Families,resources,and learning around Pokémon Go

Abstract

In this study, I detail three families who play the popular mobile augmented reality game Pokémon Go together. I discuss the parents’ perceptions of the game’s educational merits and potential drawbacks and detail how learning occurs around the game. Using the framework of Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems, I argue that Pokémon Go and other games and digital media experiences that families engage with at home can be powerful resources, which connect and integrate with other sites and resources, both in-school and out-of-school. In the case of these families, parents engage in explicit teaching around the game and share information that they have learned online. The findings presented here have implications for researchers, educators, and designers.

Over recent years, digital media and technology have become increasingly integral parts of families’ everyday lives (Takeuchi, 2011). The ways in which families engage around digital media as well as how they share expertise and knowledge around it is an area with enormous research potential. One key form of digital media that families engage with is video games. In the majority (59%) of families with children who play video games, parents report playing games along with their children (Entertainment Software Association, 2015). Additionally, video game play generally has become more widespread as they are played not only on home game consoles and computers but on increasingly ubiquitous mobile devices such as phones and tablets.

A salient example of one such mobile game is Pokémon Go. The game is an augmented reality (AR), location-based mobile game, released in July of 2016. In the game, players visit real world locations in order to track and capture virtual monsters known as Pokémon. In a study of 87 parents and guardians who play the game with children, Sobel et al. (2017) found that parents viewed Pokémon Go differently than other digital games, due to factors including its social nature, its promotion of exercise and outdoor exploration, and the ways in which it led to family bonding experiences. These positive associations contradict the ways in which parents often view screen time and videogames in particular. As such, one goal of this study is to probe further the perceptions and experiences of parents who play the game with children, and uncover the reasons that some parents might be more receptive to Pokémon Go than other games. Another goal is to explore parents’ perceptions of potential educational benefits of the game. As video games and their communities have been framed as potentially boasting a number of learning benefits (Gee, 2007), a particular focus here is on how parents view the game and its community as a potential site for learning, and how they see their role in mediating this learning. As such, the guiding research question I sought to answer here is How do parents with children who play Pokémon Go participate in its associated teaching and learning communities, and how do they interact with their children around this information and the game itself? In order to fully explicate this notion of teaching and learning communities, it is first necessary to provide a brief overview of the game.

Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is a mobile, AR game in which players capture virtual monsters known as Pokémon. These Pokémon can be found in locations throughout the world, and areas of interest in the game are mapped on to real locations of interest such as landmarks, historic buildings, and public art displays. Certain areas, such as particular parks, will have populations of specific Pokémon. Unlike many video games, Pokémon Go is not played at home on a console or computer, but can only be experienced by walking and playing in the world. The game is also an inherently social experience; in the course of gameplay, players will encounter one another. Many people play with friends and family members as a way of spending time together.

Besides catching Pokémon, players can power up individual Pokémon. They can also “evolve” Pokémon, which is a way of powering up a Pokémon, so that it transforms into a new, more powerful Pokémon. Powering up and evolving Pokémon requires players to use items, which are earned through walking and visiting various locations. Because players have limited resources, it is important to be strategic when choosing which Pokémon to power up. The ultimate goal of powering up Pokémon is to use them to battle in arenas knows as “gyms.” These gyms are also mapped to real-world locations; for example, a statue at a park or a building on a university campus could be sites for player battles. Winning a battle at these gyms can net players in-game currency. Players can battle together cooperatively at gyms, so it is common for groups of players (such as families) to visit gyms together.

In order to enjoy the game, players must learn a significant amount of information, including strategies for catching Pokémon and ways to succeed in battles. There are two key considerations related to this learning around the game. The first is that the game itself does not provide much information on how to play it. Rather than providing a tutorial or guide on how to play, as many video games do, Pokémon Go mostly leaves players to figure out how to play the game on their own. As such, much of the teaching of how to play is offloaded from the game and distributed across sites and resources provided by other players. These sites and resources include videos, wikis, guides, and information shared on social networks. Lee et al. (2017) found that players seek information around Pokémon Go through a variety of means, including online and through face-to-face gatherings, and that this information is socially distributed across a number of sites and resources.

