in a near-universal shift in spatial reality for US residents
(Moreland, 2020).

While evidence supports the implementation of stay-at-home orders and social
distancing to limit the spread of both the influenza virus (Ahmed et al.,
2018; Jackson et al., 2014) and COVID-19 (Flaxman et al., 2020; Moreland,
2020), the social, psychological, and economic effects of COVID-19 have forced
some types of companies to reconsider their products entirely (Colley et al.,
2017; Walther, 2011). For example, LBGs are incredibly social experiences that
rely on interacting with physical locations (Bhattacharya et al., 2019; Dunham
et al., 2021). Prior to the pandemic LBGs encouraged in-person social gameplay
(Kaczmarek et al., 2017; Silva and Sutko, 2009; Vella et al., 2019), required
players to play in physical environments (Papangelis et al., 2020; Wagner-
Greene et al., 2016; Silva and Sutko, 2008), and had high mobility
requirements (Ejsing-Duun, 2011). COVID-19 directly impacted these behaviors,
forcing players to remain indoors.

The recontextualization of space and restricted mobility brought about by
COVID-19 affords LBG researchers a unique opportunity to study the importance
of mobility, space, and socialization in the LBG context. As such, in the
present research, we set out to explore (RQ1) how LBGs encourage mobility,
(RQ2) the impact of external factors on people-place relationships, and (RQ3)
whether socialization is the byproduct or the driving force behind LBG play.

In exploring these concepts, we contribute a description of what these games
offer players and how developers may tune LBGs to improve players’ physical
and mental well-being not just in the pandemic but more broadly in more normal
circumstances.  To this end, the present research presents the lived
experiences of playing Pokémon GO during the COVID-19 pandemic through thirty
semi-structured exploratory interviews conducted via Zoom. The core
contributions of this work are: (1) perceived changes of socialization, (2)
coping mechanisms surrounding the game, and (3) changes to spatial
relationships (See Table 1 for a summary).

Theme | Description
---|---
COVID-19 Mediated Socialization Changes |  | Socialization migrated from chiefly in-person interaction to digital
---
interaction. To most, digital socialization didn’t supplant in-person
interaction. Family groups, however, showed resistance to
socialization changes, largely remaining in person.
Coping Through Pokémon GO |  |  Pokémon GO was used by many of the participants as a means to
---
cope with stressors introduced by COVID-19. Typically, this was
through socialization, leaving the home, or acting as reminder to
pre-pandemic contexts.
COVID-19 Redefined People-Place Relationships |  | Participants reported a shift in their perceptions of space and
---
place as a result of the pandemic. Pokémon GO further redefined
these places to both ludic and pallatative contexts.
Table 1. Summary of Contributions

This paper has the following structure: first, we present the relevant
literature about LBG socialization and territoriality with an additional focus
on the pandemic. We then describe our methodology and outline how our data was
gathered and analyzed. After, we present the critical contributions are
presented. We conclude the paper by outlining the following steps and
implications while also discussing limitations in the research we conducted.

##  2\. Background

This section first discusses socialization in online games and how it relates
to LBGs. We then move into an emergent phenomenon in LBGs, territoriality.
Finally, we will discuss COVID-19 and its impact on games in general and LBGs
in specific.

###  2.1. Socialization in Pokémon GO

Social interactions have long been an area of interest regarding traditional
online games (Bartle, 1996; De Kort and Ijsselsteijn, 2008; Nardi and Harris,
2006). Online games, however, are not the only loci of social interaction in
this context. Through co-located play, games act as a meeting place for
players to socialize to varying degrees (Voida and Greenberg, 2009). Some
players socialize for socialization’s sake (Itō et al., 2019), while others
use cooperative play to foster positive educational and health prospects
(Takeuchi and Stevens, 2011). With LBGs, players engage in socialization
patterns resembling MMOs and co-located socialization while also engaging in
negotiated socialization.

LBGs augment the physical world with a layer of digital information that can
be playfully interacted with (Benford et al., 2006). While goals are typically
well defined, the rules of LBGs are generally more fluid. Indeed, players will
negotiate some rules in an LBG, while the game itself enables others (Silva
and Sutko, 2009). For example, while the game may define a point in physical
space as a game location, the player defines what they consider to be
allowable routes to it, considering personal circumstances, laws, and mores.
An LBG user must negotiate the boundaries and rules of the LBG for themselves
at frequent intervals. Player presence, game space possibility, and player
intentionality are balanced with game goals to foster the rules experienced by
the players (Kiefer et al., 2007; Walther, 2011, 2011). Players, morals,
mores, laws, and the game itself mediate the intersection of play intention
and game rules. Therefore, an LBG is an intrinsically social experience as the
definition of the rules is rooted in elements of human socialization.

Studies of Pokémon GO, the LBG studied in this work, have found high social
interaction and communication in the players of the game (Ewell et al., 2020;
Militello et al., 2018). Further, Pokémon GO also has positive associations
with social (Ewell et al., 2020; Vella et al., 2019), mental (Watanabe et al.,
2017), and physical well-being (Althoff et al., 2016; Kaczmarek et al., 2017;
Lindqvist et al., 2018). Critically, Pokémon GO has been associated with
potentially dangerous behaviors in distracted driving, biking, and walking,
resulting in bodily harm (Lindqvist et al., 2018; Wagner-Greene et al., 2016).

Next, Pokémon GO frequently expresses socialization through player
interactions with Points of Interest (POIs) in the form of Pokéstops and Gyms.
These POIs are static locations that supply players with the resources
necessary to play the game representing locations ideal for co-located play.
In Pokémon GO, a significant amount of play revolves around the Gym; it is a
cooperative social event in which players battle powerful Pokémon to capture
them (Support, 2021). Attacks on gyms or battling a powerful Pokémon at a gym
are called raids. To participate in raids, the players must form groups to
complete these challenges, as they are often too challenging to be
accomplished by a single player. Typically these groups are ephemeral and ad-
hoc, lasting long enough to meet the challenge (Bhattacharya et al., 2019;
Vella et al., 2019). Groups can also be pre-formed in Discord, Facebook, or
other game communities so they can engage in a series of raids together. This
behavior became more frequent with the introduction of “Raid Hour” (i.e.,
specific day/hour of the week when all gyms feature a specific raid boss)
(Niantic, 2021).

When viewed through Arrow et al.’s theoretical lens of small groups (Arrow et
al., 2000), these emergent groups collect contextual and local dynamics.
Contextual dynamics represent the region’s local culture, player availability,
and unspoken and spoken rules around forming the groups. In comparison, local
dynamics represent the group’s activity and how they leverage tools and
resources. In an expression of local dynamics, it is not unheard of for
temporary raiding groups to solidify into online communities which engage in
co-operative raiding, collecting, battling, and other gameplay mechanics
(Bhattacharya et al., 2019).

These communities lead to increased socialization, as participants would
arrange in-person meetups facilitating social connectedness (Vella et al.,
2019). In addition to raiding, Niantic (the developer of Pokémon GO)
frequently encourages social interaction through in-game events known as
community days (Support, 2021). These monthly events feature a specific
Pokémon and provide gameplay bonuses and increased spawn rates, encouraging
players to participate in areas with high densities of Pokéstops and Gyms.
These events would result in socialization above and beyond what is necessary
to play the game, with players frequently organizing events in their local
communities independent of Niantic and Pokémon GO (Alavesa and Xu, 2020). The
GO Fest, the biggest annual offline event, and other local events specific to
particular regions offer similar opportunities for socialization (Niantic,
2021).

Socialization in Pokémon GO is also frequently centered around the family, as
many families play this game together (Saker and Evans, 2021). Here, the
familial playing of Pokémon GO is indicative of Joint Media Engagement (JME)
(Takeuchi and Stevens, 2011). Six conditions codify productive JME: mutual
engagement, dialogic inquiry, co-creation, boundary-crossing, intention to
develop, and focus on content, not control (Takeuchi and Stevens, 2011). As a
corollary to this, Sobel et al. explored the dynamics of parent and child
group players in Pokémon GO (Sobel et al., 2017), demonstrating Pokémon GO
expresses the six conditions of productive JME. In this context, the game
enabled parents to engage with their children: families could equally
participate in challenges, dialogue about the game extended beyond gameplay,
and families could learn about the game and their environment together (Saker
and Evans, 2021; Sobel et al., 2017).

