Excerpt:

When they first hit the scene more than a decade ago, pervasive and alternate reality games promised to offer a different way to see and understand the physical, material world. The game designer and author Jane McGonigal, who was also one of the “puppetmasters,” or game-runners of ilovebees, insisted that the “alternate” in “alternate reality” didn’t signify the alternative reality of fantasy, but the alternating one of realism. These games wouldn’t replace the world, either as escapist entertainment or as instrumental exercise or socialization therapy. Instead, they would force the fictional and the real worlds to swap places, and rapidly. The result would be a new and deeper appreciation for the real reality that the games use as their materials. That’s one reason pervasive games so often make use of paranoia fiction: they make visible previously unseen—even if preposterous or unlikely—possibilities.

 And Pokémon Go sure seems to be offering lots of alternating realities, for good and for ill. A middle-aged white guy befriends (and wards the cops off) two black men in the park at 3 a.m. A Massachusetts man reportedly causes a multi-car accident trying to catch ‘em all while driving on the highway (the report itselfturns out to be a hoax). One player finds a dead body while hunting pocket monsters; others get lured into an armed robbery. And mostly, adults and kids commune over an entertainment property old enough to be multi-generational.

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