Another consideration in regards to information and learning around the game is that players need information as to where Pokémon are located. While a player could walk around randomly in the world and find them, many players prefer to know where specific Pokémon are located. If a player wants to catch the popular species of Pokémon known as Pikachu, for example, he or she will want to know what local park has a high population of this creature. Players can look this information up online, or speak with fellow players to find out. Because information around the game is geographic in nature, players generally learn from and socialize primarily with players in their areas. As such, information around the game tends to “hang on” existing social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.

Informal teaching and learning

In order to frame the learning that happens around the game, I draw on a notion of learning that is socially situated and context-dependent. That is, teaching and learning can happen everywhere, be it in a classroom, in a museum, or among communities of video game players. Most commercial entertainment games (as opposed to educational games) are played in everyday, informal contexts, and much of the research around these games is situated in such everyday contexts. One key sociocultural learning framework for understanding learning in games is the framework of affinity spaces. Affinity spaces are where people share a passion for something, such as a favorite game, and within these groups, teaching and learning can occur (Gee and Hayes, 2012; Hayes and Duncan, 2012; Lammers, 2011; Steinkuehler, 2008).

Here I take up the framework of Distributed Teaching and Learning Systems (DTALS), which serves as an extension of this model of learning (Gee and Gee, 2016; Holmes, 2015; Holmes et al., 2017). DTALS provides a lens through which to observe how learners (in this case, players of the game) navigate the selection of resources and sites available to them in order to learn about a topic. Learners of any topic have a multitude of resources available to them, such as classrooms, websites, online classes, workshops, other people, and communities, and these resources comprise a leaner’s DTALS. The ways in which learners navigate these sites is a key focus of this framework (Holmes et al., 2017). In order to learn how to play a game, for example, players must navigate this system around the game and determine which information is relevant (Holmes, 2015).

DTALS accounts for the many resources, sites, and people that are part of a learners’ world, and in this framework, the connections between these resources—that is, the ways in which they interrelate, support, and supplement each other—are important. Indeed, DTALS shares a number of similarities with other frameworks in addition to affinity spaces, such as Barron’s (2006) model of learning ecologies, including a focus on how elements in a learners’ world interrelate to one another (what Barron terms ideational resources), the multiple pathways for a learner through such a learning ecology or system, and a focus on how people (primarily adolescents, in Barron’s work) develop learning opportunities for themselves based on strong personal interest in various subjects.

However, the DTALS framework builds on such existing frameworks in a number of ways. The first is that within most literature on informal learning, the process of learning is the main focus and teaching is not as important. Within Barron’s model, or others such as the model of Connected Learning (Ito et al., 2009), learners seek out resources related to their interest-based learning, but the ways in which people take on explicit teaching roles within these resources is not given as much attention. Within the DTALS framework, teaching and learning are given equal weight, and “teaching” can encompass a wide variety of practices such as making YouTube videos, writing online guides, or sharing information with a friend of family member. As such, here I frame families in informal learning contexts as teachers, because family members can teach and learn from one another. I seek to focus on the specific practices of parents who are not just facilitators of information access, but are explicitly teaching and guiding their children around the game.

Families

For children and adolescents, families play a key role in their out-of-school learning, because they can provide (or deny) access to resources such as workshops, classes, books, and the Internet (Gee and Gee, 2016). Beyond simply supplying these resources, however, a family can itself be a learning resource. Siyahhan and Gee (2017) found that parents, siblings, and children use their own expertise in order to convey information and teach fellow family members. The authors also found that these interactions between family members were limited not only to teaching and learning, as parents also reported spending time playing games with their children for fun, as well as having extensive conversations about the games and their children’ gaming preferences.

