What Can Pokémon Go Mean for Museums

Originally published on the Museum Next website.

This article explores how organizations can leverage games like Pokémon Go to engage new audiences amid the decline in museum attendance.

On a recent Saturday, I met with friends at a café in Old Town, Alexandria. Over coffee and baked goods, I couldn’t help but notice that besides the families and couples, the farmer market shoppers and tourists, students with laptops out and opened books, another group was present and congregating in large and small numbers. As my friends and I took a post-meal walk, the ever-present groups of individuals walking, chatting, with faces drawn towards their phones, and their phones connected to hidden battery packs, and the occasional costume or rabbit-like ears adornments that we had stumbled upon Pokémon Go. For the uninitiated, Pokémon Go is a highly popular, global, phone-based augmented reality game akin to a scavenger hunt, in which the user can detect Pokémon or other creatures played using your phone’s GPS.

To any Pokémon fans out there, I hope my description will satisfy them, my goal is not to discuss the game’s intricacies but rather its cultural and social significance. My friends were mildly confused when they saw people playing the game. Understandable as Pokémon first appeared in 2016, yet what was even more surprising was that these were not kids or teens but adults of all ages, including the grey-haired and silvery-streaked Gen Xers, and some with children in tow.

What we unknowingly stumbled upon was the Pokémon GO Fest. And, while this weekend drew the Pokémon community out in large numbers, it’s not just the occasional festival. Rather, as a Wall Street Journal article reported on the rising trend of Pokémon Go travelers, vacationers, and even honeymooners, this is in addition to the game’s everyday play. Journalist Salvador Rodriguez’s article, “The Adults Who Book Vacations Based on…. Pokémon? Boomers, honeymooners, and celebrities are among travellers who pick destinations where they can ‘catch’ digital monsters.” He writes this “unique breed: adults who incorporate the mobile-phone game Pokémon Go into their travels. The game is augmented reality, which overlays cute monsters known as Pokémon onto your real-world surroundings. Imagine strolling Rome’s cobblestone streets when suddenly your phone vibrates, and a rare creature is perched near the Colosseum.” The article describes a 62 and 59-year-old couple that has traveled and played the game across Europe, the Caribbean, and Asia. Or, of a family who traveled to Egypt to play the game, capture a rare character, and dress up in Pokémon Go costumes with family and friends for the ultimate fan photograph in front of the pyramids.

My first introduction to Pokémon Go was in 2016, when my friend and then-colleague Katrina Latka and I realized that our museum-goers were searching for Pokémon characters inside the galleries at the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, MA. This realization led us to create a Pokémon Go guide for the museum, which explained the game, provided tips for playing safely in the museum, tips for extending your battery life while playing, and recommendations to visit during free and discounted admission dates.

Since then, I have stumbled across Pokémon Go meetups in different cities across the country and several times abroad. And, on one strange day, while in Portland, Oregon, my wife and I ventured, in what can only be described as traveling back in a time moment, to catch the city’s MAX Light Rail train, some 260 feet (making it the deepest subway station in the U.S.), beneath Washington Park’s famed rose gardens; to find ourselves boarding a crowded subway car, standing room only, in which each passenger was dressed as a Zombie. The train would eventually empty, and being the curious types, we followed the Zombie crowd, which was growing in number, to a Michael Jackson Thriller song gathering with hundreds of participants and even more spectators.

Seeing the Pokémon Go-ers and reminiscing on my Thriller experience (which I’ve now learned is also an annual October event called Thrill the World) reminded me of Culture Track’s 2017 report, which remains an important and contemporary proclamation. They wrote, “Cultural organizations are facing a paradigm shift. For today’s audiences, the definition of culture has democratized nearly to the point of extinction. It’s no longer about high versus low or culture versus entertainment; it’s about relevance or irrelevance. Activities that have traditionally been considered culture and those that haven’t are now on a level playing field. With the traditional notion of “culture” no longer being a distinguishing factor, it is up to cultural organizations to reassert culture’s purpose in an increasingly complex world, by powerfully articulating and delivering on their essential impact.”

Pokémon Go, Thriller Fest, Barbieheimer, or your community’s comic or manga conventions are equal in our communities’ eyes, wallets, and attendance to the latest exhibition, gallery opening, and museum program.

