It is a map of imagination.

Pokemon Go is a locational based mobile game. In the virtual Pokemon world, players will become a Pokemon trainers. Through their mobile screens, they can see virtual stops widely distributed on physical cityscape and they are called Pokststops.  These stops allow players to obtain virtual supplement for doing virtual activities like Pokeballs for catching Pokemon and medicine for injured Pokemon after battling.  As a locational based game, gamers have to physically arrive the stop and spin the ring of each stop on their screens. Also, the spectrum of the three-dimensional map is responding to the real-time location of the players. The primal purpose of the map is used for navigating the players to surrounding stops in order to continue their adventure. Such real-time interaction and physical engagement make the players believing they are really in the Pokemon world that they dreamed of in their childhood.

Another factor helps stimulating our imagination is the creation of the Pokestops. They are created in a crowd-sourcing method providing valuable Volunteered geographic information.(VGI)  The operator called for players’ participation to create a landmarks which are educationally or historically significant, unique art or architecture, hidden local gem and networking places. Participants can snap the selected city object with GPS on, entitle the photo and share to the operator.  It allows human act as sensor network to process data collection.

We all love brain-storming as we believe everyone will have something valuable to contribute. The bottom up formation of Pokestops allow people to discover the cityscape with a new perspective contributed by the crowd. As a result, we re-discover a lot of forgotten substances around us which are in fact existing and interesting but used to not come to our eyes.

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