More generally, the question of how to position families’ game engagement within the larger fields of video game and media studies is an ongoing one. For example, Gee et al. (2016) discussed the potentials of framing family gameplay through various frameworks, including as digital media, as play, and as family practice. These frameworks lend themselves to understanding the meanings of family gameplay in a variety of ways, including as opportunities for family time and shared experiences. One particularly salient framework for looking at media engagement among families is Joint Media Engagement (JME). JME is a way of framing how people use media together, including television, games, and the Internet (Takeuchi and Stevens, 2011). JME can encompass a number of activities, including searching for information, playing games, and even content creation. Here, I am interested not only in how families play Pokémon Go together but also in how they discuss, negotiate, and learn together around the game. I also seek to explore the various reasons families might play the game together, including to spend time with one another and to prompt meaningful conversations.

Methods

There was little research on Pokémon Go at the outset of this study in the summer of 2016, as the game had just been released. To gather baseline information about who was playing the game and their experiences, I created and administered an exploratory survey of players in an area in the American Southwest (n = 149), which revealed that the majority of respondents played with members of their family. From the open-ended question portion of the survey, in which a number of respondents reported playing the game with their children, I selected three focal respondents who had different types of families and reported that they were interested in various activities in the game. They were selected not to be representative of all families, but rather to capture a range of experiences which families might have around the game.

I then conducted semi-structured interviews with these focal parents. The interview questions were based both on broad themes that were identified in the Sobel et al. (2017) study of families and the game, as well as themes that I identified from the open-ended portion of my own survey. Additionally, I sought to probe parents’ perceptions of the game and potential issues around it. A number of questions reflected common concerns parents often have around video game screen time, including that it displaces socializing and exercise (Takeuchi, 2011). Some questions also reflected newer concerns specific to Pokémon Go and location-based games, including personal safety issues (Sobel et al., 2017). Finally, questions pertaining to information seeking, teaching, and learning were included to explore the ways in which the DTALS of the game related to families’ gameplay experiences.

I used a combination of descriptive and in vivo coding on the interviews (Saldaña, 2015) in order to identify common themes in an initial coding round, and then employed a second round of coding to categorize the data and seek patterns. Analytic memos served as a further tool of the analysis.

Results

Here, I present each of these parents and their families’ stories as vignettes, which showcase the experiences of the families and ways in which they navigated teaching and learning around the game. One participant was a mother who played the game primarily with her husband and 10-year son and saw a number of benefits to gameplay, another was the single mother of a teenage daughter who viewed the game as a valuable way to bond with her daughter and other extended family members, and the last was a father who played the game primarily with his two daughters and performed explicit teaching around the game.

These families are not intended to be representative of all participants I surveyed; instead, they are cases which can illuminate information gathering practices around the game and highlight particular relationships such as father–daughter, parent and near-adult child, and a young “gamer” family. All names are pseudonyms provided by me. Following a presentation of these results is a discussion of the common themes and insights from these parents, as well as implications for family gameplay, learning, and DTALS.

Rachel: “We gave him a Pokédex”

Rachel was the mother of two children, aged 10 and 2. She primarily played with her husband and 10-year old son (she indicated that her 2-year-old son was too young to play). Rachel was enthusiastic about the game and her family integrated it into their everyday lives and technology usage. For example, initially Rachel and her husband played individually on their own phones while their son used the family tablet to play. However, when her son turned 10 and they determined he could have his own phone, she and her husband presented it to him on his birthday as a Pokédex, which is the device in the game for keeping track of captured Pokémon. In other Pokémon games and the accompanying animated show, 10 is the age at which children can become Pokémon trainers and receive their own Pokédex, and she and her husband “made a big deal” over how his receiving this “Pokédex” made him just like the characters in the games.

Her enthusiasm for Pokémon and gameplay carried over into many aspects of her engagement with the game. She frequently looked up information about the game online and shared it with her family. She and her son discussed theories about gameplay and tested them out together, and she noted that this was one of the most enjoyable aspects of Pokémon Go for her. She did not, however, look up information alongside her son or talk to him about how to find it. To Rachel, the information itself was more important than how she found it, as evidenced by how she readily shared information about the game with her family while at the same time not initiating conversations around information seeking.

