ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an application of the new mobilities paradigm as an attempt to understand locative games, particularly Pokémon GO (NianticLabs 2016). This locative game, i.e., the game genre that uses locative media as a resource for game design, has become a blockbuster of the mobile game industry since it was released in mid 2016. We believe that Pokémon GO can reflect the new mobilities paradigm by stimulating three levels of mobility in the gameplay: physical, informational, and imaginary. Otherwise previous locative games such as Code Runner (Rocket Chicken 2011), Ingress (Niantic 2012) and so forth, Pokémon GO provides a special kind of imaginary mobility, which could connect its gameplay to the universe provided by Nintendo and Pokémon Co. in 1996. Thus, the main fascinating feature on Pokémon GO could be a connection provided by imaginary mobility to the classic game, not the informational or physical mobility inherent to locative gaming.
