Greetings, readers.

If you have been on any social media platform at all within the last 72 hours, you are probably aware that there is something called “Pokemon Go” that was just recently released.

For those of you who have been wondering what it is: It is a video game for mobile devices that interacts with the real world, and with real world movement.

From what I have gathered from a cursory overview, the Pokemon franchise is a set of games wherein players try to “capture” wild pokemon (cute animated monsters). The player then trains them to fight.

Also from what I understand, it is not nearly as amoral as that description makes it sound.

This new iteration is enabling (and requiring) real-life, real-world interaction in order to make the game work. In order to find wild pokemon, players need to walk around the real world. The ap has an augmented reality feature, which thereby makes the pokemon appear in particular places. Players may also need to use physical movement in order to capture the pokemon. Also, the locations are the same for everybody. Thus, there are apparently “game-critical” stations that have been receiving a fair bit of pedestrian traffic recently.

In all, it is an interesting phenomenon. I expect the hype to start dying down by next week, but as this franchise is children-friendly, I expect this to be one of the more talked about and utilized summer activities.

Have a lovely Sunday.