Still, she certainly perceived the game as a positive factor in “family time,” which allowed her to bond with her son. She was somewhat apprehensive when discussing the safety risks of playing the game; her safety concerns included being the victim of crime or even potential player conflicts, which could lead to violence. However, she believed that the game was not any more dangerous than other everyday activities, such as commuting or going about daily chores. She emphasized that common sense and awareness were key to staying safe while playing the game. She did not consider Pokémon Go to be “screen time” (something she shared with the other mother interviewed, discussed below) and noted that gameplay boasted many benefits.

These benefits of the game far outweighed any risks for Rachel. She perceived many positive aspects of gameplay, stating that the game promoted exploration and allowed her family to discover and discuss educational and historical areas in their community. She also believed that that the game could promote patience, because after putting in “hard work” earning items to power up Pokémon, players needed to be patient and wait until they caught a Pokémon on which it was worth using these precious items. She also noted that she and her son loved taking pictures of Pokémon, and that her son had taken up an interest in photography after playing the game. She mentioned that the game also promoted exercise and hand-eye coordination.

Still, for Rachel, the primary benefit of gameplay was in the bonding and communication it promoted for players. She perceived much value in playing with her family and bonding with them over the game. Although she reported that her 2-year-old was too young to play, she said that she and her husband allowed him to try swiping on their phones to catch Pokémon. This child, too, was developing a familiarity with the game, a familiarity that to Rachel could promote fun and even education.

Lisa: “It’s hard to bond with a teenager”

Lisa was the single mother of a 16-year-old daughter. Lisa was initially only interested in the game as a way to bond with her daughter. While Lisa thought it seemed “silly” initially, seeing how interested her daughter was in it prompted her to download it so that they would have “something in common” to talk about. However, after she started playing, Lisa realized that she enjoyed the game as well. Lisa and her daughter were interested in different aspects of the game—Lisa loved gym battles while her daughter was primarily interested in finding new Pokémon. Regardless, the two shared information with each other frequently, as well as with other family members.

The two were part of a larger group of players that included Lisa’s mother, her sister, her father’s wife, and a number of family friends. They were all part of a running group text message, where they would share information about the game and send each other screenshots of what they had been doing in the game, such as “bragging” about finding or hatching a good Pokémon. Additionally, Lisa’s daughter had her own friend group that she played with, especially her coworkers. Lisa said that because of Pokémon, she was able to hear about her daughter’s daily life and about friends she hadn’t heard of before.

Indeed, Lisa mentioned several times that because “it can be hard to connect with a teenager,” she was appreciative of the game because it allowed her to communicate with her daughter. She also appreciated how it allowed her to spend face-to-face time with her daughter as the two would go on walks together to play the game. Lisa was not very concerned with safety in the game, noting that people needed to take the same precautions when out in the world playing Pokémon Go that they normally would do any activity. As long as people were exercising common sense, Lisa argued, there was nothing to worry about in terms of safety.

Like Rachel, Lisa indicated that she did not consider the game to be screen time. She noted a number of benefits to playing the game, including getting exercise and exploring. She also believed that, instead of causing people to be more engaged with their phones and unaware of their surroundings, the game allowed people to appreciate their surroundings more.

One of the biggest learning benefits in Lisa’s opinion was not learning from the game itself, but learning from looking up information about the game. She was a frequent user of social media sites to find information, and she and her daughter shared information back and forth with one another. She did not explicitly teach her daughter; rather, she and the rest of the family had an information exchange in which they shared their findings through group text messages and weekly meet-ups to play together. She perceived that doing research and reading around the game could be beneficial to young players who were learning about Internet research and practicing reading, as well as for adults, as learning about new things (such as this game) and practicing related research skills could help “keep the mind sharp.” She thought all of this in spite of the content being somewhat “silly.” This argument parallels numerous arguments that have been made about learning around games: that is, what is most important for learning is not the game’s content but the learning and literacy practices in spaces around the game (Hayes and Duncan, 2012).

Aaron: Teaching the game

The final participant was a father who played the game with his two daughters, aged 8 and 10. He mentioned that he had tried to get his wife to play with them, but she was not interested in the game. His daughters each had their own phones on which to play, but their phones were older and gym battles did not run well on them, so their primary activity was catching new Pokémon. Aaron indicated that he did sometimes play alone or with his own friends, but did not emphasize this as a large part of his motivation to play.

