Chasing Lovely Monsters in the Wild, Exploring Players' Motivation and Play Patterns of Pokémon Go

Abstract

Pokémon Go™ allows players to catch and train Pokémon in the wild through a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game. Numbers of people are willing to be physically active for long periods of time to catch the Pokémons. Further, the medical and public health communities are also curious if this game has triggered more active levels of sustainable Physical Activity (PA) or behavior changes for health benefits. Therefore, in this paper, we presented a critical analysis of Pokémon Go players' experience from an online survey filled in by 32 participants. The goal of this survey is to get a glimpse of Pokémon Go players' motivation, their play patterns and experience, and an understanding of their self-reported behavior changes and concerns. The results revealed both negative and positive outcomes of the gamification approach Pokémon Go adopted.