Why do people play location-based augmented reality games : A study on Pokémon GO

Why Do People 1 Why Do People Play Location-Based Augmented Reality Games: A Study on Pokémon GO Abstract Pokémon GO brought the location-based augmented reality games into the mainstream. To understand why people play these games, we created an online survey (n=2612) with open questions about the reasons to start, continue, and quit playing Pokémon GO, and composed categories of the answers through a thematic analysis. Earlier experiences especially with the same franchise, social influence, and popularity were the most common reasons to adopt the game, while progressing in the game was the most frequently reported reason to continue playing. The player’s personal situation outside the game and playability problems were the most significant reasons to quit the game. In addition to shedding more light on the Pokémon GO phenomenon, the findings are useful for both further studying and designing location-based augmented reality game experiences. Keywords: Pokémon GO; location-based; augmented reality; free-to-play; mobile games Authors: Kati Alha; Elina Koskinen; Janne Paavilainen; Juho Hamari This is the post print version of the article, which has been published in Computers in Human Behavior, 2019, Volume 93, 114-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2018.12.008 Why Do People 2 1. Introduction Location-based augmented reality (AR) games are pervasive games that tie into the everyday life of the players and transform their mundane surroundings into a part of the game world (Montola, Stenros & Waern, 2009). After being published in July 2016, Pokémon GO (PGO) (Niantic, 2016) became the first location-based AR game to garner mainstream popularity and one of the most successful mobile games in general. The game peaked at 28.5 million daily unique players in the United States alone a week after its launch (ComScore, 2017), it had reached over 750 million downloads worldwide within its first year (Minotti, 2017), and had made $1.8 billion in revenue with in-app purchases in two years (Nelson, 2018). Previously, location-based augmented reality games had mostly been research prototypes or games without significant commercial success (Paavilainen et al., 2017), but after the success of PGO, many location-based AR games are now entering the market. In this article, we will use PGO as a case to study why people play location-based AR games. In PGO, players act as Pokémon trainers and walk in the real world, using their mobile app to navigate in the game world while trying to find, catch, hatch, train, evolve, and fight Pokémon creatures. The player’s location is tracked by GPS, while the game shows an overlay map of the game world, showing the nearby Pokémon and other interest points on it. The player can tap any nearby Pokémon to change into the catch mode, where the player can throw Poké Balls at them. A successful catch will add the creature into the player’s Pokémon collection, Pokédex, and the aim is to collect all the different creatures, which has been one of the main reasons to continue playing the game (Rasche, Schlomann & Mertens, 2017). PGO is based on the popular and already over two decades old Pokémon franchise, which has been one of the key reasons to play PGO according to previous studies (Rasche et al., 2017; Zsila et al., 2017). Why Do People 3 PGO ties into many research interests from the last decade. It is a location-based pervasive game (Montola et al., 2009; Sotamaa, 2002) that utilizes context-information (Paavilainen, Korhonen, Saarenpää & Holopainen, 2009) and AR (Bichard & Waern, 2008; Lindt, Ohlenburg, Pankoke-Babatz & Ghellal, 2007). It ties into a transmedia storyworld (Dena, 2009) while including elements from exergames (Southerton, 2014), treasure hunts (Montola et al., 2009), geocaching (O’Hara, 2008), and free-to-play games (Alha, Koskinen, Paavilainen, Hamari & Kinnunen, 2014; Paavilainen, Hamari, Stenros & Kinnunen, 2013). We look at why people play location-based AR games through PGO. With its exceptional success in this area, it is an important artifact to research from the cultural, academic, and game design perspectives. To study why PGO reached such popularity, we investigate 1) why players have started to play PGO, 2) why they continue playing it, and if so, 3) why they have stopped playing it. We employ survey data gathered from PGO players (N=2612) and a mixed-method design containing both qualitative and quantitative analyses. The contributions of this paper are three-fold: 1) we provide new information on this culturally important phenomenon, 2) the findings can be used in follow-up quantitative studies by operationalizing our findings into variables, and 3) the findings can be used when designing location-based AR game experiences. 