First of all, I have to say that I am not a heavy game player, or even a real game player, since I only play a very limited number of games countable with my fingers. However, one recent game, Pokemon Go, catches my eye. I play this game just like others, and I have met many people walking on the street and staring at their cellphone screens. Here is my achievement in this game so far. I caught and evolved lots of high-level Pokemons as a Pokemon trainer.
The points that make this game so special to me are, firstly, it makes me remember lots of fun times watching the original Pokemon animations during childhood. Secondly, this idea of making a game feels like it is happening in the real world is amazing. When I enthusiastically talk about this game with my friends, I call this game a ‘perfect matching game’ to the Pokemon idea. You go outside, find some wild Pokemon, catch it, and put it into your pocket. Your cellphone becomes a device linking you and the invisible game world.
This game’s unique core technique is so-called Augmented Reality (AR). AR is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented (or supplemented) by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, or GPS data (from Wikipedia). In general, this technique can create virtual content in the real world while this content is perceived by special hardware, such as cellphone, glasses (Google Glass), and head-mounted headsets (Microsoft Hololens). Although virtual content requires special devices to be sensible, this technique approached one step closer to the final Virtual Reality (VR), where an environment and real and imagined situations are duplicated and simulated, allowing for user interaction with a physical presence. It could be imagined that VR requires a substantial amount of computing power as an entire environment needs to be simulated in a finely detailed resolution to feel like real. Other technical obstacles for VR include understanding human brain functions and neural signal transmission, reliable neural links (i.e., Cybernetics), virtual world creation, etc. Jeffrey Werner wrote a nice blog discussing the difficulty of implementing real VR. Here is the link for “Virtual Reality – The Road to Fully Immersive Gaming.” AR could be a realistic compromise to VR, given current technical limitations.
With all of that, enjoy Pokemon Go, the AR game.