ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2016, the mobile and locative game, Pokemon Go, became an international phenomenon. A decade before the launch of Pokemon Go, in the fall of 2006, gamers in Stockholm immersed themselves into the world of Momentum, a “live action role-playing” game that required players to embody roles of various historic characters. The design of these games, however, often presents ethically challenging scenarios, and the media-specificity of games that utilize mobile technologies creates environments that often only address a privileged audience. The tension between modes of immediacy and hypermediacy are exemplified across many genres of locative games. Geocaching has grown in popularity as a locative game since its inception. Since space and embodiment are intimately tied together, it is important to interrogate the ways that locative games develop a sense of player embodiment. Similarly, popular entertainment games that use mobile devices have been transformed into sites of social critique through creative misuse.
