Museums Try To Catch ’Em All

When the Museum of Modern Art in Philadelphia added eight Pokéstops, the purpose was to entice visitors during a time that users are encouraged to casually browse the galleries. And the results were impressive: Attendance went up 13% from the week before and 25% from the same time period the previous year.

A Pokéstop is a location where gamers, who are led by a GPS-programmed maps, can catch Pokémon characters and win points.

With 26M players daily, it’s understandable that museums, like many business, wants to “catch ’em all,” too, namely, visitors rather than cartoon monsters.

But if smartphone-wielding gamers are using their digital devices to help them see the real world as a template for their virtual monsters, isn’t the artwork just going to be a backdrop, too? Can a rare Rodin or Duchamp compete with a Jigglypuff or a Pikachu?

No doubt there are problems with this method of enticing young museum goers or those who might not be inclined to set foot in a museum. But if they come back another time, having been intrigued by what they saw when they weren’t trying to catch a rare character, the museum could say it was a success. They could also create Pokéstops at less-visited parts of the museum, to highlight artwork that might not be as well-known.

That Pokémon Go is an example of what we call Mixed Reality, an augmented reality game that combines analog and digital worlds, means that there are opportunities to help people explore not only parks and stores, but places they can be culturally enriched and open up their minds.