AR

Augmented reality games as a New Media Experience.

Nowadays, technology plays an important role in people’s life. It is everywhere and it rules the world. The processes of improvement and further development of different kinds of technology are constantly progressing. As a result, it allows individuals to communicate and interact not only with each other in the real world, but it also provides new ways to explore the virtual world.

For instance, augmented reality that allows the merging process between virtual information and the real world environment in order to provide users with more immersive interaction with their surroundings. In other words, augmented reality provides new experience of the real world that draws the users away from the real world and onto the screen (Greenfield, 2017). 

According to Oxford dictionaries, the term “Augmented Reality” simply means a technology that provides the user a computer produced image of the real world (https://www.oxforddictionaries.com). 

In programming language AR is the process that provides an opportunity to combine both images and videos from the real world with the data that generated by computer. As a result of development of the new computers it became possible to interconnect data with augmented reality. Augmented reality has its concept from informational displays developed for military pilots. The practical uses of augmented reality started in the early 1960s with military instruments such as real time video displays that were being used in airplanes and tanks to detect targets accurately. In addition, AR was used in video games in order to increase the level of realism of the game. Therefore, a lot of militaries, especially military pilots found given method as useful one and trained themselves and their soldiers by using augmented reality masks. Moreover, while training equivalent real life time fields and enemies were added. In recent times, there are different ways of using and consuming processes that involves the augmented reality. For instance, we can find the augmented reality even in our phones and it helps us to get better interface experiment, like displaying significant information for us about different products, shops, locations, offers and even sales. Furthermore, augmented reality is being used in global positioning system (GPS) and it is linked to an open-source database that helps us with directions (Greenfield, 2017). 

In this blog I will focus on augmented reality game called Pokemon Go in order to explore and understand AR games’ advantages and disadvantages and view such games as a new media experience.

Pokemon Go is a location-based, free-to-play AR game that was developed by an American software development company Niantic,Inc for iOS and Android devices and was released in selected countries in July 2016. After its release the game became very popular and had huge success among players. In addition, it quickly became a global phenomenon and was downloaded more than 500 million times worldwide. However, given app is also known for its various accidents and for becoming a public nuisance at some locations. Various governments also expressed concerns over the security of the game.

The slogan of the game is: ‘Gotta catch ‘em all’ and the main premise of the game is that players have to walk around capturing virtual Pokemon in the real world. There are some advantages and disadvantages about this augmented reality game. To begin with the advantages, first of all, Pokemon Go may be helpful in terms of human’s mental and physical health as it is very simple to understand and easy to play. Pokemon Go provides its players incentives to walk around and it require players to walk certain distances which at the end will help them to improve their healthy behavior. Secondly, it can help to ease social anxiety as it is an easy conversation starter. This games allows players to feel socially connected as it allows to interact with other players over something they share in common. In addition, it might help to notice things or places that players did not see or notice before. For example, players have to collect items at Pokestops that usually located at attractions, murals or different buildings. Moreover, I personally believe that the game can help to further develop level of creativity and spark the imagination that one has. However, there are some disadvantages that the game delivers. The game makes one to go outside and walk a lot, however player still on the phone which can even more increase the level of addictiveness. As I already mentioned the game takes players outside, but it makes them even more distracted from the ‘real’ or ‘outside’ world as gamers are playing the game on their phone and excited about the game itself, which can lead to some dangerous consequences as accidents between players and drivers. Furthermore, the game can provoke people to lose their sense of reality and damage their sense of separation two worlds reality and virtual.

There is no doubt that augmented reality brought some significant changes in our world and in some cases made our lives easier (like interface experience, GPS etc). However, it is still new phenomenon and needs some more scientific research. There are some people who believe that AR games as Pokemon Go helps to decrease the level of stress, depression and anxiety, which I personally believe is already a good characteristic for this type of game. However, it is always good to be aware that AR games are highly technology related and it is good to keep some balance while using it.