2025
Koskinen, Elina
Memorable Player Experiences with Pokémon GO PhD Thesis
2025, ISSN: 2489-9860.
Abstract | Links | Tags: Location-based games, Pokémon Go, Sociability
@phdthesis{nokey,
title = {Memorable Player Experiences with Pokémon GO},
author = {Elina Koskinen},
url = {https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-3763-6},
issn = {2489-9860},
year = {2025},
date = {2025-01-31},
journal = {Tampere University Dissertations},
volume = {1166},
publisher = {Tampere University},
abstract = {When Pokémon GO (Niantic, 2016) was published in 2016, it quickly rose to the top of the most downloaded and most profitable mobile applications. The enormous and unprecedented success of Pokémon GO offered a chance to study game experiences of a mainstream location-based game with an exceptionally wide and diverse player base. While other location-based games with famous franchises have been published after Pokémon GO, they have had less visible popularity and economic success. Even though Pokémon GO has been studied from several points of view, there has been a lack of studies that examine player experiences through players’ own descriptions. This dissertation examines memorable player experiences with location-based games through the case of Pokémon GO. The dissertation is based on Finnish qualitative survey data (n=2400) gathered seven weeks after the game’s European launch when memories of the early days of the game’s peak popularity were fresh in players’ minds. The social atmosphere and communality created by Pokémon GO in the game’s early days was a unique phenomenon, the virality of which is hard to repeat. The game lowered the threshold to interact with strangers in ways and situations that players normally might not. Pokémon GO afforded a variety of positive experiences, facilitating new, and augmenting existing family interactions between parents and children, partners and siblings, due to the playful mindset that Pokémon GO is able to facilitate. The game had an extensive impact on the experiences and accessibility of games for middle-aged players – a player group that has traditionally
played less, and for some of whom Pokémon GO was their first experience of video games. Based on the results of the study, I argue that the memorable player experiences
of location-based games are divided into four main dimensions related to gameplay, physical context of play, sociability and the investment players had in the game. Pokémon GO demonstrated a significant potential to transform physical locations through the way people populated them, as well as the social atmosphere through how people encountered each other more openly. It also made some players so invested in the game that their public behavior transformed. Hence, we should reconsider the concept of digital play experience, which has traditionally been seen as something that takes place between the player and the game screen. Accordingly, I argue that play experience also includes a wider context that features our physical surroundings, the people in it, and the interaction we have with them and our environment, stemming from gameplay that affects our behavior. This dissertation explores what Pokémon GO players experienced as being memorable about a massive phenomenon when it was at the height of its popularity, and captures the uniqueness of Pokémon GO as a social phenomenon. More broadly, this dissertation provides insights into understanding player experiences in locationbased games, and how these games are capable of engaging their players with the physical and social contexts surrounding them.},
keywords = {Location-based games, Pokémon Go, Sociability},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {phdthesis}
}
When Pokémon GO (Niantic, 2016) was published in 2016, it quickly rose to the top of the most downloaded and most profitable mobile applications. The enormous and unprecedented success of Pokémon GO offered a chance to study game experiences of a mainstream location-based game with an exceptionally wide and diverse player base. While other location-based games with famous franchises have been published after Pokémon GO, they have had less visible popularity and economic success. Even though Pokémon GO has been studied from several points of view, there has been a lack of studies that examine player experiences through players’ own descriptions. This dissertation examines memorable player experiences with location-based games through the case of Pokémon GO. The dissertation is based on Finnish qualitative survey data (n=2400) gathered seven weeks after the game’s European launch when memories of the early days of the game’s peak popularity were fresh in players’ minds. The social atmosphere and communality created by Pokémon GO in the game’s early days was a unique phenomenon, the virality of which is hard to repeat. The game lowered the threshold to interact with strangers in ways and situations that players normally might not. Pokémon GO afforded a variety of positive experiences, facilitating new, and augmenting existing family interactions between parents and children, partners and siblings, due to the playful mindset that Pokémon GO is able to facilitate. The game had an extensive impact on the experiences and accessibility of games for middle-aged players – a player group that has traditionally
played less, and for some of whom Pokémon GO was their first experience of video games. Based on the results of the study, I argue that the memorable player experiences
of location-based games are divided into four main dimensions related to gameplay, physical context of play, sociability and the investment players had in the game. Pokémon GO demonstrated a significant potential to transform physical locations through the way people populated them, as well as the social atmosphere through how people encountered each other more openly. It also made some players so invested in the game that their public behavior transformed. Hence, we should reconsider the concept of digital play experience, which has traditionally been seen as something that takes place between the player and the game screen. Accordingly, I argue that play experience also includes a wider context that features our physical surroundings, the people in it, and the interaction we have with them and our environment, stemming from gameplay that affects our behavior. This dissertation explores what Pokémon GO players experienced as being memorable about a massive phenomenon when it was at the height of its popularity, and captures the uniqueness of Pokémon GO as a social phenomenon. More broadly, this dissertation provides insights into understanding player experiences in locationbased games, and how these games are capable of engaging their players with the physical and social contexts surrounding them.
played less, and for some of whom Pokémon GO was their first experience of video games. Based on the results of the study, I argue that the memorable player experiences
of location-based games are divided into four main dimensions related to gameplay, physical context of play, sociability and the investment players had in the game. Pokémon GO demonstrated a significant potential to transform physical locations through the way people populated them, as well as the social atmosphere through how people encountered each other more openly. It also made some players so invested in the game that their public behavior transformed. Hence, we should reconsider the concept of digital play experience, which has traditionally been seen as something that takes place between the player and the game screen. Accordingly, I argue that play experience also includes a wider context that features our physical surroundings, the people in it, and the interaction we have with them and our environment, stemming from gameplay that affects our behavior. This dissertation explores what Pokémon GO players experienced as being memorable about a massive phenomenon when it was at the height of its popularity, and captures the uniqueness of Pokémon GO as a social phenomenon. More broadly, this dissertation provides insights into understanding player experiences in locationbased games, and how these games are capable of engaging their players with the physical and social contexts surrounding them.