This study leverages existing literature, as it was conceived and conducted
following the rise of COVID-19, to understand how the pandemic changed the
social landscape of LBGs and Pokémon GO more specifically. The extant
literature on sociality in Pokémon GO is outlined in Table LABEL:sociality-
pogo. There exists a wide range of studies related to social interaction in
Pokémon GO, discussing both offline and online social gameplay (Laato et al.,
2021; Rauti et al., 2020). Early on in 2016, shortly after the launch of
Pokémon GO, sociality did not seem to motivate players to play the game
(Rauschnabel et al., 2017). However, soon after raids were added sociality
became an important part of locative play (Bhattacharya et al., 2019; Evans et
al., 2021). Alavesa and Xu (Alavesa and Xu, 2020) note that even before the
COVID-19 pandemic forced people to quarantine themselves, a significant
proportion of playing took place indoors. The players integrated the game into
their daily lives, as such, when they moved indoors so did their play (Alavesa
and Xu, 2020; Colley et al., 2017). At the same time, there is strong evidence
that Pokémon GO was able to activate players (Kato et al., 2017; Tateno et
al., 2016), bring players to physical proximity to meaningfully cooperate with
one another (Bhattacharya et al., 2019), increase their social connectedness
(Vella et al., 2019) and to even influence the language and slang preferences
of players (Laato et al., 2021).

Table 2. Sociality in Pokémon GO Authors |  Findings
---|---
Alavesa and Xu, 2020 (Alavesa and Xu, 2020) |  Playing is interlinked with players’ real life, including social life.AR images shared on social media suggest that indoor playing was commonplace among pre-pandemic players.
Bhattacharya et al., 2019 (Bhattacharya et al., 2019) |  Raids bring people together in temporal and spatial dimensions. The local group formation may solidify into online social groups.
Evans and Saker, 2019 (Evans and Saker, 2019) |  Playing Pokémon GO led to people going out more and experiencing their environment differently. Equally, Pokémon GO led to players playing in strange places - sometimes dangerous places - in a manner that differs from older locative games like Foursquare. Finally, this research spoke to players who primarily played for their children.
Evans et al., 2021 (Evans et al., 2021) |  Friendship maintenance and relationship initiation are strong motivators for Pokémon GO players to play the game.
Laato et al., 2021 (Laato et al., 2021) |  LBGs are a mixture of online and offline interactions that are heavily interlinked.Players’ teams influence their linguistic identity and attitudes towards the game.
Rauschnabel et al., 2017 (Rauschnabel et al., 2017) |  Among various uses and gratifications, sociality did not significantly lead to attitude towards playing Pokémon GO nor intention to continue playing.However, social pressure led to the intention to continue playing and making in-app purchases.
Rauti et al., 2020 (Rauti et al., 2020) |  Pokémon GO brings players together in temporal and spatial dimensions through trading, lures, battles, and raids.In addition, the game provides asynchronous spatial, social activities such as gym battles and collecting gifts. The game also supports non-spatial social interaction.
Saker and Evans, 2021 (Saker and Evans, 2021) |  Playing Pokémon GO saw families going out more and spending more time together.The familial playing of this game improved relations and allowed families to socialize around a joint activity. Yet, the social connections created were weak and transient. This speaks to the idea that family play of this game would not be impacted that much by the pandemic, as families often played alone. Finally, this research considered the impact of surveillance capitalism and how families were not concerned about personal data being used.
Tateno et al., 2016 (Tateno et al., 2016) |  Pokémon GO may help with social withdrawal. The game is particularly useful for activating people who are otherwise disinterested in spending time (socially) outdoors.
Vella et al., 2019 (Vella et al., 2019) |  Playing Pokémon GO increases players’ sense of social connectedness.

###  2.2. Territoriality in LBGs

Socialization in LBGs can also lead to antagonistic playful behavior due to
players competing over their perceptions of the play space they inhabit. This
often manifests as expressions of territoriality through territorial claims
(Papangelis et al., 2017b, a; Silva and Sutko, 2008). As players capture and
recapture these spaces, they continuously redefine the space over time:
renegotiating their relationship to the space they play. Through these
territoriality expressions, LBGs separate space from preconceived meanings and
reassign them with new ones. The recontextualizing of space through
territoriality generally has social implications, a phenomenon highlighted in
GeoMoments (Papangelis et al., 2020).

Through the locative app GeoMoments, players assumed ownership over physical
locations through a virtual layer. App users were selective of the territory
they controlled, with social factors frequently being the deciding factor of
space’s value(Papangelis et al., 2020). To app users, a street corner in a
nice part of town or shopping center carried with it the implicit social
status of frequenting those places. Through this locative app, players
presented a performative self while recontextualizing the spaces they
inhabited through the game’s lens.

To this end, LBGs alter a city’s legibility (Montgomery, 1998) and
imageability (Lynch, 1960), expanding the elements of the space to include not
only physical paths and landmarks but also digital ones. In a similar vein,
Pokémon GO expresses territoriality through the Gym POIs. The game itself
instructs players to align themselves with a team, an act of playful
antagonism. A team or player may capture and defend Gyms to assert dominance
over a location. In addition to the inherent rewards of digital ownership
(Laato et al., 2020b; Woods, 2020), players also receive benefits in the form
of digital currency for maintaining control of the location (Niantic, 2021).

###  2.3. COVID-19 and Pokémon GO

Figure 1. Main Interface of Pokémon GO (Niantic, 2016), October 2020

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 82% of global consumers have
either played games or watched video game content (Nielsen, 2020). In April
2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) partnered with game developers to
promote the hashtag “#PlayApartTogether” (Johnston et al., 2020), encouraging
socially distant gaming. For locative media, such as Pokémon GO, this was a
potentially disastrous change due to gameplay’s highly social nature (Saker
and Evans, 2021). Yet, 2020 was a successful year for Pokémon GO, generating
over one billion US dollars in revenue in the first ten months alone (Chapple,
2020b). Changes implemented by Niantic in 2020, therefore, may account for
this success (Kiefer et al., 2007). However, the implications of these changes
to socialization and territoriality are underexplored at present.

To alleviate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Niantic progressively rolled
out changes during the 2020 calendar year to encourage continued play by its
player base (See Figure 2). Niantic initially announced these changes on their
official blog (Niantic, 2021). Starting March 12, Niantic canceled the Abra
community day in response to widespread lockdowns in the United States.
Niantic also halved Egg hatching distances (a mechanic which supplied players
with Pokémon as a reward for walking), increased the gifts (a resource that
gifted additional resources to peers) received from Pokéstops and increased
the spawn rate for Pokémon (Niantic, 2021).

On March 17, the developers temporarily canceled raid hours. This initial wave
of changes diminished the critical social aspects of Pokémon GO and reduced
the general need to exit the home during the lockdown (Laato et al., 2020c).
In March 2020, Niantic disabled the locative elements of the GO Battle League
(an organized player versus player league) until May 1st. Continuing the trend
of disabling social aspects, Niantic canceled a planned raiding event on March
23 before indefinitely suspending raid hours. On the same day, Niantic
increased the daily bonuses, buffed gifts so players could give and receive
more, and introduced a cheap rotating one Pokécoin (the game’s premium
currency: USD .01) bundle (Niantic, 2021). The last significant change to
Pokémon GO came March 31st when the developers doubled the maximum distance at
which players could interact with Gyms to increase accessibility in the
pandemic’s opening weeks (Niantic, 2021).

Niantic’s changes have gradually chipped away at the game’s locative and
social aspects, enabling players to play from home effectively (Saker and
Evans, 2021). Despite this, players still needed to play in the real world to
really progress in the game. Consequently, on April 15th Pokémon GO’s
introduced Remote Raid passes (Niantic, 2021). Remote Raids represented a new
way to raid in Pokémon GO.

Here, players no longer needed to physically travel to a gym to challenge a
raid boss, and they could even invite friends from across the world to
virtually join in the challenge (for a nominal fee). Further, Niantic removed
the need to visit Pokéstops to acquire field research (quests) and gifts,
making the game’s POIs and in-person social aspects entirely optional. On May
24, Niantic even reintroduced Community Days branding them as “Play at Home
Edition” (Niantic, 2021), cementing the transition from a game centered around
locality and in-person socialization to one that encouraged static play and
online social interaction.