2. Related work Location-based games resemble other digital games in other ways, except the way they take place in a physical environment rather than only on a device screen (Leorke, 2018). According to Leorke, the discussion around location-based games has focused on two discourses: how they allow players to interact with strangers in ways they normally would not, and how they transform the surroundings into spaces for play. Why Do People 4 Previously, individual location-based games and prototypes have been studied from different aspects, but PGO is the first to have attracted wider academic interest. Especially, the game’s effects on health and well-being have been studied (Althoff, White & Horvitz, 2016; Barkley, Lepp & Glickman, 2017; Koivisto, Malik, Gurkan & Hamari, in print). Studies explaining why people play the game and especially exploratory studies investigating this are still lacking. Qualitative mapping of such an emerging phenomenon is essential for understanding it. Rasche, Schlomann and Mertens (2017) studied the reasons to start, continue, and quit playing PGO in an exploratory survey study (N=199). The self-reported reasons to start were sorted into categories shown in Table 1. Reasons to start Reasons to continue Reasons to quit Curiosity (68%) Completing the Pokédex (41%) Boredom (57%) Being a Pokémon fan (40%) Fun or curiosity or recreation (15%) Difficulties in reaching higher levels (29%) Media reports (28%) Finding new or rare Pokémon (11%) Being disappointed (23%) Reports from friends (27%) Catching strong Pokémon or being the best (10%) Technical problems (18%) Everybody around me plays it (14%) Joint activities with family and friends (6%) Too few Pokémon (18%) Being fascinated by the augmented reality function (6%) Being active or outside (6%) Waned interest (11%) Combining fun and physical activity (4%) Updates or new generations (5%) Too few Pokéstops (9%) Why Do People 5 Game for traveling (3%) Higher levels (4%) No time to play (9%) Nostalgia (1%) Incubating eggs (3%) Lack of co-users (7%) Fighting in arenas (3%) Too few arenas (5%) Nostalgia (3%) Table 1. Reasons to start, continue, and quit playing PGO (Rasche et al. 2017). In Zsila et al. (2017), motivations to play PGO were studied by utilizing the Motives for Online Gaming Questionnaire (MOGQ) with three new factors: outdoor activity, nostalgia, and boredom. These new factors were found to be the main play motivations. In addition, recreation from the original MOGQ model was the strongest motive while the lowest scores were observed with skill development and escapism. Other significantly related factors were competition, social, coping, and fantasy. The authors suggest that the three new motivations should be taken into consideration in future studies when studying games similar to PGO. Similarly, Yang and Liu (2017) studied motivations for playing PGO. The authors used factor analysis to identify seven motives for playing: exercise, fun, escapism, nostalgia, friendship maintenance, relationship initiation, and achievement. Except for exercise and escapism, the other motives had a positive correlation with the overall amount of play. Hamari, Malik, Koski and Johri (2018) studied gratifications of playing PGO and how they predict intentions to continue playing and to purchase in-game items. Their results showed that game enjoyment, outdoor activity, ease of use, challenge, and nostalgia were positively associated with intentions to continue playing, whereas outdoor activity, challenge, competition, socializing, nostalgia, and intention to continue playing were associated with in-app purchase intentions. Why Do People 6 3. Methods and data We designed a survey featuring open-ended questions focusing on game experiences in PGO. Rather than utilizing a pre-defined survey instrument, we emphasized the respondents’ own narratives and meaning-making by allowing them to answer freely. This is a fruitful approach when studying new and emerging phenomena. The survey featured closed-ended questions to reveal key demographics and playing habits. In this article, we focus on the three open-ended questions regarding starting, continuing, and stopping to play PGO (translated from Finnish): 1. Begin by explaining what made you to start playing Pokémon GO. 2. What makes you to continue playing Pokémon GO? 3. If you have stopped playing Pokémon GO, what made you to quit? The survey was developed and tested within an iterative process. During the development, 18 test respondents gave feedback on usability, flow, and other issues that might affect the respondent experience. We distributed the final survey in 15 Finnish PGO and other related Facebook groups, and encouraged respondents to further share the survey. Two Finnish gaming news portals advertised the survey. As an exploratory study, the respondent sample was not aimed to be representative of the whole player population. The survey was launched on September 1, 2016 at 7:00 PM and was online until September 7th, 2016 12:00 PM with a total of 2616 respondents. Two cases were removed due to false information and two cases due to technical problems in saving the responses. Therefore, the data consisted of 2612 survey responses. Of the 2612 respondents, 2595 gave at least one reason to start the game and 2049 at least one reason to continue playing it. Of the 119 respondents who had quit the game, 117 reported at least one reason why they had done so. Why Do People 7 The responses were typically short, ranging from a single word to a couple of sentences, longer answers being relatively rare. Many of the respondents gave more than one reason for each question. We used applied thematic analysis (Guest, MacQueen & Namey, 2012) for the qualitative analysis, where the open-ended answers were coded by three researchers. For the three survey questions about starting, continuing, and