The occult magick of Pokemon Go

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/08/04/the-occult-magick-of-pokemon-g.html

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I had pretty much the same thought just the other day. To excerpt my post on the subject:

I stare at the sigil of the Niantic logo. I catch cute cartoon monsters. Micro-stories from the game attach themselves to the real world: this is where I caught a Vileplume, this is the first gym I won. The world’s stories attach themselves to the game: I caught this one on my trip to Europe, you can’t catch them in the States.

Slowly, Tlön seeps into our world.

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No, I don’t think that it is ironic, I think that it works in precisely the same way. They are ideas, and ideas can and do “exist” - regardless of whether or not one has a telephone. Also, mythologies have often been created intentionally, rather than as some hapless automatic process.

Bene Gesserit witch!

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Hey, I resemble that remark!

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There’s a really good interview and q&a with alan moore in there for those that missed it. He touches on vr experiences…

Some sort of D&D variant seems inevitable. You’d think with all their MMO experience that Blizzard must be at least considering WoW GO. Niantec have shown what’s possible and what appetite there is for it, it’s only a question of who jumps in next.

Also:

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I don’t thinkg something like Doom Go will happen, at least not in the same way. Pokemon go seems like it’s breaking the seal on this kind of thing, but Pokemon has such a simple physical model that involves so little acutal physical involvement. With Doom, you’d have to run after, or run from things. Way too dangerous. Where we are at now, and for the forseeable future, throwing balls at a semi-static object is probably as far as open-world AR will go. Now, FPS AR in a lasertag/paintball controlled space…

Something like world of warcraft could be cool as an AR tabletop with miniature graphics, have your device scan a large patch of ground, involving fieldstones, streams, fallen logs, moss burms, stairs, sewer grates, etc, then algorithmically transform it into a battlefield for miniatures. Then watch / control the whole thing through a headset…

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