It is also worth discussing a series of recent and concerning headlines relating to museums, including this March New York Times article titled “Audience Snapshot: Four Years After Shutdown, a Mixed Recovery” and another from ArtNews, also from March, “UK Museums Still Have Yet to See Pre-Pandemic Attendance, New Report Reveals.” This is backed by research from the NEA’s 2022 Survey of Public Participation and the 2023 American Alliance of Museums Survey of Museum-Goers, where 2/3 of U.S. museums have self-reported that their attendance has not returned to pre-pandemic attendance.

Are Pokémon Go and other activities to blame? No, there is no connection. However, it’s hard to ignore the continued toehold that Pokémon Go and other activities like it have. Even consider the other end of the participation spectrum with events like mud runs or color runs (mud runs are obstacle-based races that include, as the name implies, mud and a color run is where the runners are doused in powdered colors throughout the race), have increased in popularity, participation, and regularity. Correlation does not imply causation, but as a Slate.com article on the phrase’s usage writes, “It sure as hell provides a hint.”

A Washington Post article from October 2023 on the NEA’s study also highlights the increase in digital usage and the decline in museum, theater, and film-going attendance. Merlin, the birding app is proof of this. And, while I might be the only person I know who has not downloaded the Cornell University app, millions have. A March 2024 headline says it best: “I Can’t Stop Using This Free App That Uses AI to Identify Birds.” USA.com writer Elizabeth Weise wrote in a June 2024 article, “I’m not a bird watcher, but I’ve become a bird listener ever since downloading a bionic ear app to my phone.” With 96,000 reviews and 12 million downloads by May of 2023 alone, Merlin has become ubiquitous, and birding is a hobby seemingly quotidian. Like Pokémon Go, Merlin travels with you, and your ability to see and hear more birds expands exponentially as you put on more miles and attend more meetups and gatherings.

Birding, like many activities and hobbies, took off during the pandemic, when our lives and society were topsy-turvy, reorienting our priorities, adjusting how we live, work, play, and as aptly stated in this March 2021 sub-headline from USA Today, “During the pandemic, many people found new joys, new perspectives, and new connections. Some people found themselves.” How could it not? Over 7 million lives were lost globally, with over 1 million alone in the U.S. dying from COVID-19, and today, 1 in 13 U.S. adults struggle with the effects of long-term COVID. Health became a priority, and activities and hobbies that were once relegated to the someday, maybe, or when I retire category became priorities. The Pew Research found that the Pandemic “brought a new sense of trade-offs between protecting one’s health and participating in social activities as part of daily life.”

Pandemic fads like sourdough might have been moments of passing the time for some. Still, for others, the fermented starter was a vital process of healing and participation in a community, connecting digitally, sharing tips and techniques, and helping others by sharing their starters so the sourdough process could start again with another host.

If you can, recall the sourdough starter that arrived at your house or apartment or that of your friends, neighbors, or relatives; likely, you knew someone who made sourdough during the Pandemic. It wasn’t just the starter, then voilà, and now you’re done. Sourdough is an online communal event, a learning process filled with videos and comments, online community groups, TikTok and Instagram, articles, and text messages between friends. The same is true for Pokémon Go, birding, races, and any activity and hobbies, or personal and professional efforts, where, for better or worse, we spend our time online so that we can live in the real world informed.

Several years ago, I became very interested in wellness as a concept and a way of understanding what it means to be healthy and successful. I spoke with Dr. Bill Hettler, who, for all matters necessary, is the father of wellness; if your school, business, or organization has a wellness team, center, or goals, it’s because of him. Wellness’s big idea is you can be physically fit but still unhealthy or unwell if, for example, you neglect your social or emotional health; the idea here is that while you might be fit, you are not well. Today, wellness is a national concern and a government priority; for example, the Surgeon General’s office recently released a Guide to Workplace Mental Health & well-being. And who hasn’t heard or had a conversation about the negative impact of loneliness in our society?

This brings me back to Pokémon Go, Merlin the Birding app, fun runs, and other activities. These highly social activities encourage exercise and social interactions and provide instant communities online and in the real world.

For museums and cultural organizations, the headlines have changed. However, it doesn’t have to mean doom and gloom, but rather, a chance to reinvent, reimagine, and reengage. We need to pay attention and hold space for conversation on what we can learn from, adopt, play with, and consider as part of the new way that we work within our organizations, in our online spaces, and in the community. It means experimentation, and now is a time that we should return to the idea that museums can be fun and places for play in a time when respite is so needed. As museums embrace digital tools and AI, I explore how to do so thoughtfully in Museum AI Pledge: Keeping Human Expertise at the Center.