quitting PGO a similar approach was conducted. Three researchers started to code the data individually, taking notes of the issues that rose from the answers and marked the codes and their descriptions to a code guide. At the point of saturation the researchers convened to talk, compare the codes, and merge similar codes together. Based on the final codes, the researchers created main categories for these codes. The categories and the codes they include are listed and described in the results chapter. The three researchers coded a sample of the data (N=100) separately twice during the process with the help of the formed code guide, first after the first discussion and later at the end of the process. After both rounds, the resulting codes were compared and discussed. In the case of disagreement, a consensus was sought and the code guide edited accordingly. After changes to the code guide, previous codes influenced by the change were corrected. This approach was used to make sure that the researchers shared a unified view and could code a majority of the data alone. In addition, using several researchers helped us to pinpoint challenging and problematic points, and solving these made the process more reliable. To support the process, we used Fleiss’ kappa (Fleiss, 1971) to test the inter-rater reliability with both data samples in the starting and continuing categories. On the first round, we reached excellent agreement (at least 0.80) in 7 starting categories and 6 continuing categories and substantial agreement (at least 0.60) in 3 starting and 2 continuing categories. On the second Why Do People 8 round, we reached excellent agreement in 7 starting and 6 continuing categories and substantial agreement in 3 starting and 4 continuing categories. No kappa value was lower than 0.60. These kappa values were seen as high enough to be confident about continuing coding the data separately, avoiding the high cost and time-consuming process of all researchers coding all of the data. Furthermore, the process helped us see which categories were the most challenging to code reliably, and we could focus on improving them. Due to the lower number of respondents who had quit the game and given at least one reason why (N=117), the third question allowed for each of the three researchers to code all of the data. However, the three-step process of first creating a codebook and then comparing two samples of data coded individually by the three researchers was implemented similarly as with the other two questions. At each point, the researchers discussed and compared the codes to achieve a consensus. However, the inter-rater reliability test was not used. All interview quotes in the Results chapter have been translated from Finnish. Survey participants are indicated after the quotes by an ID number, gender, and age. 4. Results Table 2 lists the background information and the playing habits of the respondents. As the respondents were mostly from PGO groups on Facebook, it can be presumed that our respondents were somewhat more active than all PGO players on average. At the time of the survey the game had been out for two months. N % N % Gender Playing frequency Female 1628 62.3% Several times a day 1394 53.4% Male 927 35.5% Once a day 483 18.5% Why Do People 9 Other 57 2.2% A few times a week 516 19.8% Age More rarely 100 3.8% Under 18 147 5.6% I don’t play anymore 119 4.6% 18–24 721 27.6% Level 25–34 1067 40.8% Under 10 96 3.7% 35–44 489 18.7% 10–14 265 10.1% 45 or more 188 7.2% 15–19 641 24.5% Walked distance 20–24 1323 50.7% Under 50 km 464 17.8% 25–29 276 10.6% 50–99 km 671 25.7% 30 or more 11 0.4% 100–199 946 36.2% Used money 200–399 km 476 18.2% Yes 939 35.9% 400 km or more 55 2.1% No 1673 64.1% AR mode How much money (if used) On 200 7.7% Under 10e 225 6.6% Off 2017 77.2% 10e–19e 226 8.6% Depending on situation 388 14.9% 20e–49e 307 11.7% I don’t know 7 0.3% 50e–99e 118 4.5% 100e or more 63 2.4% Table 2. Background information and playing habits. 4.1 Reasons to start playing Pokémon GO We divided the reasons for starting to play PGO into 11 different categories (see Table 3). Altogether, these categories included 53 separate codes, each category including 2–11 codes. On average, one player reported starting reasons from 1.6 categories. Why Do People 16 While the game mechanics stayed in the margin when describing the reasons to get into the game, they arose as one of the main reasons to continue playing. Collecting, evolving, hatching eggs and battling were mentioned. Hatching eggs is addicting. I walk/bike nowadays more in order to hatch eggs. (ID 1925, female, 23) The social features were an important reason to continue, whether wanting to meet new people while playing or playing together with friends or family. The game functioned as an easy way to connect people together and create a feel of community. Some liked to compete or compare progression with others, while others wanted to help or teach others to play the game. Community and sociability. The game alone does not keep my interest, but is a splendid addition to social situations. (ID 219, male, 27) Closely connected to social features, respondents explained continuing to play due to social influence. This could mean parents wanting to be up to date and informed about their children’s hobby or avoiding being left out of social