Thousands of people shuffling around the streets, their eyes downcast, sounds like something out of The Walking Dead. However, it’s not the zombie apocalypse, rather it’s people playing Pokemon Go.
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Without a doubt it will become the bane of parents and teachers as addicts get distracted by their game, but there’s an emerging group of digitally-disaffected refugees: spouses and loved ones.
Where once video game addicts were stereotypical teenage nerds locked away in a bedroom, they have now grown up, had families and gotten full-time employment. But what happens when these functioning members of society fall victim to the insidious trap of gaming?
This is all very tongue-in-cheek, of course, because we’re witnessing the latest evolution of an emerging form of mainstream entertainment: augmented reality.
The first time most people over the age of 40 encountered video games was in fish and chip shops and corner stores where huge plywood and fibreglass cabinets held coin-operated games like Space Invaders and Pacman.
Throughout the 80’s, gaming came into the home thanks to companies like Atari, Sega and Nintendo. The latter would ultimately sign a contract with the makers of Pokemon in the 1990’s for their handheld console: The Gameboy.
Aborted attempts at virtual reality followed but for the most part gaming remained on consoles, computers and hand-held devices such as the early Nokia mobile phones, which featured the perennial ‘Snake’ game. As the original gamers grew up and had children, video games were more widely adopted but it still didn’t ‘cross-over’ into the mainstream until the iPhone and Angry Birds.
Technology recently caught up with gaming and we are now seeing virtual reality and it’s cousin, augmented reality, begin to emerge. The blending of real-world environments with the flights of fancy in video games is akin to the way children play-act, but with better graphics.
As with other forms of entertainment, augmented reality will also be derided and the subject of much concern from older generations, but it will eventually become the norm. At the risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, the only real concerns here are safety and whether scripted games will ultimately limit our own imagination.
-STEPHEN MUDD