How Pokémon Go took over the world in a weekend

If the clusters of teenage otaku captured wandering round Central Park on Saturday are anything to go by, Pokémon Go is rapidly turning the US’s streets into a George A Romero B-roll. The newly released augmented-reality game uses your phone’s GPS and clock to make Pokémon “appear” around you. The aim is to travel around the real world nabbing these coloured blobs – normally dinosaurs, birds, rats, snakes or dragons. As a “trainer”, your role is then to build up their strength, thereby enabling them to “fight” each other. It may not sound riveting in precis, but the game has juiced Nintendo’s stock price by 23%, and has proved so popular the company’s servers haven’t been able to keep up with demand.

Now, as a community best known for lying on sofas eating Reese’s steps outside to visit “Pokéstops” (to gather “Pokéballs”) and trek to “gyms” (to battle other Pokémon), reality is biting back at augmented reality in surprising ways.

Locating dead bodies

The first the non-gaming world knew of this was on Friday, when, in Wyoming, 19-year-old Shayla Wiggins jumped a fence to capture the Pokémon shown on her smartphone, sending her on a collision course with a dead body.

Abetting armed robbery

By Saturday night, in O’Fallon, Missouri, the app was being exploited by a group of armed robbers. The gang, apprehended by police around 2am, had apparently led at least one group of gamers into a secluded spot, by “adding a beacon to a Pokéstop” to multiply its significance.

Highlighting racial profiling

On the other side of the legal fence, one Reddit user, a middle-aged white man, reported buddying-up with two twentysomething black players at a Pokéstop, then having to rapidly explain to law enforcement why their 3am park bench conference wasn’t a drug deal.

Comfort zones are being bulldozed in pursuit of Pokéballs – and in a tetchy, post-Philando Castile US, orienteering past the nation’s unspoken racial zoning can feel particularly uncomfortable. At least one black player has blogged about the discomfort of being eyed with suspiciond by middle-aged white suburbanites, while doing laps around predominantly white neighbourhoods in the course of playing the game.

Disrupting space and time

Beyond the bafflement, those hip to the Go jive are taking a more enlightened approach. Massachusetts designer Boon Sheridan, who lives in a converted church, found that his home had been designated a “gym” within the game (churches are often classified as “public space” by the system), leading to a steady stream of teens pulling up on a bench across the road, loitering without intent. In Australia, the Northern Territory Emergency Service has been reduced to issuing statements such as: “You don’t actually have to step inside [Darwin police station] in order to gain the Pokéballs” to keep the space invaders out.

Improving mental health

The gym is virtual, but there is an increasing, if anecdotal case that the mental health boost is real – agoraphobics, depressives, anyone who would normally spend their weekend dragging body between bed and couch, have received a life-giving jolt of the great outdoors in the past few days.