Niantic has tweaked these gameplay changes in the intervening months to great
success. A sample of the main map screen after these changes were complete has
been preserved in Figure 1. In addition to being the best year on record for
the game (Chapple, 2020b), the game continued to display positive aspects
noted in earlier studies. A survey by Ellis et al. found that players
continued to use the game for socialization, exercise, and as an escape from
the pressures of the pandemic (Ellis et al., 2020). Likewise, Laato et al.
similarly found a continued drive by players to socialize during the pandemic
(Laato et al., 2020a), indicating that socialization remains a critical
component of Pokémon GO, regardless of the current circumstances. In sum,
then, our article seeks to understand how Pokémon GO players’ adapted their
approach to this game in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figure 2. Timeline of changes in Pokémon GO March 2020 - May 2020

##  3\. Methodology

We conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with individuals who had
experience playing Pokémon GO during the pandemic. Researchers gathered
participants from several sources, including (1) Twitter and (2) Facebook
posts, a (3) local discord server for Pokémon GO players, and (4) the
/r/pokemongo subreddit. Participants were encouraged to sign up if they were
willing to participate in a study exploring how the global pandemic and the
associated changes to Pokémon GO affected their gameplay. Initially,
participants were not offered a reward for participating in the study;
however, we later added an in-game reward valued at approximately $10 to
increase participation. The first author retroactively provided the reward to
participants interviewed before it had been added.

Registration for the study leveraged the online calendar tool Calendly
111https://calendly.com/. We gathered basic demographic data and presented an
informed consent document to participants before the interview with this tool.
Participants were required to provide age, pronouns, the number of years
playing Pokémon GO, and whether they perceived themselves as a “hardcore,”
“casual,” or “other” player of the game. Gender Identity was an optional
parameter. The informed consent document assured users that their data would
be anonymous and confidential. Researchers allowed users to withdraw from the
study at any point with no penalty. This article provides pseudonyms to all
named participants.

In total, 60 participants registered through this process, with 30 completing
the interview and 1 participant giving a partial interview which was discarded
in analysis (the interview had just covered demographic data before
interruption). The age of interviewed players ranged from 18 and 50. The mean
age was 30 years with a standard deviation of 8 years. In terms of gender, 15
of the participants identified as male, 14 identified as female, and one
declined to answer. Most players considered themselves “gamers” (28/30) and
had been playing Pokémon GO for an average of 3 years with a standard
deviation of 1. Of the interviewed participants, interviewers confirmed 11 to
be from the US, four from Europe, two from Africa, and the remaining from
Canada (1), Asia (1), and South America (1) each. The observed distribution of
countries was consistent with Dunham et al.’s (Dunham et al., 2021) sampling
of Pokémon GO Reddit users, 10/30 of the participants didn’t disclose their
location. For this reason, we eschew a more refined assessment of regionality
for participant descriptions of local conditions.

Interviews began with a verification that the participants understood their
rights in the informed consent document, confirmation of the supplied
demographic information, and an additional question about gaming experience
beyond Pokémon GO. The first author conducted the interviews in English
through Zoom, recording discussions locally using Zoom’s record functionality.
Each interview took approximately 30 minutes. Structurally the interviews were
organized thematically, with the beginning of each interview asking the
participants about their favorite feature of Pokémon GO. Participants were
encouraged to mention in-game elements or social structures surrounding the
game.

We analyzed our research questions in the context of the current literature to
generate a set of related themes. We identified five broad themes in this
manner to structure our interview guide: (1) people-place relationships
(including mobility), (2) socialization and social connectivity, (3) community
engagement and culture, (4) outdoor activities (including exercise), and (5)
motivations/gratifications. As noted in Azungha (Azungah, 2018), designing a
qualitative interview guide in this manner allows us to ensure our research
questions are addressed in each interview, as well as provide a base framework
for us to structure our analysis of the interviews themselves. The questions
themselves were written as prompts with sub-prompts to give the interviewer
control over how they elicited responses from our participants. For example,
one prompt was “Do you use Pokémon GO as an excuse to leave home?” which had a
potential sub-prompt of “Have you done this more or less since the onset of
the pandemic?”

Broadly, our data analysis process leveraged the following structure: (1) data
familiarization, (2) adjustment of the thematic framework and (3) coding of
the data. We transcribed the interviews with aid from the automated
transcription product, Descript 222https://www.descript.com/, and then in
cleaning the transcription manually, the first author enhanced their data
familiarity. As the first author conducted the data familiarization, they
adjusted the thematic framework established in generating the interview guide.
While we removed no themes, additional themes, such as (1) family engagement
and (2) Pokémon GO as a coping mechanism, were added to the thematic framework
as they had emerged from interviews. Moreover, the core themes noted in the
interview guide planning phase were adjusted to be umbrella themes for more
granular concepts. For example, sub-classifications of the community
engagement theme were identified in this process, such as how remote raiding
impacted the manner participants engaged in the Pokémon GO community.
framework Therefore entering the coding phase there was already a base level
thematic framework in place to structure our coding. In this regard, we
conducted our analysis initially deductively to ground further analysis in the
extant themes of LBG. This approach to thematic analysis borrows from the
processes illustrated in adjacent work by Evans and Saker (Evans and Saker,
2019).

##  4\. Findings

Our interviews paint a picture of a game changed deeply by external forces. As
Niantic re-engineered aspects of the game to reduce the impetus to travel to
play (RQ1), participants indicated their relationships to the world around
them and the greater Pokémon GO community changed dramatically (RQ2).
Socialization saw dramatic shifts indicating not only did the game drive
socialization but aspects of LBG inherently encouraged socialization, a fact
sorely recognized by our participants (RQ3) Unexpectedly, however, these
interviews exposed the game as a source of comfort in our participants,
allowing them to handle the myriad stressors of the pandemic better.

###  4.1. Play Before and During the Pandemic

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, socialization was a major part of playing
Pokémon GO for our participants (30/30). Indeed, all participants described at
least one offline social experience with Pokémon GO. Here, the sociability of
these experiences manifests themselves in several ways: for some participants,
it was simply a casual association with colleagues, while others recounted
raids or recalled the excitement of taking part in community days. These
experiences varied both in frequency and intensity.

In addition to social play, many participants also played alone and derived
pleasure from doing so. When we asked which game experience they preferred,
participants were roughly split down the middle, with nearly half focusing on
social experiences (13/30), while others preferred solo experiences (17/30).
More precisely, solo players were interested in the “Gotta Catch ‘em All”
experiences: completing their Pokédex, catching rare and powerful Pokémon, and
taking on in-game challenges. In contrast, social players focused on events
involving other players, including raid hours and community days.

Moving forward, players who consistently played Pokémon GO before the pandemic
(25/30) recounted positive memories of doing so. For example, one long-time
player, Michelle [S005] (female 32), found it “fun to collect things and
accomplish something, even if [she] couldn’t write anything” during her time
in grad school. For Michelle, the game effectively helped her relax during a
difficult period in her life. Likewise, Nicole [S016] (female 30) described
the game as “a way of life” from the introduction of raids in 2017 again,
underlining the positive impact of this experience.

During the pandemic, Pokémon GO quickly adapted to a different kind of world,
with the social experience of raids and community days shifting accordingly.
Here, health concerns, lockdowns, and in-game modifications led to many
participants reporting significant changes to their playing experience. In the
following sections, we further explore these alterations and how they impacted
participants’ experience of playing Pokémon GO.

####  4.1.1. Contextual Dynamics and Organizing Group Play

Raiding is a major social activity of Pokémon GO, in which players frequently
form ad-hoc groups, as they are often too difficult to tackle alone.
Consequently, some participants (2/30) reported deliberately avoiding the more
powerful raid bosses and only challenging targets they could combat in solo
play. For example, Alex [S019] (male 19) is a solo player who would explicitly
target the “one-star [raids] that you can do on your own,” as opposed to the
more lucrative legendary raids featuring more powerful Pokémon.

Equally, other players actively sought out people to engage in physical group
play and raiding even during the pandemic. In our study, 10/30 participants
described some form of in-person raiding, which was largely formed on an ad-
hoc basis. Still, the pandemic impacted participants’ abilities to form
groups. For instance, Noel [P001] (female 23) recalled finding raiding
partners before the pandemic was easy at her college. As she explains, “people
would gather together on campus to do raids … [, and] didn’t need much
coordination … there would be like 10 or 20 people.” Nonetheless, online
coordination of raids saw a fair amount of occurrence before the pandemic,
with 16/30 participants describing using Discord or Facebook to organize
raiding. Contextual dynamics of the region played a role in the frequency and
prominence of online coordination. Generally speaking, participants who
reported ad-hoc play described experiences relating to colleges or city
centers, indicating that density of players of the game impacted how events
would coalesce.

