The world is full of Pokémon now. This should not be cause for moral panic, but celebration. Contrary to a few handwringing editorials and Twitter hot takes, Pokémon Go is not a triumph of the normalization of violence, the apotheosis of cell-phone zombification, or even gamification gone awry. Amid the neo-Luddite contrarianism, a shining truth rises above all the (Magi-)carping: Pokémon Go comes in peace. But it raises profound questions about ethics in this new overlaid world of augmented reality.

WIRED OPINION About Katherine Cross (@Quinnae_Moon)is a Ph.D student in sociology studying the causes and structures of anti-social behavior in virtual worlds, and a Gamasutra columnist.

The success of this mobile game, with its echoes of Beatlemania, seems to have caught everyone off guard—not least the company that produced the game. The game’s developer, Niantic, has had to rush to patch security flaws and a litany of bugs. With only a few dozen employees, the company is struggling to keep up with the fact that it runs the world's most popular game.

Meanwhile, there are news reports that cannot be dismissed as ironically viral Luddism: Koffing appearing at the National Holocaust Museum, for instance, or women being sexually harassed as they play, or the risk posed to young black players in the US by trigger-happy police officers.

The suddenness of Pokémon Go’s mass popularity signals that a technological revolution is upon us, and it is past time for an industry-wide set of ethical standards for augmented reality.

The Emergence of Pokéstalking

It is in the nature of videogames to conjure incalculable joy from the simplest engagements. The twitch of a joystick, the recoil of a plastic button, the vibration of a controller. Pokémon Go adds to that the joy of seeing a Goldeen pop up on your desk. Videogames, since their inception, have extended the physical dimensions of art, placing the "work" somewhere between the player's mind and the screen reflecting their input. Today, augmented reality pushes in a new direction, superimposing game matter onto the physical world, and drawing gameplay into it.

So far, it seems like the physical nature of Pokémon Go helps tamp down the harassment that might otherwise occur if the game took place in a purely online space. Tech journalist Beth Winegarner observed that Niantic’s first AR effort, the sci-fi game Ingress, was surprisingly welcoming to women. One of her interviewees argued that the game’s relative friendliness stemmed from players being forced to see each other in the flesh. By existing in the same space and working toward a collaborative goal, it scuttled the “trash talk” impulse that manifests in many an online game.

Winegarner argues that this is because would-be abusers are robbed of the anonymity they might enjoy online. I'm not sure this is the entire explanation; there are too many instances of people engaging in online harassment or toxicity even under their legal names. I think the Internet itself is dissociative, anonymous or not: We're still socialized to see online interaction as less real, which makes it harder for us to identify avatars or Twitter accounts as human beings. Augmented reality immediately circumvents that problem.

But problems remain, which by rights should have been the developer’s responsibility. Winegarner relates the story of a female Ingress player stalked by a male rival. Of course this is a police matter, but Niantic created the environment and the competitive context in which that stalking occurred. Developers of AR games must realize that using the physical world as a gaming space makes it possible for harassment to enter that world as well.

They must be prepared to discourage such behavior and punish players who engage in it. They also should take on the collective responsibility of educating law enforcement, so officers don’t immediately laugh at someone who says she was stalked because of a videogame.

"Those that don't take such issues seriously and put effort behind enforcing their terms of service are essentially saying that harassers and abusers have free rein to do what they like in-game," Winegarner says, biasing the software "in favour of bullies against the bullied."

In Pursuit of Pokéquality

A recent McClatchy report by Christopher Huffaker found that black neighborhoods and rural areas have fewer Pokémon Go locations. This is a result of crowdsourcing. Pokémon Go’s locations were derived from the locations Ingress players added to the game. If no one played Ingress where you live, and no one from your neighborhood submitted locations during Pokémon Go’s beta period, you have no Pokestops. But looking at the maps in Huffaker’s report, the digital redlining is unmistakable. Should Niantic step in?

Media critic Brendan Keogh thinks so. Writing in Australia’s Overland journal, he notes that for Pokémon Go, as with many other digital technologies, “both the labour and responsibility have fallen onto the end user, leaving the corporate owner with nothing but the maintenance and the profits ... Airbnb owns no properties, Uber owns no cars, Pokémon Go is just some markers on a map. The politics is someone else's problem."

In truth, the politics are presumed to be no one’s problem, as if the virtuality of the medium renders any potential issues equally non-tactile. The world is moving into an economy of virtual commodities–but the physical traces left by this virtuality are all too real. Someone must be responsible.

This is about more than just pocket monsters. The world is moving rapidly toward a future where AR will not just be a gimmick in a fun mobile game, but where it will be the shingle hanging from every business and civic endeavor. Consider augmented-reality exercise regimens; AR test prep programs where children can explore their neighborhoods with AR overlays on trees, fauna, and local monuments; AR policing where a person’s ID—and criminal history—flashes before an officer’s eyes. Or just AR augmentation for every aspect of life, a better Google Glass in which overlays for everything from the temperature to the inventory of a local shop unfold before your eyes.

A precedent establishing that developers have no responsibility for inequality of access—whether it’s passively excluding black neighborhoods or poor rural regions, the risk posed to black youth and women, or the lack of access for people with disabilities—would allow these inequities to be repeated by countless applications and games ad infinitum.

Society has a chance to set new precedents and commit to industry-wide ethical standards now, when the biggest manifestation of AR is still a relatively inconsequential videogame.

Imagine for a moment that a young Pokémon Go player is killed by police because he “looked suspicious” as he was looking for digital creatures. Would Niantic stand up and advocate publicly for the fallen player? That would set an example worthy of enshrining as an industry best practice.

If you're a game developer reading this, you might well ask: “Why should I take the lead here?” Consider this: Inevitably, your work experience will make you a prime hiring candidate when a city wants an AR or VR app for an infrastructure project, or a hospital wants to develop VR tech for performing surgeries, or you’re given a job to develop AR apps for a major museum. As this technology moves well beyond the realm of games, you will be the people with the experience and skill to build that virtual future.

People should decide, here and now, what they want it to look like.