Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Waiting for the Augmented Reality ‘Killer App’: Pokémon GO 2016

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Augmented Reality Games I

Abstract

In this chapter, the author asks why, despite the commercial success of Pokémon GO, a large popular audience for augmented reality experiences has not yet gathered. Drawing a comparison to the quick and massive popularity of cinema at the turn of the century, the author asks, what do audiences desire from this ever-emerging medium? In response, the chapter re-draws definitions of the augmented reality medium and reflects on its unique potentialities. The central question of the chapter is an analogy: if, in 1903, The Great Train Robbery established the cinematic montage form and inspired the creation of massive cinema audiences and venues, what could be The Great Train Robbery of AR?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    And it’s not just in cinema. In his essay, “Little History of Photography,” Walter Benjamin notes, after the presentation of Daguerre's invention in the Chamber of Deputies in 1839, “Things developed so rapidly that by 1840 most of the innumerable miniaturists had already become professional photographers, at first only as a sideline, but before long exclusively” (Benjamin 1999, 515).

  2. 2.

    Lumiere’s Le Jardinier (1895) is considered one of the first, if not the first, comedy film, and was part of the program at the December 28, 1895, premiere screening at the Grand Cafe (Gaines 2004, 1309).

  3. 3.

    I would liken this to the uncanny valley in robotics. A seamless integration of computer generated virtual with real is the goal of cinema special effects. A delineated integration of virtual and real is the realm of AR. And between the two lies discomfort or insult. It is interesting, in regard to the comparisons between photography, cinema, and AR, to note Masahiro Mori’s discussion of the effects of movement in “amplifying the peaks and valleys” of this phenomenon in his 1970 essay (Mori 2012, 2).

  4. 4.

    Translated by J. F. Prieto. The original Spanish: “El objetivo final de todas estas “máquinas de visualización” consiste en superar las dificultades de comprensión debidas a los diferentes niveles de abstracción conceptual que presentan los distintos sistemas de representación tradicionales empleados para comunicar un diseño espacial: planta, alzado, sección, perspectiva, axonometrías y modelos a escala” (Álvarez and José 2010, 114).

  5. 5.

    This particular fiducial was developed as part of the Pentag system for what would become SnapDragonAR, developed at York University’s Future Cinema Lab with Mark Fiala shortly before the iPhone was launched.

  6. 6.

    The Chicago 00 Project comprises a series of new media publications in apps, videos, and VR stills. The first publication was an app-based augmented reality experience at the site of the Eastland Disaster, where a passenger ferry capsized on the Chicago River in 1915. VR panoramas of the site, created as research tools, were shared on Google Street View, and because of their success (over a million views), subsequent projects used VR to share historical photos superimposed on their present-day sites: the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair, and the 1968 DNC protests. www.Chicago00.org.

  7. 7.

    In a footnote, Benjamin writes: “Before film had started to create its public, images (which were no longer motionless) were received by an assembled audience in the Kaiserpanorama. Here the audience faced a screen into which stereoscopes were fitted, one for each spectator. In front of these stereoscopes single images automatically appeared, remained briefly in view, and then gave way to others. Edison still had to work with similar means when he presented the first film strip- before the movie screen and projection were known; a small audience gazed into an apparatus in which a sequence of images was shown. Incidentally, the institution of the Kaiserpanorama very clearly manifests a dialectic of development. Shortly before film turned the viewing of images into a collective activity, image viewing by the individual, through the stereoscopes of these soon outmoded establishments, was briefly intensified, as it had been once before in the isolated contemplation of the divine image by the priest in the cella” (Benjamin 2008, 52). Doesn’t this sound like AR on the smartphone?

References

  • Adobe (2018) Introducing Project Aero. Available via https://www.adobe.com/products/projectaero.html. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Álvarez F, José A (2010) De Las Arquitecturas Virtuales a la Realidad Aumentada: Un Nuevo Paradigma de Visualizacion Arquitectonica. Presented at: Graphic Expression applied to Building International Conference APEGA

    Google Scholar 

  • Arth C, Gruber L, Grasset R, Langlotz T, Mulloni A, Schmalstieg D, Wagner D (2015) The history of mobile augmented reality: developments in mobile AR over the last almost 50 years. Technical Report ICG–TR–2015-001, Graz, Austria

    Google Scholar 

  • Azuma RT (1997) A survey of augmented reality, presence. Teleoperators Virtual Environ 6(4):355–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett B (2018) The Quiet, Steady Dominance of Pokémon Go. In: Wired.com. Available via https://www.wired.com/story/pokemon-go-quiet-steady-dominance. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Benjamin W (1999) Selected writings, vol 2, 1927–1934. Livingstone R et al (trans: Jennings MW, Eiland H, and Smith G (eds)). The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Bush MD (2016) A tool for flipping the classroom: Ayamel in action. Educ Technol 56(6):57–60

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin W (2008) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media. In: Jennings M, Doherty B, and Levin T (eds) (trans: Jephcott E, Livingstone R, Eiland H et al). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Borrelli C (2016) Pokemon Go For Broke. In: Chicago Tribune, Dec. 27 2016, pp 4–1