The participants suggest that raids were easy to engage with before the
pandemic, which is, of course, noteworthy. COVID-19 drastically changed this
sentiment as people became less likely to leave the house and assemble. While
this was grounded in social distancing and quarantine orders in some cases,
participants reported that fear of Covid-19 also restricted their movements.
One participant, Kyle [S024] (male 18), expressed they weren’t ”as comfortable
because [they’re] afraid of Covid and its long term effects,” limiting their
movements in regards to the game. Harold [S010] (male 18) mirrors this
sentiment: ”it’s scary. You don’t want to go out and get sick just for Pokémon
GO. It’s not worth it.” Contextual dynamics, therefore, transformed raiding as
ad-hoc raid groups became less common.

Similarly, the departure of students from college campuses exacerbated this
situation in college towns, resulting in fewer players being available within
those communities for communal play. Tom [P005] (male 21) even cited this
exodus as a reason to move to discord servers: ”I started joining these
Discord servers, … [because] Covid ravaged our community. … A lot of people
left because [a college] is pretty much the worst place to be during the
pandemic.” Tom’s experience is not unique as raids became almost exclusively
organized online, indicating shifts in local dynamics. Interestingly, despite
players organizing more online, only 7/30 of the participants started using
Discord, Whatsapp, or Facebook during the pandemic for this purpose, with the
remaining participants continuing to use whatever platforms they had been
using before. Adopters of these networks were generally new players (4/30) or
returning players to the game (8/30).

The perceived shift in communal styles, however, was generally received poorly
by existing players, who did not appear to receive the same sense of
gratification from the online platforms as they did from in-person
interactions. For these participants, the rapid increase in the necessity of
these networks left them feeling that organic connections within the game had
declined. As Brandon [S002] (male 30) explains: “you didn’t need Facebook
[before the pandemic], you just met people organically, and now that’s a lot
harder to do.”

While organic interaction was more challenging, it still happened with some
frequency. One participant who recently returned to the game, Jane [S026]
(female 30), only became aware of the community during the pandemic when she
recognized that ”there were other people still claiming gyms, so there must be
a community.” Jane’s [S026] encounter with the Pokémon GO community occurred
within the core mechanics of the game, and while she didn’t directly meet the
players controlling the gym, she was able to recognize their existence.
Similarly, Connie [S007] (female 32), a veteran player of three years, only
became aware of the Pokémon GO community’s existence during the pandemic. In
Connie’s [S007] case, it was a chance in-person encounter with a fellow
Pokémon GO player who invited her and her boyfriend to a group chat. While
initiated in physical space, the group chat made the existence of the
community real to Connie [S007] as she realized “it wasn’t just my boyfriend
[who] plays [Pokémon GO], but a whole lot of people.” This appears to imply
that organic community discovery is not exclusively rooted in physically
tangible social interactions, as Connie’s [S007] discovery was both physically
tangible, but only became significant in a virtual context.

Regardless, some participants perceived a reduction in physically tangible
social interactions, particularly in raiding, resulting in a blow to their
enjoyment of the game. Even with the help of social media platforms, several
of the participants (5/30) stopped raiding at some point during the pandemic.
However, this situation changed when Niantic introduced the remote raiding
feature. Here, players could raid with other players irrespective of physical
distances, with 26/30 of our participants engaging directly with this feature.

In many ways, this restructured the classification of dynamics and expanded
their scope beyond previously studied manifestations. In other words, a global
community of players was now able to engage in local dynamics once exclusively
in-person through digital platforms, and contextual dynamics of those groups
became the particular platform’s culture. Consequently, raids shifted from a
locative experience to a digital one, resembling a more traditional massively
multiplayer online (MMO) raid style (e. g. World of Warcraft (Entertainment,
2004)).

As implicitly touched on above, many participants responded positively to the
introduction of the remote raid system. For Tom [P005] (male 21), it was a
“week[ly] treat” that he would engage in, while for Kristen [S008] (female
30), a solo player, it felt like she was able to “virtually travel”. In
general, and on that note, solo players were happier with the remote raiding
experience than more socially orientated players. It gave these players a new
opportunity to gather rare and strong Pokémon by joining raids listed on
various social media platforms that involved minimal social obligations.

However, our study’s more socially oriented players did not find these changes
entirely gratifying. Nicole [S016] (female 30) noted that since the onset of
the pandemic, she was not meeting new players during raiding and “not
participating that much in a group [anymore].” Remote raiding in Nicole’s case
has supplanted in-person raiding and removed opportunities to meet new and old
friends playing the game. The game acted as a common ground for participants
to communicate with people of disparate backgrounds, with conversations
extending past the game’s strict confines.

Moreover, our participants reported that remote raids are frequently more
challenging to organize than pre-pandemic in-person raiding. Penny [S011]
(female 44), a socially inclined player, found coordinating remote raids to be
“exhausting sometimes.” For Penny, timing concerns, players having sufficient
resources to raid, and the limited number of player invites made the
experience difficult to manage. Because of these organizational barriers to
play, Penny had less time to focus on the social aspect of raiding, therefore,
indicating that local dynamics suffered due to the changes brought on by the
pandemic.

####  4.1.2. Social Gratification and Extended Boundaries of Play

For many socially orientated players, community days met with a similar fate
as raids. Before the pandemic, community days were social events where Pokémon
would spawn more frequently, and rarer shiny versions would be easier to
acquire. These events would occur in a short, fixed period, encouraging
players to carve out portions of their day to participate intentionally.
Following this, some participants would rearrange their work schedules to play
during the event’s window.

For Jackie [S025] (female 34), for a “long time,” community days were the
“biggest driver of the community at large.” Players would hold raffles, share
in-game resources known as lures to encourage more Pokémon, and generally
socialize during the events. However, with the advance of COVID-19, these
events, which would organically appear in city parks, suddenly declined. In
part, and as one might imagine, this decrease was due to safety concerns over
COVID-19. Caring for high-risk family members, quarantine, social distancing
orders, and general concern for one’s health were all stated as reasons for
not participating in these events. As our participant Sarah [S003] (female 50)
notes, while it was not as “fun” as it had been previously, she could
nonetheless engage in community days from “the couch”.

Participants witnessed changes in how community days functioned, with 11/30
participants directly referencing changes during their interviews. Of the
various changes noted, a reduction in the number of players playing at local
hotspots for community days was most prominent. Parks that once drew large
crowds now drew smaller groups that would be less open to outsiders. This
change represented a shift in the culture surrounding community days
commensurate with the contextual dynamics of raids following the pandemic.

The similarities extended to local dynamics as our participants reported that
social media platforms became where the community aspects of community day
would occur. However, this transference of community to social media did not
provide a social experience that was precisely comparable with what it had
once been. Indeed, none of our participants reported being fully gratified by
the shift from the physical to the digital. This particular finding indicates
that the digital replacement of in-person interactions did not produce an
experience that was as socially gratifying as it had been before COVID-19.

Interestingly, the extended duration of community days from 3 to 6 hours
indirectly addressed players’ existing issues with the game. Participants such
as Jackie [S025] would frequently need to adjust their work schedules to
participate in community days in pre-pandemic contexts, even going as far as
”[requesting time] off … or [getting] work shifts swapped .. just to do
community days”. With the more lax duration, it was simpler for players to
engage more passively, interweaving the event with their daily life. For the
most part, however, changes to the game were insufficient to overcome
environmental factors to meet the observed goals of community day, as communal
aspects declined during the pandemic. In other words, while players could more
readily participate in events, these changes reduced the sense of community
observed by many participants, with 8/30 directly referencing this decline in
their interviews.

####  4.1.3. Family Play

While a sense of greater community was reduced for the participants in our
study during the pandemic, the more localized family playgroups thrived during
the pandemic. In our study, 11/30 players reported that they consistently
played Pokémon GO with family members. Family play, therefore, appears not to
be impeded by the pandemic forces that negatively impacted both raiding and
community days. Participants who played with family members not only continued
to play the game, but the frequency of play increased. Indeed, Families would
use the game to spend time with their family, typically through some form of
co-use.

