Reality is a Game

Game thinking from Adam Clare

Tag: Pokemon

My Book About Pokémon GO is Available Now

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On 02/11/2016

In Stuff, Video Games

The Unofficial Pokémon GO Tracker's Guide: Finding the Rarest Pokémon and Strangest PokéStops on the Planet

The Unofficial Pokémon GO Tracker’s Guide: Finding the Rarest Pokémon and Strangest PokéStops on the Planet

Pokémon GO took the world by storm this year by providing an AR experience that Pokémon lovers have wanted forever. Accordingly, this past summer Page Two Books asked if I wanted to write a book on the game. Instantly I said yes!

Pokémon GO is all about getting out into the world and exploring it, so I decided to celebrate that part of the game in the book. Throughout The Unofficial Pokémon Go Tracker’s Guide I provide the strangest and best places to play the game. Think about it as a sort of tour book to take your Pokemon GO playing to the next level.

Inside The Unofficial Pokémon Go Tracker’s Guide you’ll find places around the world that will add to your Pokemon GO experience. Thanks to my travels around the world I used my personal experiences to choose the niftiest PokeStops and gyms. You’ll also find stories about how some people have expressed their joy around Pokemon GO in novel ways!

Much more than a player’s guide, The Unofficial Pokémon Go Tracker’s Guide takes you on an epic journey to all the weird and wonderful places Pokémon appear across the planet — from the Pentagon to Iceland’s Westfjords to Frankenstein Castle — and shows how everyday players are taking the world’s greatest, most exciting treasure hunt by storm.

Uncover secrets of the player community in this one-of-a-kind, visually striking guide. Experience infamous and obscure PokéStops first-hand through the eyes (and screens) of real-life Pokémon GO players — just like you! See how players congregate at bustling Central Park to capture a care Vaporeon and kayak to the middle of New Zealand’s breathtaking Oriental Bay to claim an undiscovered PokéGym. Learn about PoGo yarn bombing, moth research, mountain climbing, and other quirky elements of the world’s favorite game.

Where to buy

You can get the book now at any of the following stores:

  • Amazon
  • Amazon Canada
  • Indigo
  • It is also sold in Walmart, Costco, Shopper’s Drug Mart, select Loblaws, American Urban Outfitters, Barnes and Noble, and chain and independent stores around the world.

Collection of Propaganda Games Part 1

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On 15/01/2013

In Education, Experimental

Propaganda is about changing public opinion on something for political or other motives and many games aim to that very thing. In my opinion both advertising games and educational games aim to change the way people think and can therefore be lumped together under propaganda games.

Like many things in the world of games Hollywood have already tackled with putting propaganda in their entertainment properties, the most blatant and perhaps comical example of this comes from Wayne’s World:

Games don’t tend to be that blunt or honest, or get nearly as much money for tossing in such blatant advertising. Still, we can look at what;s out there in the world of games.

Here’s a fairly random selection of games that lean to the educational side but can also be considered propaganda because of the message they carry.

Super Tofu Boy by PETA

Moonbase Alpha by NASA (article on the game).

Real Lives allows you to simulate what it’s like to live anywhere on the planet.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s games to help kids understand citizenship.

Save the Silly Earthlings from their climate change.

Phylo a trading card game inspired by Pokemon, instead it’s abut real animals.

Sweatshop a game about the horrible working conditions that too many people on the planet suffer through in order for cheap products to exist.

Mayor Munch is a game about the most pathetic mayoral race in Toronto’s history (article in the Toronto Star).

Urgent Evoke an interactive story about saving the world.

World Without Oil is all about getting players to be more conscious of how oil is used in everything.

The Bail Out Game is a chance to relive the welfare the banks got from the USA during the banker caused bank implosions of a few years ago.

The NRA has a pro-gun game for ages 4 and up, which is quite ironic.

For more explicitly educational games please check out the great list at Games for Change.

Somewhat related stuff:

Here’s a previous post on the Canadian military looking into using virtual reality and things like America’s Army.

It’s worth looking at how Angry Birds has been manipulated into propaganda in this post at MetaFilter.

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