Aaron approached the question of safety in a different manner than Rachel and Lisa. He was not concerned with physical safety issues such as being the victim of violence. Rather, he deemed the game “safe” because of the lack of a chat feature in the game. He also said that he monitored his daughters while they were playing. He was focused not on the potential dangers of the game due to playing in the world, but rather on the dangers his kids might encounter in a typical online game: chatting with strangers or seeing inappropriate content. He did note that he felt his daughters did not pay attention to where they were going sometimes while playing, but this was the only physical concern that he had. Aaron did consider Pokémon Go screen time, although he mentioned that he perceived a difference from other games because it involves walking while playing.

Aaron said that in regards to learning around the game, he would look up information and tell his daughters about it. He did note that they would sometimes look with him, but he never discussed how he found information with them. Aaron used a number of social networks in order to find information about the game, including Facebook and Reddit. He said that he did not learn from his daughters, and expressed that his daughters sometimes did not listen to him when he was trying to explain information he had learned online. He said that his daughters mostly wanted to evolve Pokémon, and he tried to frame his teaching around the game in terms of their interests. For example, he attempted to explain why determining which Pokémon were the strongest was important for evolving them. This in turn allowed his daughters to understand his explanation, and he expressed that they were improving as players of the game.

Aaron did not seem particularly interested in the community around Pokémon Go, or in playing often with people other than his daughters. Rather, the value of the game was in the opportunity it gave him to spend “family time” with them. While the mothers also discussed the potential for family time extensively, in addition to the perceived various skills and benefits arising from gameplay, Aaron believed the biggest benefit of the game was its ability to “open up the lines of communication” between he and his daughters. To Aaron, it wasn’t necessarily the game that was important, but the way that it enriched and enabled his family time.

Discussion

Gee and Gee (2016) provided an example of how a parent might play a role in a child’s DTALS. When a child is interested in a domain such as science, parents can play a key role in ensuring that their child has access to sites and resources around this domain, such as books, museums, summer camps, or access to online resources. Alternatively, a parent might not have the resources or knowledge to provide access to this informal learning, or might not consider it a priority.

The findings of this study reveal that parents can serve a role in a child’s DTALS not only by providing access to resources, but by taking on an active role as both teachers and co-learners. Additionally, there are a number of factors that influence how parents are involved with the game, including their perceptions of it in terms of benefits, education, and safety. The findings also suggest a key reason that families might be involved in a child’s DTALS is for bonding around shared interest, in this case, a favorite video game. At the same time, each parent in this study had his or her own DTALS through which they sought information on Pokémon Go, because all three of them were interested in the game independently of their children. What follows is a discussion of common themes and findings regarding these families, the game, and its community.

Teaching and learning

Sobel et al. (2017) found that around this game, there was a shift in expertise where children taught their parents about the game. In contrast to this, the findings here pointed to more traditional roles. While Lisa and her daughter exchanged information with each other frequently, Rachel and Aaron both took on more of an explicit teaching role. They both sought information online and then talked to their families about it. While Rachel reported that her son would sometimes teach her something that she didn’t know about the game, she was generally the one explaining information to him. Aaron indicated that his daughters did not teach him anything new about the game.

This indicates that these two parents served as teachers of how to play the game, rather than of how to find information about the game to begin with. Lisa and her daughter exchanged information, although this was because her daughter was old enough to use the Internet and social media on her own. In this case, too, they were essentially both teaching. They did not research together or talk about how to find information, although Lisa did note that she thought that looking up information was beneficial. However, there was no co-viewing between these two when seeking information.