This aspect of communal family play has not decreased during the pandemic -
quite the opposite. For instance, participant Mark [S009] (male 32) and his
family played the game for the sake of their youngest member, his nephew (age
5). Here, Mark [S009] and his family collectively played the game to provide
some structure to his nephew’s lockdown and to “keep his mind occupied [so] he
didn’t have to think about why we aren’t going out every day and stuff like
that.” For Mark [S009], the game was purposeful; it enabled him to connect
with family members and help a loved one through a difficult time.

In general, familial locative play served to maintain and even strengthen
communication in families of our study. Competitive families such as Penny’s
[S011] (female 44) saw an increase in the expression of behaviors that had
already codified their play: ”we’ve been [playing Pokémon GO] all four years,
but [the competition has] intensified over the quarantine.” The game for
Penny’s family relieved pandemic tensions and strengthened the bonds between
family members as their primary form of entertainment.

As families typically quarantined together, there were more opportunities for
in-person cooperative play than players who did not play with family members.
The majority of participants who reported playing with their families were
happy with their experiences with the game during the pandemic. Yet, there
were notable exceptions where health concerns over COVID-19 were reported. The
family playgroup was more uniform in its positivity, with 10/11 reporting a
neutral or better experience than the 14/19 participants who did not play with
families.

Most of the participants who engaged in family play did not drastically change
their play patterns with their family members. Families who played together
remotely with a messaging platform did so, while families who played in person
continued to play in person. Consequently, this kind of familial locative play
was seemingly better able to withstand the changes brought about by the
pandemic, as inversely demonstrated by the impact felt by other demographic
groups interviewed. We, therefore, suggest this resistance to pandemic forces
might be symptomatic of participants not needing to alter their behaviors
during periods of plays.

###  4.2. Coping Through Locative Play

Participant Michelle [S005] (female 32) recounted Pokémon GO’s importance
during graduate school before the pandemic. To her, the game served as a
“diversion” from graduate school’s inherent difficulties and stressors.
Several participants mirrored this sentiment during the pandemic, using the
game to relieve stress from work, education, or even the pandemic itself.

Players generally appear to be continuing to use Pokémon GO to enhance their
mental health in the same ways as before the pandemic. However, additional
stressors from the pandemic have added new value to the game as a coping
mechanism. Some participants (7/30) joined or rejoined the game to escape from
the realities of the pandemic. For example, Harley [S018] (female 28), a
returning player, was dealing with pandemic boredom when her brother-in-law
suggested she ”re-download Pokémon GO [and she] said what the heck? You know I
got nothing else better to do.” After rejoining the game, it became an excuse
to engage in walks, providing a reason to leave home. While Harley [S018] was
using the game to escape boredom and encourage exercise, Mark [S009] (male 32)
used the games with their family members to obfuscate the existential
questions of the pandemic, as noted in section 4.1.3. For Mark [S009], the
game acted as a direct means to cope with the issues presented by the
pandemic, and the mechanics afforded by Pokémon GO allowed for a brief
respite.

Harley [S018] and Mark [S009] typify participants matching this description: a
family member or friend, introduces Pokémon GO as something to do during the
pandemic and the participant begins to play in earnest. Interestingly, these
participants universally described the game as an excuse to move and leave
home. Whether it be raiding, exploring the woods, or even hatching eggs, all
of the participants who joined due to the pandemic leveraged the mobility
aspects of LBG to great effect as a mechanism for coping.

However, for long-time players, the game was valuable for a different reason
in dealing with pandemic stressors. As was true in Michelle’s [S005] case,
these players would use the game to unwind after a long workday or take a
break from coursework. While exercise and familial play appear to have driven
players who mentioned the pandemic in their reasons for returning to or
joining the game, for veterans, the game served as a tether to times before
the pandemic. For example, Tom [P005] (male 21) had played the game for three
years before being interviewed, meaning he had played for about two years in
non-pandemic contexts. For him, Pokémon GO was “very relaxing and [took] [his]
mind off [work],” which the pandemic had moved into his home. The game allowed
him ”for at least ten minutes … [to] feel like we’re not in the middle of a
horrible, disastrous pandemic.” Interestingly, Tom’s [P005] relaxation was
also linked to exercise and ambulation.

To Hank [S017] (male 33), the game served a similar purpose as a relief to
pandemic woes, serving as an explicit escape. While Hank [S017] was careful to
note that ”gaming in general [was an escape],” his story hinted at a more
profound value in Pokémon GO than traditional games. Hank [S017] notes, ”you
[could] escape to a world where all [you] have to do is catch Pokémon … and
because [we’re] a level 40 player’s we don’t have to worry about things
running away. It’s almost like a constant; if you open [the app] at home
there’s one or two spawn spots. If you walk to the shop there are [more], it’s
comforting. … Despite the fact there is a virus that’s raging around the
world, this is constant.” To Hank [S017] Pokémon GO allowed him to ground his
reality to a familiar, consistent experience in a rapidly changing world.

Other participants, such as Brandon [S002] (male 30), also pointed directly at
the LBG characteristics of Pokémon GO as its value as a tool for relaxation.
For Brandon [S002] Pokémon GO was a literal escape from his home during the
pandemic, to him ”no one wants to be stuck, cooped up at home … [wouldn’t] you
rather be out exploring, being at least a little active?” In this
participant’s case, his home transitioned to a space that captured him, but
the game gave him an excuse to extricate himself from it. Moreover, in
playing, he had more opportunities to encounter green spaces, which he found
to be a ”kind of stress release” because it ”[felt] great to be outside.”
While Brandon’s [S002] reason to use the game to relax isn’t necessarily tied
to the pandemic, it has undoubtedly been exacerbated by it.

To Penny [S011] (female 44) the game was more holistically valuable to her
health. In addition to getting more exercise from the game, the game served as
”mental exercising [through] mental stimulation” by giving her a ”reason,
purpose and place to go [beyond to just] walk around a grocery store or
something.” For Penny [S011] Pokémon GO gave her a purpose beyond just
survival in the pandemic, injecting play into her life and engaging her
mentally. Penny’s [S011] family also played the game with her, allowing the
game to serve as a focal point of socialization with her family. This
socialization is largely playfully antagonistic with family members ”setting
up raids or showing off the newest shiny … in group chat.” The competitive
nature of play, coupled with necessary movement and adding purposeful
objectives to her day, worked in tandem during the pandemic offering a respite
from its challenges.

The exact shape and purpose of Pokémon GO in the lives of our participants as
a means of escape from the pandemic were non-standardized. How intense local
restrictions were, the health and well-being of family members, and even the
type of work participants engaged in appeared to influence the manifestation
of Pokémon GO as a coping mechanism. Moreover, exercise, green spaces,
socialization, mental stimulation, and the game’s existence as a constant
emerged as common themes in participant responses. At its core, the game
provided participants with structure in their lives to attach meaning
important to them: a family-oriented person such as Mark [S009] rendered this
structure as an apparatus facilitating family play. For Brandon [S002], this
structure acted as a reason to leave the house and explore. Finally,
Penny[S011] saw it as a combination of the two. No matter how small or large
the impact of Pokémon GO on a participant’s means of dealing with the
pandemic, it afforded them the capacity to redefine the space around them and
the way they interacted with the world. Most importantly, as their worlds
shrunk under quarantine and social distancing Pokémon GO allowed our
participants to recontextualize their world not only as they saw fit but as
they needed it.

###  4.3. Spatial Alterations and Intentional Ambulation

Pokémon GO requires players to interact with physical space in a manner that
is different from traditional games. Before the pandemic, players left their
homes to play the game, visiting in-game locations that serve as virtual
landmarks used as waypoints to navigate and contextualize space. One
participant, Penny [S011] (female 44), “could probably tell you where every
single PokéStop is in the city that [they] live in,” indicating a strong
presence of in-game waypoints in her mental topography. In this context, the
PoIs act as an imagable object the players can use to build or restructure
their mental maps of their surroundings. The association of these digital
locations with tangible in-game resources and out-of-game social rewards
strongly highlights these locations to the game’s players. The pandemic
restructured the way people interact with the space surrounding them in
general: commutes disappeared for many, places became taboo due to
restrictions, and free movement became impossible in areas hit by quarantine
measures. Pokémon GO was no exception, as players learned to restructure their
interactions with the game and the spaces in which they played it during the
pandemic, revealing some potential answers to RQ2 as people-place
relationships saw noticeable changes.

In one case, Michelle [S005] (female 32) related that ”[she] used to go to the
local university campus on community days to walk somewhere different, [but
since the pandemic] it feels really wrong to go to the university campus.” To
Michelle [S005], a place she had not only once played but also socialized with
other players, had become a location restricted by unspoken social norms. The
campus was still accessible; however, the pandemic had contextualized the
space and changed the game’s rules.

Michelle’s [S005] outdoor play was consistent with the remainder of our
participants, with 27/30 describing leaving home to play the game. That being
said, pandemic forces had reduced the frequency, recontextualizing the outside
world. However, the consensus amongst these players was the game was still
best played outside of the house, despite improvements allowing play from
home. In addition to recontextualizing space, how they navigated space to play
changed as well as participants found themselves engaging in more frequent car
play (10/30) or adjusting the routes (paths between game PoIs to maximize
play) (10/30) they took when playing on foot.

Routes taken along clusters of PoI were described in 17/30 of the
participants’ accounts as a typical play pattern during and before the
pandemic. This continued usage highlighted the importance of PoI in the game,
with the pandemic exacerbating the value of PoI as players were unable to
visit them to acquire the resources necessary to play the game as frequently.
Those who already had difficulty gathering resources (3/30) found the pandemic
had been exacerbating them.

Regardless, all participants reported that they modified how they interacted
with space regardless of pandemic fears as play styles shifted incidental to
more intentional. Before the pandemic, much of the play underpinning Pokémon
GO was incidental or ad hoc: visiting stops and catching Pokémon on the
commute, in class, or while shopping. Intentional play was not unheard of,
particularly amongst the most dedicated and those who participated in raiding
or pre-pandemic community days. However, many participants (7/30) reported
working from home during the pandemic, with all indicating experiences with
shelter-in-place restrictions.

Naturally, this impacted our participants’ chances for incidental play as
commutes, the locus of incidental play, had all but disappeared. An unexpected
consequence of the reduction in intentionality is a reduction in our
participants’ spatial awareness (15/30) while playing the game. As Noel [P001]
(female 23), recalls ”I [went] out to a new Lake and I found myself more
engaged by the game because I was spinning these new stops rather than
enjoying the Lake scenery. … I put the game away, … [and tried to] actually
live in the moment and enjoy the scenery in front of me.” This reduction
appears to be tied to the engagement models employed by Pokémon GO
(particularly spinning stops and catching Pokémon). However, reduction in
spatial awareness appears to be largely agnostic to the pandemic, as all
participants who described this phenomena recalled it applying in pre-pandemic
contexts.

Still, a tension arises between participants being less aware of the space
they inhabit and health concerns during the pandemic. Several participants
(6/30) indicated that their play was more cautious due to health and had
become entirely intentional. They appeared acutely aware of others occupying
the same space as them during the pandemic. This change in perception may be
in part because the pandemic has made intentional play “much more of a
process,” as Tom [S004] (male 26) notes. To play, the game players need to
prepare themselves more rigorously: donning a mask and arming themselves with
sanitizer before leaving the house. As a result, physical artifacts exist on
their person, acting as a constant reminder to be mindful of others. While the
locations fell into the background for our participants, the people entered
the forefront.

While the physical locations fell into the background for the participants,
the virtual ones were thrust more prominently to the forefront of their minds.
For players who could not travel as much, locations with PokéStops and Gyms
suddenly became more valuable. For example, Nicole’s [S016] (female 30)
grocery store experience no longer simply revolved around a site to purchase
essential resources and food. Instead, the grocery store became a lifeline for
continuing to play the game at a time when strict quarantine restrictions
severely limited her ability to travel. As travel saw a marked reduction for
the participants, there were fewer opportunities to encounter PokéStops and
Gyms incidentally.

Some participants had more significant restrictions preventing leaving their
homes to play the game. For some of these participants, such as Sarah [S003]
(female 50), risking the lives of their at-risk family members for the sake of
a game was not tenable. The game became centered around the home to these
participants, a pain point early in the pandemic as their resources and
opportunities to play dried up. However, as Niantic introduced new changes to
the game, stationary play became more accessible, and participants in cities
suddenly had access to PokéStops that were previously out of reach. For other
players, gifts ensured they had a constant supply of Pokéballs. Participant
living rooms were suddenly an accessible place to play Pokémon GO, or rather
Pokémon STAY.

##  5\. Discussion

###  5.1. Socialization Redefined

The present research’s findings indicate that the socialization involved with
playing Pokémon GO shifted in response to the pandemic. More precisely, the
kind of socialization that was endemic of raiding and community days decreased
following changes in society and the game due to COVID-19. For the most part,
these changes were brought about by the increased social distancing and
isolation implemented to combat COVID-19. Players lost the ability to interact
personally with other players, or at the very least, saw a large decline in
the feasibility of this form of interaction.

By ceasing to congregate in parks or around points of interest (POI) in the
game, players enacted Silvia and Sutko’s assertion that, in part, players
negotiate the rules of LBGs (Silva and Sutko, 2009). That is to say, players
changed the game’s rules, with social distancing and lockdowns acting as the
driving force. Players left the sidewalks and more actively utilized the
platforms they had already leveraged for coordination. In turn, Niantic
shifted with the players adjusting the rules of their game, making the
renegotiation of rules a two-way street (Silva and Sutko, 2009). As noted in
the background section, Niantic allowed players to thrive in more socially
isolated contexts by changing the game’s core mechanics.

Yet, all players did not receive these changes positively, as highlighted in
the shifting attitudes towards raiding. Raiding underlines the interplay
between player and developer action in negotiating Pokémon GO’s rules, with
lockdowns completely shutting down this aspect of the game. In several cases,
participants even noted that early raiding changes were primarily responsible
for them playing less or individuals they played with stopping. Some players
directly called out the impact on their ability to socialize: it represented a
loss of an integral aspect of the game to others. Nonetheless, most of our
players persisted through the raiding drought.

Only a third of the participants identified as hardcore players (very
dedicated players) of Pokémon GO, indicating that this may not be a factor
vis-a-vis commitment to the game. However, this may also be an artifact of
players being bad at identifying their placement on the hardcore-casual
continuum (Dunham et al., 2021). The participants generally underestimated
their commitment level to the game, indicating that this effect was at play in
the participants based on interviewer assessments. Reconsidering our players
as being largely more dedicated to the game than they reported
recontextualizes these findings. Under this interpretation, player dedication
appears to be a reasonable predictor of whether this renegotiation of the
rules was palatable to the players who considered raiding their favorite
experience. Players sufficiently dedicated to the game found the other
elements’ sum to outweigh the gratification loss from their favorite mechanic
changing. One player who appeared to be devoted casually to the game stopped
playing after raiding became a virtual event. In other words, this in-person
socialization was the driving force for their play resulting in them all but
quitting the game, indicating the answer to RQ3 is largely mediated by the
player’s particular gratifications and commitment.

####  5.1.1. Raiding Contextualized to Digital Spaces

The changes implemented by Niantic led to further renegotiations of raiding
rules, revolving around the inclusion of online socialization as a vital
component in the form of raid passes (Niantic, 2021). Local dynamics (Arrow et
al., 2000) shifted to organize online wholly in response, but this online
organization was already the norm for many participants. Organization moved
from identifying a raid and setting a meetup time to wrangling raid
participants to ensure all participants could participate. In this way, while
the participants of our study appreciated the functionality of remote raiding,
it did not replace the socialization offered by pre-pandemic raiding
(Bhattacharya et al., 2019). The increased complexity was less satisfying than
the more straightforward ad-hoc pick-up groups observed in the study of
Bhattacharya et al. (Bhattacharya et al., 2019). Similar trends are emphasized
in prior work, which has highlighted explicit benefits afforded by LBGs
concerning in-person interactions (Kaczmarek et al., 2017; Silva and Sutko,
2009), and reinforced by participants who noted this discrepancy between in-
person and online interactions.

The changes brought about by remote raiding extend beyond the discrepancy
between in-person and online play. Remote raiding created a new way to play
Pokémon GO, just as it reshaped a core element of the game. Raiding already
had a strong association with locative play in players’ minds, as in-person
play forced players to move and get out of their homes. In playing the game,
players redefined the legibility (Montgomery, 1998) of their surroundings and
established connections between the game and the space they inhabited (Saker
and Evans, 2021).