    Google Scholar 

  • Corliss R (2015) D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation 100 Years Later: Still Great, Still Shameful. In: Time Magazine. Available via: http://time.com/3729807/d-w-griffiths-the-birth-of-a-nation-10. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Dogtiev A (2018) Pokémon GO Revenue and Usage Statistics (2017) In: Business of Apps. Available via http://www.businessofapps.com/data/pokemon-go-statistics. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Doherty T (2015) ‘The Birth of a Nation’ at 100: “Important, Innovative and Despicable”. In: The Hollywood Reporter. Available via: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/birth-a-nation-at-100-770620. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Eisenstein S (1977) Film form: essays in film theory. In: Leyda J (ed) Harcourt, Brace & World, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Frampton H (1983) Incisions in history/segments of eternity. In: Circles of confusion: film, photography, video: Texts, 1968–1980. Visual Studies Workshop Press, pp 87–106

    Google Scholar 

  • Frayssé O (2017) Guy Debord, a critique of modernism and Fordism: what lessons for today? In: Briziarelli M, Armano E (eds) The spectacle 2.0: reading Debord in the context of digital capitalism. University of Westminster Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Fried M (2005) Barthes’s Punctum. Crit Inq 31(3):539–574

    Google Scholar 

  • Gaines JM (2004) First fictions. Signs 30(1):1293–1317

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • GATech Augmented Environments Lab (2004) The Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit. Accessible via: http://ael.gatech.edu/dart. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Gaucheraud H (1839) The Daguereotype. Lit Gaz J Belles Lett Arts Sci 1148:43–44

    Google Scholar 

  • Gunning T (1986) The cinema of attraction[s]: Early film, its spectator and the avant-garde. Wide Angle 8(3):63–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Hansen M B (2004) Room-for-play: Benjamin’s Gamble with cinema. October 109:3–45

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jentsch E (1997) On the psychology of the uncanny (1906). Angelaki 2:7–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/09697259708571910

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johri A (2016) Digital lens: Gotta catch ‘Em All? ASEE Prism 26(1):23

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Kamarainen J, Reilly J, Metcalf S, Grotzer T, Dede C (2018) Using mobile location-based augmented reality to support outdoor learning in undergraduate ecology and environmental science courses. Bull Ecol Soc Am 99(2):259–276

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Manifest.AR (2011) The AR Art Manifesto. Accessible via http://manifest-ar.art. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Mori M (2012) The uncanny valley the original essay by Masahiro Mori (trans: MacDorman K, Kageki N). IEEE Robot Autom Mag

    Google Scholar 

  • Moseley R (2016) Play again? In: Keys to play: music as a Ludic medium from Apollo to Nintendo. University of California Press

    Google Scholar 

  • New York Times (1915) “Five dollar movies prophesied: D.W. Griffith says they are sure to come with the remarkable advance in film productions”. March 28, 1915

    Google Scholar 

  • Niantic Labs (2017) Press release: Niantic Prepares to Reboot First Augmented Reality Game with Ingress Prime. Available via https://www.nianticlabs.com/press/2017/ingressprime. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Peacock D, MacKenzie J (2016) Find your Adelaide: Digital placemaking with Adelaide City Explorer. In: Griffiths M, Barbour K (eds) Making Publics, Making Places. University of Adelaide Press

    Google Scholar 

  • Pitcher C (1999) D. W. Griffith’s Controversial Film, “The Birth of a Nation”. OAH Mag Hist 13(3):50–55

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prieto JF, Pereab EC, Arroyoc FL (2017) 3D virtual reconstruction and visualization of complex architectures. Int Arch Photogramm Remote Sens Spat Inf Sci 42(2)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rogin M (1985) “The Sword became a flashing vision”: D. W. Griffith’s the birth of a nation. Representations 9:150–195

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schipper I (2017) From flâneur to co-producer: the performative spectator. In: Leeker M, Schipper I, Beyes T (eds) Performing the digital: performance studies and performances in digital cultures. Transcript Verlag

    Google Scholar 

  • Squire K, Gaydos M, DeVane B (2016) Introduction to special issue on games + learning + society. Educ Technol 56(3):3–5

    Google Scholar 

  • Steuer J (1992) Defining virtual reality: dimensions determining telepresence. J Commun 4(24):73–93

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Talbott HF (1839) The new art. Lit Gaz J Belles Lett Arts Sci 1150:72–75

    Google Scholar 

  • Tassi P (2018) ‘Pokémon GO’ Is More Popular Than It’s Been At Any Point Since Launch In 2016. In: Forbes.com. Available via https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/06/27/pokemon-go-is-more-popular-than-its-been-at-any-point-since-launch-in-2016. Accessed 20 Dec 2018

  • Tresch J (2007) The daguerreotype’s first frame: Franc ̧ois Arago’s moral economy of instruments. Stud Hist Phil Sci 38:445–476

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vertov D (1984) Kino-eye: the writings of Dziga Vertov. Michelson A (ed) (trans: O-Brien K). University of California Press, Berkeley

    Google Scholar 

  • Wythoff F (2009) Projecting martian photography. Paper presented at the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) conference, Georgia Tech, 13 June 2009

    Google Scholar 

  • Žižek S (2017) Incontinence of the void: economico-philosophical spandrels. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Visual Communication Design, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA

    Geoffrey Alan Rhodes

Authors
  1. Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Geoffrey Alan Rhodes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Informatics and Computer Science, The British University in Egypt, Cairo, Egypt

    Vladimir Geroimenko

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Rhodes, G.A. (2019). Waiting for the Augmented Reality ‘Killer App’: Pokémon GO 2016. In: Geroimenko, V. (eds) Augmented Reality Games I. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15616-9_1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15616-9_1

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15615-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15616-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation