Impact of location-based augmented reality games on people’s information behavior: A case study of Pokémon Go

Location-based augmented reality games that blend the real-world experience with virtual world gameplay are becoming increasingly popular. We aim to improve our understanding of how these new types of games will impact people’s information behaviors in both physical and virtual places, specifically investigating the case of Pokémon GO. We conducted over 100 hours of field observation of Pokémon GO players in numerous public places and also monitored over 200 online communities related to the game, in addition to conducting interviews of 30 players. Our key findings include observation of the emergence of ad-hoc information grounds in physical spaces where much of the information sharing occurred, as well as a crowdsourced data-driven approach in problem solving and information sharing in online environments. We discuss the common types of information sharing that occur in both of these environments in detail, and identify areas for future research