Pokemon Go was never about play
Chicago. June 13, 2019.
I attended the Pokemon Go Fest which was being held in Grant Park. It was an accident that I happened upon this large gathering of humans all in their phones but all outside. I wondered what they were playing but the Trainers, the Players, the Users, were all too busy raiding, so I continued on my journey.
I was heading to the Red Line, for my weekly visit with kiddos at the West Englewood library. When I got there, I asked the young folks present about Pokemon Go. They told me about it, but said they couldn't play. I assumed it was because their parents wouldn't allow this over use of data, but it was literally because they couldn't. As one youth remarked, “ain’t no stops on the Southside.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired.
The young man, we will call Demarcus, opened his phone, selected the Pokemon Go app, and showed me the map: empty.
This was actually a shock for me, coming from Grant park where the map was full of stops and other interactive elements. The Southside Pokemon Go map was literally empty. On another occasion, I ventured out to identify where the closest Pokestop was, and it was located in another park, the Oakwoods cemetery, at the Confederate Mound.
The closest stop to these Black and Brown youth was a landmark commemorating the Confederacy.
[insert doc rivers gif here]
The auntie in me was upset but the scholar in me became more curious. First, these young folks were being left out of a cultural moment that I assumed would revolutionize play. Second, the pragmatic scholar in me wondered, if a stop can be anywhere, why are there no stops everywhere?
What we would soon learn is because it hasn’t been mapped yet.
So I reached out to Niantic, via their website first. I wanted to understand what it meant to have a “Pokestop” in your neighborhood.
The list was short and quick. In order for a Pokestop to be considered, you needed:
A landmark
Sidewalks
That’s an interesting list, surely all encompassing. Most places, outside of rural areas or geographically isolated areas have landmarks and sidewalks. But the third requirement for a Pokestop was more complicated for my friends on the Southside of Chicago:
3. A safe area
“Safe according to who?” was my first question. The beautiful humans who reside on the Southside have learned to navigate the challenges that accompany living on the South Side, saturated police presence, divestment and neglect, gang violence, unhoused residents, and mediated narratives, to name a few.
Who determines “safe?” According to Niantic, this is data generated from law enforcement. I saw the map - the Southside is a “redzone,” which they define as a high crime area; we would, instead, frame it as an area with high police presence, with stop and frisk ever present.
But for those of us who grew up outside, that list is insignificant when it comes to play (outside of the aforementioned challenges). In fact, the less infrastructure the better because our imaginations can have free range to see what we want and thus we can do what we want.
So for me, I knew Pokemon Go was created for digital infrastructures not the physical. It was not meant for play, and it was not meant for people. Those strict parameters, the list of three, became a code of sorts, a pattern that the system was looking for to replicate over and over again.
But most of our neighborhoods are not replicable. They are playable. I didnt grow up in the suburbs but I frequent them. And those are replicable neighborhoods, the ones that look the same on each street, feel the same, smell the same. For those of us who grew up outside, this is boring for play. We want unpredictable. Think about your skateboarding friends. You got accustomed to looking for spots where they could play. A rail, a skid, a bowl, an obstacle: not landmarks, not sidewalks, not safe areas.
We will look at a structure and wonder how long it can hold us up while we pretend we are flying.
I always questioned who Niantic imagined would play in these predictable worlds, because it wasn’t designed for humans, at least not the ones who look like me on the Southside.
Fast forward to March 19th, 2026, when it was revealed that Pokemon Go created the biggest database to teach robots navigation. Niantic had an imagined audience in mind already, delivery drones and bots.
Oh that makes so much more sense! Landmarks for tracking. Sidewalks for moving. Safe area for safe keeping? No, a safe area for the audience who would then benefit from this new digital infrastructure mapped onto the physical.
I am conflicted. One part of me wants geographically isolated areas who benefit from the perks of the robotic era, but another part of me feels like the existing structures might offer some protection and benefit, because these areas are unmapped and analog.
Think about any dystopian movie you’ve seen. There is always an area where the tech conglomerate wouldn’t reach or couldn’t. I will rest well knowing that rural areas, Black neighborhoods, The Rez, and Barriors will be the beacons of hope and saviors in the midst of our robotic futures.
The areas where play is still sacred and protected.