circles when all friends were still playing the game. Because all my friends play. I don’t want to stand out from the crowd. (ID 2464, male, 12) Interest continued being somewhat important, meaning that the game continued to feel, for instance, interesting or fun. [I]n its most parts very excellent implementation makes the game feel interesting and fun from day to day. (ID 2454, female, 22) Why Do People 17 Some reported continuing to play because of future expectations for the game. They were curious about how the game was going to change or waiting for a specific update. Some were even threatening to quit if the game would not change “for the better”. The game has such an inconceivable potential to develop for the better, this is unquestionably the biggest and the most important reason. (ID 1245, male, 34) The nature of the game as a reason to continue included the casual nature of the game, making it easy to play, while others felt that the challenging nature was positive. The game provided surprises and was rewarding. The casual nature of it. It is easy to play for an occasional minute or for hours and hours without much planning. (ID 1531, female, 26) While previous experiences, especially with the Pokémon brand, were brought up as the number one reason to start the game, they were rarely mentioned as the reason to continue playing. Some brought up their love for Pokémon or similar activities to PGO, but these were in a small minority. The love for Pokémon, I presume. When it’s been with you for your whole life, the game will not go away in a hurry. (ID 1019, female, 25) A few respondents mentioned staying in the game to keep up similarly as in the reasons to start the game. [A]s a teacher I want to be up to speed on the youth’s world of games. (ID 2570, female, 39) Only a few respondents reported technology related reasons to continue playing, for instance liking the location-based properties or the AR features. Why Do People 18 It’s fun to take pictures of the Pokémon on a real background so to speak. (ID 2013, female, 27) 4.3 Reasons to stop playing Pokémon GO We divided the reasons for stopping to play PGO to 9 different categories (see Table 5). These categories included 49 codes, each category including 2–12 codes. On average, one player reported reasons to quit from 1.8 categories. Category N % Codes Situation 63 53.8% Time, health, addiction, boredom, reached goal, deleted for space, hype down, weather, phone not working, situation changed, internet connection, money Progression 35 29.9% Slow progress, grinding, repetition, no new Pokémon Problems 32 27.3% Technical problems, battery usage, game always on, slow performance, incomplete, lack of content in area Shortcomings 25 21.4% Lack of new things, no endgame, missing features, missing content Mechanics 24 20.5% Battle system, searching, demands movement, does not encourage movement, cannot use a bike, escaping Pokémon, losing Poké Balls, poor design Nature of the game 16 13.7% Unrewarding, no challenge, too random, bad luck, competitiveness, lack of sociability, shallow, too simple Changes 10 8.5% Poor updates, change to worse, closing third-party applications Social influence 9 7.7% Others, children, friends, partner, cheating The company 9 7.7% Communication, lack of trust Table 5. The reasons to quit playing Pokémon GO. Why Do People 19 The player’s situation was the most frequently reported reason to stop. Getting bored, a lack of time or money, poor or cold weather, and health problems were mentioned, while some had quit due to their phone breaking or the game not working where they lived. Some had achieved their goal and had thus decided to quit, while others felt the hype was settling down. I don’t have the time to go and sit in the park or walk somewhere just after Pokémon. (ID 78, female, 28) During the summer it was nice to walk outside, but now during the fall I’m not that interested, and wouldn’t even have the time. (ID 1088, female, 31) While progression was a strong reason to continue the game, it was also a strong reason to quit. The leveling curve was seen to be too steep: the required experience points needed for a new level rose exponentially, while the earned experience points stayed the same, making it necessary to grind to advance. Similarly, when reaching a certain point in collecting the Pokémon, it became increasingly hard to find any new ones to advance towards the goal of catching them all. Advancing started to be infuriatingly difficult at around level 20: you never get feelings of accomplishment when you never get on to the next level and there are not many brand new Pokémon either. (ID 1762, female, 23) Players were bothered by the various problems in the game. Bugs, the game crashing or not registering the walked distances properly were mentioned. The respondents criticized the unequal gaming possibilities due to the Pokémon and PokéStops being concentrated to city centers. In addition, some disliked that you needed to keep the game active at all times even when playing passively. This caused the battery to drain. I quit shortly after the publication because the game was infinitely buggy. If the game had been anything other than a Pokémon game it would probably be played by hardly anyone, and you could not publish such a buggy game. (ID 1514, other, 27) Why Do People 20 Because the