You might’ve noticed people looking down lately, walking in frantic circles, or perhaps even acting a bit territorial over seemingly trivial public places, all the while being glued to their pocket-sized boob tube. (Granted, you’ve possibly spotted a tablet or two.)

Pokémon GO – the mobile application responsible for the aforementioned hysteria – was an overnight success thanks to a rather delicious blend of novelty, accessibility, and nostalgia. Even the uninitiated know only the very best can catch’em all; most of us want to be the very best, don’t we?

Pop culture has a lot to do with peer pressure. It’s not a bad thing, tuning in to the hive mind now and again, and online media has only made it easier to do so. Despite this, it is still rather rare for a video game to splash outside of its intended circle of players, a phenomenon previously observed with titles like The Sims and Guitar Hero, yet Niantic’s monster-catching app debuted at a rolling boil.

As the developers struggles with popularity that has proven too hot for its servers to handle, PoGO’s player base struggles with remaining patient. Some feel burnt by the latest update, a patch that removed the game’s integral-yet-unstable tracking feature. Others are chilling in Camp Wait’n’See – it beats being salty, trust me – but, love it or hate it, Pokémon GO has changed the landscape of mobile gaming.

Today’s article will conclude with an in-depth rundown of the gameplay experience, brought to you by Black Ship staff writer Andrew Dearborn, though first I felt compelled to emerge from the editorial sidelines to address this latest ripple in the black mirror.

Our reality is governed by how we experience it. Not to fall down the red-pill/blue-pill rabbit hole, but things got a bit less real in 2016. Two methods of digital abstraction are emerging thanks to the incessant march of the entertainment-technological complex, with both approaches contending for our ever-dwindling attention spans – augmentation and virtualization.

Virtual reality is a household term thanks to its prevalence in science fiction and the arrival of immersive devices such as Oculus Rift and its slew of similar headsets. The idea here is to “turn on, boot up, [and] jack in” to a cyberdelic experience, the ramifications of which have been explored long before V.R. ever became available to consumers.

Augmented reality, however, has snuck up on us. While there are certainly works of fiction that embrace the concept, it is almost always featured as a world-building element. (For a delightful exception, check out the short film Sight.) There have even been a handful of games with A.R. functionality before Pokémon Go, including Niantic’s proof-of-PoGO­-concept, Ingress, though none made it into the mainstream.

The current hype has a lot to do with the game’s recent launch, sure, and we can expect a shrink in the player base (currently around 20 million), but walking around town these last few weeks has been a surreal experience.

We’re used to tuning out strangers in public. Cell phones are perfect for that. With the rise of networked, AR-driven, interactive media, an interesting contradiction emerges. You can play Pokémon GO without ever physically interacting with another human being. Yet there is an innately social mechanic driving the game, that being the inclusion of team-based gym battles.

Once you complete the game’s early orientation levels, your avatar is given the opportunity to pick from one of three factions. This in and of itself is an interesting experiment in personality profiling, one that has awakened many a player’s tribal instincts; it is where PoGO’s social paradox begins to take shape.

Walking around with your phone out, formerly a “do-not-disturb” signal, suddenly implies you are likely out on a digital adventure. Others enjoying a similar walkabout feel an instant sense of camaraderie… just try not to mention which team you’ve chosen. If you do, prepare for some (friendly) heckling.

A virtualized representation of reality is driving the physical realm. A game with no real multiplayer component – even when you do participate in a gym battle, the defending Pokémon is controlled by the computer – is creating a sense of community that augments the way we socialize, all by virtue of our tacit consent.

This notion raises plenty of concerns, many of which are best explored in a more pessimistic piece. Questions of data-privacy will be the bread-and-butter of debates during the digital renaissance. Like it or not, most of us can carry a supercomputer in the palm of our hands, one that will increasingly entrench itself into our daily routines as its sophistication advances.

I’ll be the first to admit that I run the risk of burying my head in the pixelated sand but, for now, I’m simply happy to go hunting for pocket monsters. Oh, yeah, and one more thing: GO TEAM INSTINCT!

And now, without further idealized ado, Andrew’s review: