The Impact of Pokémon Go and Why It's Not about Augmented Reality - Results from a Qualitative Survey

Pokémon Go is a mobile game that uses geolocation and Augmented Reality (AR) to bring little monsters into the real world. In this paper, we want to outline a qualitative study which focuses on socio-technical effects of this game onto the players themselves. Episodical interviews are used to collect data which is then coded by an approach close to Grounded Theory. The results contain theories with quotations from the participants. On the technical side, players judge AR as hardly relevant for the game and more useful for advertisement through media coverage. Even though Pokémon Go is an AR game, this feature is optional and suffers from bad usability.