None of the families discussed how to find information online or modeled these kinds of behaviors. They generally perceived benefits of playing as rooted within the game experience itself. They cited exercise, finding new places, and bonding as some of the main benefits, which are all more part of the game than its community. They did perceive the game as having a number of educational benefits. Rachel noted that the game could “teach patience” because players needed to learn to wait for the best Pokémon on which to spend their limited resources. Similarly, Aaron stated that he was trying to teach his daughters about Pokémon statistics, so they could be strategic. Both parents looked up information online to learn about the game, so that they could then teach their children and have experiences playing together that were educational, such as exploring historical and educational sites and communicating about the game and strategies around it. Hence, the perceived value of the game for these parents was not in the game’s community so much as gameplay itself. Only Lisa mentioned benefits from doing research around the game. These included practicing reading and research, and she perceived these practices as being beneficial for everyone, children, and adults alike.

Rather than co-researching the game, parents sought to scaffold their children’s learning how to play by providing them with information and testing out various aspects of the gameplay together. Sobel et al. (2017) found that adults accomplished this scaffolding of gameplay through turn-taking and taking over in more difficult parts of the game, and the parents in this study did so as well, with each parent mentioning this in their interviews. Aaron would let his girls try catching Pokémon on his own personal phone when there was a rare or difficult to find Pokémon, in order to give them more practice. He also provided information about how to determine which Pokémon were the strongest and let them make their own choices around which Pokémon to evolve. Rachel did the same thing with her son, letting him play his own game but offering guidance and assistance when needed. She also allowed her 2-year-old to try and catch Pokémon by finding Pokémon on her own phone and then letting him perform the task of swiping on the screen to try and catch them. In this way, she was scaffolding not only his experience with the game but his experience with technology and touchscreen devices. While Lisa did not need to provide as much scaffolding for her daughter, she did send her information about the game and encourage her to share what she found. In this way, she was scaffolding not the experience of the game but her daughter’s role as an independent researcher and teacher. This serves as evidence that parents may serve a more active role in children and adolescents’ interest-based learning than has been discussed in various informal learning frameworks, including previous work on DTALS (Gee and Gee, 2016).

Family bonding

All three of the parents reported that they enjoyed family bonding through the game. Sobel et al. (2017) found that parents reported that they were able to spend time with their children that they might not be able to otherwise, and that Pokémon Go gave them something to talk about with their children. The participants here certainly echoed these sentiments and went a step further, discussing how it not only allowed families to spend time together, but became part of their everyday practices. For example, Rachel presenting her son with a “Pokédex” and making it a part of his birthday party and Lisa and her daughter communicating around the game in a running group chat showcase how the game integrated into the lives of families beyond simply allowing them to spend more time together.

A key theme of this family bonding was that Pokémon Go created interactions, which otherwise would not have occurred. Lisa noted that she did not know who her daughter’s work friends were or much about them, but was able to learn about them and her daughter’s day generally because the discussion was framed around the game. She noted that she could sometimes find it hard to bond with her daughter, especially because they weren’t a “sit at the table and eat dinner” type of family. The game provided opportunities to bond, both through their discussions of the game and their gameplay. The two would go on walks to catch Pokémon together and also bonded with their extended family and family friend circle in their weekly rides to catch Pokémon.

Likewise, Rachel was able to bond with her family and have different types of interactions. Presenting her son with a “Pokédex” (his own phone) for his 10th birthday was a way of connecting the gift with a shared interest that was important to everyone in the family. A key part of gameplay for this family was discussing and testing theories, which Rachel noted was a particularly fun aspect of gameplay for them. Finally, Aaron emphasized that the game provided time for him to bond with his daughters. He thought that the game opened up opportunities for communication, and also brought him and his daughters closer together. This bonding was a motivation for all of the parents, and in turn, leads to both playing together as well as learning together around the game.

Safety

One important consideration around games, especially for a location-based game such as Pokémon Go, is how safe the game is to play. There have been numerous news stories about crime and safety incidents related to the game, including a number of incidents in the community in which this research was conducted. Observations of the local online community also revealed that safety concerns were a common theme.

The two mothers in the study both mentioned that while there were safety concerns, exercising “common sense” was the most important aspect of staying safe while playing. Rachel did mention that Pokémon could appear in “less than ideal” areas, and expressed some concern that there could be disputes over in-game elements such as battling that could escalate into real danger. Even so, she emphasized that it was the player’s responsibility to be aware and exercise caution. Both parents expressed that the game was not more dangerous than activities in everyday life, such as commuting and running errands.

Aaron was the only parent who did not express concern over these physical aspects of personal safety. Rather, he stated that he considered the game safe due to the lack of a chat function where his daughters might interact with strangers. He also noted that they did not play without his supervision unless they were at home. This concern over online interaction was reflective of more traditional concerns parents might have over online games, such as their children seeing inappropriate content while playing a game. While Rachel also mentioned that there could be some “inappropriate names” in gyms, it was not a primary concern for her. Aaron’s interpretation of what safety around the game meant was a departure from how both mothers interpreted it. While there are not enough data to make broad claims regarding the gender differences in perceptions of safety around games, it is worth considering that the divergent concerns here could be due to the mothers and Aaron having different concerns around the game and ways of thinking about the meaning of safety in games more generally. This could have implications for DTALS and the accessibility of teaching and learning, as well. For example, a parent who viewed going online as a risk to his or her child (either playing games or looking up information) might place restrictions on accessing certain sites, meaning that the resources available to a child or adolescent are affected. A parent who buys an official guide or book for his or her child about a game, perhaps with the perception that the printed materials are safer or perhaps more reliable, is brokering a different kind of DTALS for the child than a parent who is encouraging him or her to look at information online.

Besides physical safety concerns, another way in which the game was viewed differently from other games concerned how the parents viewed screen time. The concern of “screen time” is ever present regarding digital media and video games (Takeuchi, 2011). Both mothers noted that they did not consider the game to be screen time. They cited a number of factors in their reasoning, including that the game involved both exercising and socializing, and therefore it did not replace either of these important activities. Indeed, Takeuchi (2011) found that concerns over screen time were often related to parents’ concerns that screen time displaces activities such as socializing, going outside, and exercising. Perhaps because Pokémon Go promotes rather than displaces these very activities, it did not draw the same concern from the mothers in this study. Aaron, however, did consider the game to be screen time. He acknowledged that the game involved walking around, but called the difference with other games “minor.” Still, he did not mention any large concerns about screen time more broadly. Because screen time, and its potential to displace other activities, is such a concern among parents generally, it is significant that Pokémon Go does not seem to raise these concerns as much as other games.

Implications

These findings regarding the experiences and perceptions of three parents who play Pokémon Go with their families have a number of implications for families’ engagement and learning around games. In particular, these three parents provide a number of insights into how different types of families might engage around this and other games.

Scaffolding and DTALS

A player of most modern video games needs to access a range of different sites and resources in order to learn how to play the game, including websites, forums, and other players. This is true of adults as well as children and adolescent learners; for example, a young fan of Minecraft might watch YouTube videos about the game, interact with peers around the game, and read the various print books available in the subject. Parents may or may not play a central role in this child’s DTALS (although they likely provide access to resources). In the case of the children in this study who play Pokémon Go, their parents are a central part of this DTALS. Because parents tend to play Pokémon Go for various reasons (and perhaps feel that they need to, since they might feel the need to accompany their children while playing due to safety issues), parents become teachers of the game to their children. Combined with the lack of designed teaching in the game which can often make learning to play a frustrating experience, parents play a key role in ensuring that their children have an enjoyable experience playing. Even in the case of Lisa’s teenage daughter, who navigated many sites and resources around the game including social media and her peers at work, her mother and other family members were still key sources of information. In that case, however, she was also able to take on the role of teacher, explaining aspects of the game to other family members.

While parents were eager to facilitate their children learning how to play the game, they did not generally facilitate their children learning how to look up information. It is impossible to say without knowing more about each family’s practices around digital media more generally whether these parents never teach their children about how to find information, or if they simply didn’t see any benefit to doing so around Pokémon Go. Lisa said she thought that looking up information around the game was an educational experience even if the content was “silly”; it is possible that these parents didn’t perceive a benefit to looking up information around the game because it was not related to explicitly educational content. It is also possible they do not think of learning how to look up information online as something they need to teach their children directly.

