The Human-Media Interface Study of Pokémon Go : Inspiring Future Gaming Experience with a New Attempt to Map the Human-Media Relation

Abstract: Pokémon Go is a Pokémon theme smartphone game released in July, 2016. The game surprisingly created a global boom of ‘Pokémon Go gaming engagement’ during the second half of 2016. This thesis is interested in the phenomenon, and wants to investigate how the factors including the technology of augmented reality (AR) impact the gaming experience and drive the gaming engagement in this case. The research aims at interpreting the human-media interface design in this game and how it influences the gaming experience. Furthermore, the thesis hopes to come out with a working strategy in bridging humans and media in future gaming for better gaming experience with the research findings. The research uses qualitative interviews to collect first-hand data, and relevant online reports for describing some details in this case. This thesis applies a wide range of academic research including media cultural studies, human-media interface studies and gaming studies. The analysis structure begins with micro and meso perspectives where the thesis discusses gaming experience in Pokémon Go as well as human-media interface’s construction, and ends with macro perspective which concentrates on the topic of future gaming. This thesis is especially curious about gaming experience in the future, and it also comes up with original ideas in optimising the gaming experience which requires humans to redefine their relation to media opposite to anthropocentrism. However, this remains to be discussed due to its appropriateness for humanism in the future throughout this thesis and future research. Pokémon Go’s success implies media technology is playing a more crucial role in expanding the gaming market nowadays, and it is valuable work to know how to make best use of media technology to benefit humans in media entertaining area.