Pokemon Go: success secret

I was very surprised when I first heard about Pokemon Go through social media. Most of my Facebook friends suddenly started publishing pictures of the old known Pokemon in the real world, sometimes in weird and funny places. One of my closest friends went mad for it and I felt the urge to download it. I was curious. I needed to see by myself what drives them that crazy. what was the secret?

At first, it was quite difficult to download. It was saying that due to over download it was necessary to try later. It made me even more interested especially that the game has not been launched yet in some countries such as Japan and even not yet formally available in the United Kingdom.

So what makes Pokemon Go so attractive?

• Pokemon Go is a new augmented reality smartphone game that overlaps the real world with the virtual one, giving to the users the possibility to experience an environment of co-presence with cartoonish characters. 

• One critical feature to its success is that it depends on available technologies (the GPS and the mobile) that the strict majority of the population is familiar with.

• The game offers to the users the possibility to pretend that our mother earth is occupied by different creatures, virtual ones. Capturing and training them for the fight against other users was the final aim.

• The game offer to the users the pleasure to capture and train, fight and survive which are some of the human primal instinct and evolutionary behaviors. 

• While the game offers a novel gaming experience, it also brings old memories and reminds people of the 1996s when the series was popular among the millennials. 

• The game also provides the users with a sense of exploration at the same time as having fun. The Pokemon fans, most of the timeshare through their social accounts the creatures they find and comment on the circumstances and the environment in which they caught them which might be the most important feature of this game success.

In the pre-smartphone age, gaming was purely in the real world, using physical, touchable objects in a closed or open space, collaborating with some players against others. The virtual games come afterward focusing mainly on the play's attention on the screen.

Nowadays, people are constantly using their smartphones regardless of where they are. They become connected to others more than ever before, with family and colleagues, and virtual friends which they never met in the real world that might be located on the other side of the world. Awar of the importance of being active and healthy, they are using apps to monitor their activities. besides, research for constant entertainment become the new trend.
It was the opportunity, the right time to create a game which combines all of these characteristics. 

With the actual technological progress, it was possible to develop a game which gives the user power over virtual creatures in the augmented reality environment. It has a lot of similarities with pure virtual games but the additional feature, which is keeping continuously the AR world in view makes all the difference. In better words, in order to receive feedback, the user is obliged to be actively in control of his device and his fingers in contact with the screen especially when the user is in the combat field. 

Although the player can see both avatars, he is only in control of his own character, defense, and attacks. The game indeed is a mixture of the entertaining fantasy attributes of gaming and the interactive, and competitive features between the users, which characterize the human spicy.

The game is very new and many professionals for sure got similar ideas and it won't take so long before other games that give similar sensations and feelings will be released. Indeed, the game gave more insights on what encourages people to interact through social media and how they enjoy spending their time, especially when commuting to work or to release stress.

Of course, the game did not get that famous without controversy. Concerns have been raised regarding data confidentiality and security due to the fact the game might have large access to the gamer's data especially when the user register through their Google accounts on IOS smartphones. Also, the player is not free in the real world, the game requires a lot of attention and needs constant eyes on the screen. 

1. First, because the player needs to keep an eye on the screen in case a virtual character appears, in which case the player has to physically catch it. The ease with which it is possible to catch the virtual creature gradually decrease as the creature get powerful and trying several times might be necessary in some cases. 
2. Second, in order to increase the player's physical activity and as the game relies on GPS and the player's real-time position, monuments, museums, and many other historical buildings that are existing in the real world have been embedded in the game. Being close to these places give to the player some sort of gifts such as magical potions or virtual eggs. These last requires walking in order to bring them to maturity and become a complete virtual character. Also, this action requires the screen on for several kilometers, which is also attention-taking. 

While the game might be entertaining, pleasant and gives to people incentives to move longer durations, it might be dangerous and responsible need to take this seriously and find how to make the game safer for users. 

The recent years witnessed a huge change in the way people interact, communicate and entertains themselves and the digital era brought enormous changes in the societal psyche and lifestyle. The augmented reality transformed gaming into some exotic fantasy that is taking the real world for a playground. The users are able to enjoy both the fantasy of the virtual characters and the experiences as well as the tangible physical world.