GPS did not work properly, the game did not register all the length of my walks. It felt a bit pointless to walk 5 km when the game then registered maybe half a kilometer. (ID 1665, female, 34) The shortcomings of the game, especially the lack of content, were seen to be problematic. There was no endgame for players who had already advanced further, and the game was seen to be too shallow and simple. Some players would have wanted more features or more Pokémon. There was nothing new to do in the game and my interest slowly decreased until I quit. (ID 1282, male, 22) At the moment the game is a walking simulator with a Pokémon theme. (ID 1516, female, 21) The game design and some of the game mechanics were disliked or seen to be faulty. Especially the battle system was criticized for being over-simplified and for not feeling like a battle against another player. Searching mechanics were seen as imperfect, and the catching mechanics were sometimes frustrating when you would lose many Poké Balls on one Pokémon or when the Pokémon fled. The game stopping to measure movement if the speed was too high was criticized, claiming that the game discouraged cycling. PVP [player versus player] is pretty passive (the other player is not actually “present” as in Shadow Cities in its time, where group fights were possible too). (ID 1652, female, 36) It is ridiculous that as an above level 20 player under 100 cp [combat power] Pokémon don’t always get caught with the first ball. (ID 2024, female, 23) Different aspects of the nature of the game were brought up as the reason to quit. These included the game being unrewarding or random in its rewards, lacking challenge, being too Why Do People 21 competitive, simple or shallow, or just not social enough. Some explained that the game should not require movement, while some felt that the game encouraged staying in one place instead of walking. I simply did not want to go outside to walk around randomly, as it feels like the chance of finding the wanted Pokémon is the same as winning the lottery. (ID 618, female, 26) The game evolving and changing was not always positive, as sometimes players felt that the game was changing for the worse. For instance, the removal of the nearby feature, which had made locating Pokémon easier made some to stop playing. Similarly, some complained about Niantic’s approach to close down the third-party map services, which were used to show the locations of all Pokémon at any given time. The changes the developer made ruined the game, for instance removing the Nearby feature was just lousy game development. (ID 207, female, 25) Because Niantic doesn’t fix the bugs in the game, makes stupid additional features and banned third party services. (ID 2079, male, 30) The company behind the game was brought up. Niantic was criticized for their lack of communication to the public, and even claims of not seeing them as trustworthy arose. The developers’ behavior towards the gamer community was the last drop. (ID 2572, male, 23) When quitting the game, social influence was brought up. If friends no longer played the game, some respondents explained not feeling like continuing the game alone. Other people could have a negative influence, for instance by cheating. It is not nice to play the game in a vacuum. When other players’ enthusiasm faded, so did my own enthusiasm towards the game. (ID 526, male, 30) Everyone from my circle started to cheat in the game so I lost my interest in the game completely. (ID 1494, male, 25) Why Do People 22 4.4 Relations to playing frequency Two multiple-regression analyses (Tables 6-7) were conducted between the reasons for starting and continuing PGO identified in the qualitative steps of the study and the playing frequency (see Table 2). Regarding the relationship between the reasons to start playing and playing frequency, the results indicate that the reasons to start playing both had a negligible total effect; the reasons explained only 6.3% of the variance of playing frequency as well as none of the reasons to start playing had a statistically significant relationship with the playing frequency (Table 6). In other words, the results indicate that the reasons for why players start playing do not have a more sustained effect on whether they play the game less or more. DV: Playing frequency R² = 0.063 Beta p Previous experiences -0.014 0.541 Keeping up 0.004 0.828 Positivity 0.021 0.291 Situation -0.005 0.819 Social influence 0.015 0.492 Mechanics 0.022 0.263 Nature of the game -0.009 0.637 Social features 0.024 0.223 Popularity -0.021 0.309 Technology -0.026 0.189 Table 6. The relationships between playing frequency and the reasons to start playing (R2 = 0.063). There are several significant relationships between the reasons to continue playing and the playing frequency. The reasons to continue playing explained 31.2% of the variance of the Why Do People 23 playing frequency. The results in full can be seen in Table 7. The strong relationship (B=0.282) between progression motivations and continued playing is clearly stronger than the relationship between continued playing and other reasons to continue playing. DV: Playing frequency R² = 0.312 Beta p Previous experiences 0.044** 0.019 Keeping up 0.010 0.610 Positivity 0.061** 0.001 Situation 0.087*** 0.000 Social influence -0.032 0.130 Mechanics 0.058** 0.002 Progression 0.282*** 0.000 Nature of the game 0.015 0.431 Social features 0.027 0.215 Expectations 0.077*** 0.000 Interest 0.076*** 0.000 Technology -0.079*** 0.000 Table 7. The relationships between playing frequency and the reasons to continue playing (R2 = 0.312), * = p < 0.05, ** = p < 0.01, *** = p < 0.001. 