In any case, it is clear that teaching how to play a game and teaching about finding information around a game are two different activities. Martin (2012) found that video game fans participated in a wide range of information-seeking behaviors while utilizing both in-game and user-created resources around the game World of Warcraft; similarly, the parents, as well as at least one of the children in this study, participated in a wide range of information literacy practices across various sites including social media platforms and forums. The ways in which the information practices of parents and children influence and intersect with one another is an important question for future research on family gaming practices.

Intergenerational appeal

All three of these parents, in addition to a number of parents in the survey that preceded these interviews, noted that the game was engaging to players of different ages. Indeed, in the case of these families, the game was appealing to everyone from a 2-year-old to the parents themselves. While there is plenty of deep strategy to the game, it can also be enjoyed in a much simpler manner if the primary activity of a player is walking around and catching Pokémon. Because there is no explicit goal in the game, players are free to set their own goals and explore what aspects of the game appeal to them.

This means that in each of these families, the parents were interested in somewhat different elements of gameplay than their children. In the case of Lisa and her teenage daughter, Lisa loved the gym battles while her daughter didn’t care for them and was more interested in catching Pokémon. However, the two were able to play together regardless because both aspects of play involve walking around and exploring. In the case of Rachel and Aaron, both expressed frustration that their children didn’t listen sometimes while they were explaining various aspects of the game to them. However, both of them then framed their children as having different play styles. Rachel said that her son was simply interested in playing in a different way than she was. Aaron noted that his daughter just wanted to evolve Pokémon, which differed from his goals. The parents didn’t frame the different play styles as right or wrong; rather, they were simply different choices.

Pokémon Go’s open goals and ability to support multiple play styles means that different types of players can enjoy the game. Indeed, this is important to keep in mind for designers of intergenerational, joint media experiences as well as researchers and parents who seek out games and digital media that can support such joint engagement. A game which can support multiple levels of engagement lets children of different ages as well as parents to play together, and also provides valuable opportunities for parents to scaffold their children when they want to try out new, more advanced aspects of the game.

Finally, the complexity of some aspects of the game meant that the parents were all interested in seeking information around the game for their own gameplay. While it is impossible to separate parents’ information seeking for their own purposes from information seeking for their children, there is evidence here that parents also engage in interest-driven learning around the game. This kind of game-based interest-driven learning which is associated with the acquisition of skills (Barron, 2006; Ito et al., 2009) or various literacies (Gee and Hayes, 2012) has often been associated with adolescents in research on informal learning, but the results here indicate that adults may commonly engage in this kind of learning as well. The ways in which this learning might intersect with the interest-driven learning in adolescents and children is worthy of further research.

Limitations and future research

There are a number of limitations to the findings presented here. One is that this study focused on only three families, which are not necessarily representative of all families who play. More research with other families is necessary to uncover the varying attitudes and experiences with the game among families who play.

Additionally, while this study was intended to provide a thorough description of families’ play of Pokémon Go, there is no description of how each of these families connect the game to their everyday practices and engagement with other games and social media. The way that these families approach finding information more generally, and even how the game integrates into family routines and dynamics more broadly, cannot be determined without a larger sense of other activities of the family. Future work around how a game like Pokémon Go integrates into family life more generally is necessary, which would need to involve more extensive ethnographic work. Additionally, while I sought to include both mothers and fathers who played with children of varying ages, I did not inquire about, nor include in my analysis, factors such as SES or race. These factors could potentially influence numerous aspects of families’ gameplay, including their access to technology, views on safety, and background experience with games and digital media. Understanding these factors as they relate to videogames is key to advancing research on Pokémon Go as well as family gameplay more generally.

Finally, interviews captured only the perspectives of parents and, in the case of two-parent households, only of one of the parents. Understanding the perspectives of children is essential in order to obtain a full understanding of the family dynamic around the game. Indeed, the perspectives of the other spouses in the study would be important as well for understanding these dynamics and how the family interacts around the game. Particularly in the case of the parent who did not play the game at all, understanding her perspective and reasons for not playing would be incredibly valuable. This could lead to important findings about motivations for playing and not playing, as well as for designing experiences to engage entire families.