In the olden days of gaming, we would play games to withdraw. We would play Dragon Warrior to escape the harsh world of our physical reality and leap into an epic fantasy. We would play Burgertime to relax from a day of otherwise mechanical drudgery as a slinger of fast food. These days are quickly ending.
PokemonGO has taken the world by storm. Not only because it’s a revolutionary ARG (Alternate Reality Game) that puts an overlay on your surrounding environs — that is, unless you don’t acknowledge that Ingress or predecessors like The Beast. Anyway, PokemonGO is the most widely accepted, adopted and played ARG — so fuck its influences — nobody cares. All anyone cares about is assembling 125 Geodudes into Golem, aka, Geodude Voltron.
Part of the end of escapism — or at least the end of private, home-bound escapism, is that now your ARG video game constantly reminds you that you live in a shitty place. Pokestops, though haphazardly placed, usually mark art installations, cultural centers, parks and other commons. If you live in the rapidly-decaying-suburbs, you may not have access to these things. This anti-urban angst is captured quite well in the YouTube joint, Small Town Pokemon Go:
Created by brand spanking new channel, AOK, it captures the rubbing- salt-in-the-wounds-quality of a game giving you a lackluster experience as a direct consequence of you living in a lackluster town.