5. Discussion The success of PGO has been the sum of several factors, but one clear reason for it is the brand. According to our findings, previous experiences, especially with the Pokémon franchise, were the main reason in achieving the player-base. Pokémon has several strengths. The brand is widely known, it has nostalgic value, and its characters are simple and attractive even if one is unfamiliar with them. The “gotta catch ‘em all” theme of Pokémon is well suited for a locationbased game where the player can go to different places to find and catch different creatures. Why Do People 24 Using existing intellectual property (IP) is a common practice in the game industry, and seems to be important in location-based games, as well. The announced upcoming location-based games use widely known IP: Harry Potter (Niantic, forthcoming), The Walking Dead (Next Games, 2018), Ghostbusters (4:33 Creative Lab, forthcoming), and Jurassic Park (Ludia, 2018). Existing IP was not usually used in previous, less successful location-based games before PGO, such as BotFighters (It’s Alive!, 2001), Shadow Cities (Gray Area, 2010), or Ingress. According to our research, social reasons were important both in starting and continuing PGO. Social interaction is a common motivation to play (e.g. Yee, 2006; Hjorth & Richardson, 2017). While it has been argued that PGO fails to harness the social networking power compared to earlier location-aware games (Licoppe, 2016), our data shows that encounters do happen. Although the game lacks in-game communication channels and means to locate other players through the game, it acts as a social catalyst and increases the effect with features such as rival teams and lures that are shared by all players in the area. The requirement to play outdoors makes the players visible to each other, and including real-world locations into the game gathers crowds to the best play areas or to a sighting of a rare Pokémon. These features can assist the emergence of in-group closeness (Humphreys, 2016). According to Vella et al. (2017), PGO strengthens existing social ties, acts as an icebreaker, and creates a sense of belonging. Furthermore, social influence and the visibility of the players affects the hype through the bandwagon effect (Colman, 1950): when people hear about the game frequently and see it being played, they may want to try it too. Many respondents started or continued playing PGO as a form of exercise. Although studies of the long-term effects of PGO on health habits are needed, it has been studied that mobile apps that combine playing and physical activity may lead to substantial short-term Why Do People 25 activity increases and have the possibility of reaching sedentary populations (Althoff et al., 2016). PGO works as a gamified exercise app, since it offers motivational affordances (Hamari, 2015) for players to walk more than they normally do. PGO has other positive influences as well, such as self-treatment for depression or other difficult situations in life. Similar selfreported effects have been found by Kari, Arjoranta and Salo (2017), as well. Interestingly, the game being free of charge and using novel technology were rarely mentioned influencing the decision to pick up or continue the game. However, it can be speculated that both of these influence the decision more strongly than people have expressed. For one, games being free-to-play is already a widely-spread model, and might not be mentioned even if it was a significant motivation to pick up the game. It can be speculated that having a purchase price would have decreased the player base substantially. The lack of responses around technology might be explained by the respondents not always expressing the technology-related reasons in specific terms, but instead describing the game feeling “interesting”, “fun”, or “novel”. A portion of these answers might refer to AR and location-based technologies since they were not mainstream game technologies before PGO. On the other hand, the location-based technology and AR features were in focus to reach the hype of the game, which was one of the main reasons to start the game. Progression was by far the most common motivation to continue playing the game, and it also had the strongest positive correlation to playing frequency. Collecting all the Pokémon has been an important part of the Pokémon franchise since its beginning. PGO offers a wide variety of creatures to collect, some of which are rare and need a lot of effort to catch, making completion a long task even for the most active players. In addition, the individual Pokémon have different attributes, and catching the best of each creature extends the possibilities for Why Do People 32 Gray Area. (2010). Shadow Cities. Guest, G., MacQueen K.M., & Namey E.E. (2012). Applied thematic analysis. SAGE Publications, Inc. Hadiji, F., Sifa, R., Drachen, A., Thurau, C., Kersting, K., & Bauckhage, C. (2014). Predicting player chum in the wild. 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