When raiding became remote, these prior associations of space may have
influenced player perceptions, with multiple participants indicating that they
felt as though they traveled while remote raiding. The phenomenological
sensation of travel felt by players may be an expression of the blurred nature
of the boundaries of LBGs found in prior works (Bell et al., 2006; Benford et
al., 2006; Gaver et al., 2003), as the virtual action and intent bleed into
the player’s reality. Through the ambiguity of the rules and the prior
negotiated contracts of play, a stronger connection to physical space may have
arisen through the game’s virtual space. In this way, despite removing the
need for strictly local play, the game at least partlymaintained some degree
of locality.

####  5.1.2. Engagement Through Socialization

While participants felt as though they were virtually traveling, their sense
of community (Kim et al., 2020b) was not as equipped to survive this digital
leap. Users of chat apps such as Discord, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger
already had existing connections between socialization and these applications,
so patterns of communication and behaviors were already established. Players
noted shifts in the contexts of the conversations held on these platforms
concerning changes in the game, although it did not supplant pre-pandemic in-
person interaction.

As social isolation took its toll on in-person interactions, digital platforms
failed to rise to replace them. Had the platforms been sufficient in replacing
these interactions, players should not have experienced a reduction in their
sense of community. The decline of communal connectedness appears to be a
manifestation of the “loneliness pandemic” (Luchetti et al., 2020; Palgi et
al., 2020), indicating that even games like Pokémon GO are not immune to this
effect.

Participant response to changes in community days appears to support this
assumption further. Community days prior to COVID-19 were vibrant events that
participants described asalmost fair-like. Pandemic events were duller and did
not provide the same gratification for our veteran participants, once again
reinforcing the importance of in-person socialization. However, participants
who had not played the game before the pandemic did not feel this dissonance.
New players did not mourn the loss of in-person interactions, the interactions
afforded by the game were fresher and provided them with relief from the
pressures of the pandemic.

Moreover, players who engaged in family play saw nearly no decline in their
sense of community or gratification with the game. Prior work by Sobel et al.
(Sobel et al., 2017) alongside Saker and Evans (Saker and Evans, 2021) on
joint media engagement (JME) indicates that family play already had a
substantial presence in LBGs such as Pokémon GO. It follows that despite the
stressors imparted by the family by the pandemic (Prime et al., 2020),
participants who played with families appeared to find relief in Pokémon GO.

To these players, their interactions with family members in the game
introduced a sense of structure and normality to their lives. Moreover,
Pokémon GO acted as a common goal or activity for the family to engage in,
resonating with Saker and Evans (Saker and Evans, 2021) study on families that
played this game before COVID-19. Indeed, this is also shown in Sobel et al.’s
pre-pandemic work (Sobel et al., 2017), with the game serving as a focal point
of engagement with their families.

In other words, the context of the game is less important than the social
activities it enables, supporting socialization as a driving force of LBG play
(RQ3). Nonetheless, even with a reduced capacity during the pandemic, families
could engage in playfully antagonistic competition (e.g., racing to catch
better Pokémon or controlling gyms), collaborative play (e.g., raiding and
joint usage of devices), and had an excuse to leave home. As family players
frequently lived together or at least were able to continue interacting in
person, they were more insulated from the impacts of in-person interaction’s
decline. Through co-quarantining, players could continue to engage in locative
play as a group, suggesting socialization acting as a primary mechanism by
which LBGs encourage mobility in their players (RQ1).

In the larger group of players, co-located play declined among the
participants. The general structure of locative play saw a major shift in the
participants, the most noteworthy of these changes being an increase in
intentional play over incidental play. Intentional play in Pokémon GO has been
observed in multiple contexts prior to the pandemic: most notably raiding (Aal
and Hauptmeier, 2019; Bhattacharya et al., 2019), community days (Aal and
Hauptmeier, 2019; Kim et al., 2020a), and family play (Sobel et al., 2017).

###  5.2. Coping Through Play

For the participants, incidental play accounted for much of their pre-pandemic
play patterns, namely on the commute. As noted in our Findings, a shift to
work from home resulted in players no longer needing to commute, and previous
opportunities to play disappeared. Yet players still went out of their way to
play the game, a finding mirrored by Laato et al.(Laato et al., 2020a). For
some, this was to seek the game as a form of simple entertainment. To others,
the game was acting as a means of stress relief. The participants reported
that the game served as a moment of distraction from the stressors of the
pandemic and even reminded them of a time before the pandemic. This
observation is supported by a recent study conducted by Ellis et al. (Ellis et
al., 2020) indicating positive prospects for depression in players of the
game. Palliative qualities of Pokémon GO have been reported before the
pandemic in other studies (Watanabe et al., 2017) and by our participants.

How Pokémon GO can have a palliative effect, however, is diverse. To socially-
minded players, the primary benefit of the game was its capacity to provide
avenues of socialization. Even if COVID-19 reduced in-person socialization,
our participants frequently indicated the importance of socialization to their
play and their gratification. When considered in the context of the pandemic,
known for its high rate of loneliness (Palgi et al., 2020), the continued
social outlet enabled by Pokémon GO makes the game alluring to players.

In the case of family players, this benefit is further highlighted. As
families are frequently co-quarantined, in-person social interaction (the
preferred interaction model of our participants) was still a reasonable
interaction model. Moreover, many family-oriented players had a pre-existing
history of co-playing, allowing experiences in the game to be tied to pre-
pandemic contexts, furthering the game’s capacity to reduce stress. In other
words, Pokémon GO served as a means for families to engage in productive Joint
Media Engagement (JME), as they cooperatively interact with media as a group
(Sobel et al., 2017; Takeuchi and Stevens, 2011).

Beyond the bounds of socialization, the game served as a distractionary
activity. While players engaged with the game, they could ignore the realities
of the pandemic and instead worry about the routine presented by the game.
Whether maintaining control of their territory or simply catching new Pokémon
the play elements represented an appreciated respite to our participants. It
stands to reason that players may have turned to the game as stressors
increased, either consciously or not. Moreover, the sensation of normality
afforded to players by Pokémon GO cannot be overstated.

Yet, within this normality, change emerged; as players visited locations
purposefully to play the game, the contexts of those spaces changed for them.
For some, a supermarket transcended being only a place to get food; others
redefined the meaning of local parks. The participants described a mentality
shift as locations attained new value based on their meaning in the game.
Pokéstops represented a lifeline to continued gameplay, indirectly relating
them to improved mental health. This recontextualization of space is supported
by existing literature (Papangelis et al., 2020), as the in-game contexts
augmented or changed the real-world ones.

###  5.3. Player Perceptions and the Intentionally of Play

As players’ meanings of locations change, so did their perceptions of the
space around them. Some players described the Pokéstop as the focal point of
their play, as they were intentionally visiting these locations, often
driving. In this way, the gameplay was more driven by moving more
intentionally from location to location, with the physical space being
secondary to the virtual one. Player intent appears to be critical in this
regard, as players who did not report such reductions in awareness indicated
that they deliberately engaged with their surroundings.

It appears that this deliberate awareness was in opposition to trends noted by
Lindqvist et al. (Lindqvist et al., 2018), wherein players were observed
having difficulty engaging in their surroundings. Interestingly, however, both
before and during the pandemic, players appear aware of other individuals who
occupy the same space. Based on participant testimony, before the pandemic,
players would routinely recognize other players and be aware of the reactions
of non-players. As LBGs are highly social experiences and blur the lines
between play and reality (Walther, 2011), this may be an extension of
socialization in pre-pandemic interactions.

Pandemic recognition of others seems to be for a different reason, as health
concerns were frequently noted when discussing others. The physical artifacts
carried by participants (e.g.mask, sanitizer) who noted increased awareness of
others may have served as reminders to be more aware. Additionally, as the
physical space is unlikely to carry the same health threats as a potentially
infected other, these spaces may take a back seat in the minds of the more
health-conscious. It is also noteworthy that players in self-described low
restriction areas in our study did not typically have increased awareness of
other people.

Changes in perceptions of space may also be the result of quarantine fatigue
(Palgi et al., 2020), as the home itself was recontextualized during the
pandemic. As a result of changes introduced by Niantic, the game could be more
comfortably played from home. A lesser need emerged for some players to leave
home to play the game, particularly those with a Pokéstop nearby. In this
manner, Pokémon GO shifted from being an LBG requiring offline interactions
with people and space to effectively being a static solo or online experience.

Through this stark contrast, the home effectively became a point of interest
in the LBG, contributing to the increase in play observed in many players and
the rise in intentionality. Players could now, from the comfort of their
living room, perform nearly every action in the scope of the game. Playing
Pokémon GO, then, was mechanically closer to playing a typical game than an
LBG.

Nonetheless, tensions were still present for some players. More precisely, the
lack of having a Pokéstop nearby resulted in fewer resources. Consequently,
some players still needed to leave their homes to continue playing the game
effectively, frequently engaging in fixed routes to play the game. As detailed
above, changes to commutes or routes chosen were not phenomena inspired by the
pandemic. Instead, routes were frequently embedded in player commutes and
their navigation through their daily lives.

Here, participants noted strong memories for locations of PoIs and how they
moved between them. However, multiple participants reported changing routes,
as locations became taboo for pandemic reasons: travel restrictions,
shutdowns, and health concerns. Once again players renegotiated the boundaries
of play (Bell et al., 2006; Benford et al., 2003; Gaver et al., 2003), this
time external factors pressuring the change. Participants redefined space even
further, once mundane paths to work became exotic as they began to understand
their neighborhood more fully. Likewise, new paths lost their luster as they
were more frequently tread.

As these changes are all driven mainly by the pandemic, a potential answer to
RQ2 emerges. Sufficient disruptions in players’ lives impact how people-place
relationships are mediated in the game. What constitutes a sufficient
disruption is linked to the player’s pre-existing relationship. However,
external factors that reduce a player’s ability to navigate the space around
them will invariably impact how the players engage in people-place
relationships.

###  5.4. Participants Want to Play

Ultimately, the participants just wanted to keep playing. Our study identified
the followings shifts in-game experience: (1) interaction with Pokémon GO
shifted from in-person to online, (2) a “soft reset” of sorts was experienced
by the observed players, which redefined their relationships with real and
virtual space around them, and (3) Pokémon GO became increasingly meaningful
beyond entertainment, with certain participants using this game to help them
cope with the pandemic situation.

First, the combination of stressors caused by the pandemic (e.g., social
distancing, quarantine, etc.) and the changes introduced by Niantic to the
game (e.g., remote raiding) resulted in players shifting their interaction
model with other players. While generally, this shift did not fully replace
the offline modalities, it produced new dynamics between players of the game
and connected players who normally would not interact in the course of the
game. Moreover, some evidence suggests that transitioning a largely offline,
locative game to a more statically defined online game may change how players
interpret online interactions. Users may make associations with the
experiences of locative play to the non-locative, presenting users with the
sensation of travel where there is none.

Second, restrictions to mobility reset a player’s perception and relationship
with the world around them beyond just the context of LBGs. Participants
reported changes to commutes, new patterns for leaving the house, and new
perceptions of space’s value, including both within the home and in public
spaces. Much of this recontextualization resulted from the pandemic, local
ordinances, and general cultural pressures. However, even during the pandemic,
Pokémon GO influenced the people-place relationships experienced by the
players. More broadly, in terms of LBGs, real-world circumstances interact
with the in-game content, forcing players to choose how they experience
locations in terms of the game.

As the world shows signs of a potentially fragile and slow ”new normal,” the
potential value of LBGs cannot be understated. LBG researchers and developers
are uniquely positioned to influence and enable the re-discovery of the city
for players of such games. Referring to previous work that has argued for the
ability of LBGs to activate people (Kato et al., 2017; Tateno et al., 2016),
shifts in gameplay have the potential to influence how people interact with
cities. Finally, the present research reinforces findings reported by both
Laato et al. (Laato et al., 2020a) and Ellis et al. (Ellis et al., 2020)
wherein Pokémon GO was leveraged by players to cope with stressors of the
pandemic in social and personal contexts.

##  6\. Conclusion

The COVID-19 global pandemic represents not only a major disruption to daily
life but an unprecedented upheaval to the regular operation of LBGs. The
present research presents the lived experiences of thirty LBG players to
observe the perceived changes to the game from their point of view. In pursuit
of this goal, a series of semi-structured interviews were conducted which,
amongst others, targeted key aspects of user experience: (1) the socialization
around LBG, (2) the impact of family play, (3) player relationships to space,
and (4) LBGs as a coping mechanism.

Socialization was recontextualized for many participants, with in-person
interactions declining during the pandemic being supplanted by online ones. As
a corollary to this, it was also observed that online social media was not a
replacement for the reduced in-person interaction. However, new phenomena such
as the sensation of virtual travel through the game manifested in response to
the introduction of mobility agnostic gameplay mechanics.

Moreover, family units were found to be a reasonably static group in terms of
perceived changes, with many continuing old behaviors or even increasing the
amount they played during the pandemic. Interestingly, these participants had
more generally positive perceptions of the game during the pandemic than their
cohorts who engaged in non-familial locative play. Participants also observed
changes in their routine in the LBG introduced by pressures of the pandemic.
These changes resulted in the recontextualization of the space around the
participants, attaching new meaning and value to different locations in their
lives. Finally, the participants were found to use the game to psychologically
cope with pandemic stressors.

###  6.1. Limitations

The limitations of this work are as follows. First, the participants are
predominantly recruited from online communities like Reddit’s /r/pokemongo
board. This sample may be more dedicated to Pokémon GO than the general
population, which, as noted in Dunham et al. (Dunham et al., 2021), may result
in the participants being disproportionately socially oriented. This social
orientation may have skewed our sample to have participants who perceived more
stark changes to socialization than the average player. Additionally, the
participants are more likely to have been members of online communities by
virtue of the participants being members of the online communities we
advertised in.

Consequently, these participants may have a different perception of online
communities. Due to health concerns centered on the pandemic, interviews were
exclusively conducted through Zoom. Accordingly, in situ observations of play
could not be conducted to reinforce participant interviews. Similarly,
researchers could not visit In-person raid hours and community days to confirm
a reduction in participants.

The distribution of participant locations also limited this work, as we
leveraged an opportunistic method to gather candidates. There were no
guarantees regarding regional participant distributions. Future work in this
space may require a more precise accounting for player regionality to draw
more specific conclusions.

Finally, given the temporal nature of LBGs and the pandemic’s unprecedented
nature, this study represents a snapshot of a particular moment in the history
of LBGs. As such conclusions must be considered from the state of the game
when the present research was constructed and mediated through this lens in
further studies. This work, however, opens several avenues for future work.

###  6.2. Future Directions for LBG Research

First, further research must be conducted into how players leverage Pokémon GO
and other LBGs to cope with stressors, particularly those relating to the
pandemic. Player relationships to space must also be investigated more
closely. A particular focus must be given to the notion of perceived travel
through LBGs, as it represents an unexplored facet of LBGs. Likewise, as the
world reopens from the pandemic, the application of LBGs to sculpt the
reopening of cities represents a novel area of research suggested by this
work. Additionally, as this work focused on urban play, future work could
explore how the discovered phenomena play out in predominantly rural player
communities. Ideally, this research should engage in ways that LBG can be
ethically leveraged to allow users to rediscover and discover their cities
through gameplay mechanics. Researchers could further expand this work to
compare and contrast urban and rural player communities in these contexts.

Additionally, while not new in the context of Pokémon GO (Laato et al.,
2020c), the continued usage of the game as a means of coping with mental
health concerns during the pandemic raises additional questions. In what ways
did this coping behavior manifest itself? Were there changes to user
perceptions of play as a means of coping during the pandemic? How will the
experience of the pandemic impact the relationship between the players and the
game in a post-pandemic context? Our work indicates that there is evidence of
using Pokémon GO as a metaphoric crutch; however, interviews primarily focused
on people-place relationships and socialization.

Future work should explore these questions and contextualize them to the
broader LBG context. This work should also investigate if and how LBGs can be
directly targeted to better their player’s mental health. As a final note,
studies observing players’ return to in-person interaction should be
conducted. This work should serve as a companion to this work challenging the
broader assertions made by this article discussing the core experiences of LBG
play inferred from exceptional circumstances.

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###### Acknowledgements.

Niantic has funded this work through the Niantic X RIT Geo Games and Media
Research Lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology.