Pat Kane: A game that helps you escape reality sounds good. . .

What am I talking about? I’m referring to the current massive success of Pokemon Go. It’s a version of the mid-1990s video game that moves its quest to “catch ‘em all” (the characters mentioned above, and many more) from the flat screen, to the real streets.

Holding a GPS-enabled smartphone, you roam your local environment, and use its camera to find Pokemon creatures anywhere – park benches, police stations, even Holocaust memorial centres (with the expected outrage). You then seize your creature, and move on to the next location (or “gym”), trying not to get splatted by traffic in boring old meat-space...

With 7.5 million users in the US alone, daily revenue of $1.6m dollars, five per cent of all Android phones with the app installed, in a week, Pokemon Go has as many users as Uber, the taxi-platform service, has after seven years of operation.

It’s a phenomenon – and it’s not really virtual reality (VR), but more augmented reality (AR), on which more later. But what does it all mean?

There’s an aspect of PokemonGo’s success that is about sheer escapism, and for a particular generation too. The Pokemon game began on a Nintendo GameBoy device in 1995 – so the “cute nostalgia” factor for thirty-something millenials is high.

And who could deny this beleaguered, precarious generation a few soft and sheltered moments? It reminds me of the way that Norah Jones’ first album – the music and performer both luminously, heart-soothingly beautiful – became the record of the early 2000s, as the drumbeat of war led us into the Iraq invasion. Some immediate respite from the daily anxiety was provided, and gratefully received.

But there is also something poignant about how PokemonGo plays with, and to some degree redeems, our current situation.

As I write, I can’t avoid thinking about the brutality of the killings in Nice – where festive crowds were deliberately mowed down on the resort promenade, by a truck-driving fanatic. Nor can I ignore the scenes of police brutality in the suburban environments of the United States, as the #blacklivesmatter protesters make their stands amid the picket fences. Nor, of course, the market square assassination of Jo Cox.

Yet I’m also writing about a game which gets people out of their houses and into their streets and public squares, seeking magic and enchantment in the unlikeliest of places, and often bringing them into friendly contact with other strangers.

And yes, weapons – the infamous Pokeballs – are thrown around these streets, with Pokemon characters engaging in combat. However their aim isn’t mutual destruction, but “evolution”, as the game’s rules have it: the winning character grows and develops through the contest. Very few Pokemon characters ever “die” – and the few that do always get resurrected.

“Reality is broken”, as the games theorist Jane McGonigal’s book puts it. But sometimes games, in their ability to motivate us, to encourage our collaboration and conviviality, can point to ways in which we can heal the cracks – even if inadvertently.

In this anxious, crisis-torn moment, when our nerves are starting to jangle even as we head into our high streets, the childlike reclamation of public space that is PokemonGo must be of value.

Yet there’s an interesting debate contained within the mnemonic of “AR” – as to whether it means “augmented” or “alternate” reality.

A recent video from the London designer and filmmaker Keiichi Matsuda, called HyperReality (bit.ly/HyperKane), shows how far down the line the “augmentation” of reality could go. The real-world footage is taken from a pedestrian’s single point of view, wandering through the malls, transport systems and streets of Medellin, Colombia.

But what the film simulates is her experience of seeing reality through her AR-enabled glasses (they could even be hi-tech contact lenses, already in development at Google).

It’s a vision of what could come after PokemonGo – if it fell entirely into the hands of retailers and advertisers. A shabby supermarket is digitally transformed into a pulsing cathedral of talking stuff, with cute brand animals cajoling and cavorting with our weary, sighing heroine.

Now, there are some visions of AR that imagine it could be a way to “alternate” reality. That is, it could reveal the power-structures that underlie our daily acts of consumption, seeing through all the surface conformism, like Neo in The Matrix. There are many digital radicals who’ve been trying to create these alternate-reality experiences for a decade. They’re currently arms-folded and extremely grumpy about the PokemonGo success.

But unless we have a Tim Berners-Lee for AR – that is, Tim Berners-Lee the inventor of the World Wide Web, and a stalwart defender of open and civic networks against closed and commercial ones – Matsuda’s cautionary tale will triumph.

Matsuda’s character sees the world in the role of a “Job Monkey” (a version of the existing chores-service TaskRabbit). Artificial “inspiration gurus” pop up in her eyeline, urging her to complete her tasks more quickly, or she will lose her credit “points”.

Life is a game for her – but one where she is constantly measured, monitored and scored on various performance tables, which flicker at the corners of her sight.

The cleverness of the current elites of capitalism, their ability to push the hot-buttons of our evolved and primary emotions, should never be underestimated. For even in Matsuda’s nightmare vision, there are scenes of shimmering, drop-jaw beauty – where boring, bustling streets are overlaid with signs, images, slogans, creatures human and non-human.

These are the kinds of inner experiences that humans have sought for hundreds of thousands of years. These are the visions of the shaman, the religious faithful, the artist, the psychonaut – and including the inventors of VR, AR and whatever-R comes next.

But as they used to say in the 1960s, you have to keep an eye on The Man. We shouldn’t forget that the original Pokemon was partly inspired by Japanese animist religions (which are some of the earliest religions on record).

The daily life of the animist is populated with little gods of all kinds, who bring fortune if appeased, and trouble if not.

It could be all too easy for brilliant but fiendish “interaction designers” to create wrap-around augmented worlds, in which these ancient submissions are incited and invited.

Except the gods to be appeased are representatives of governments, or retailers, or credit-services, or health services.

As with so much technology these days, the disruption happens first, with laws and moderating institutions scrambling after it.

The music and newspaper business knows this story all too well, as its solid (and saleable) objects dissolved themselves into streams on screens, now slowly being connected back to cash again.

PokemonGo players are stumbling into the front gardens of angry owners of establishments – or alternatively, blessing coffee shops with a massive burst of custom, as they become a “gym” for Pokemon characters. The question of how a digital territory relates to an actual territory has only just begun to be addressed. But we’ve also just had a year or two of being softened up for buzz-sawing Amazon drones, descending on our gardens carrying bags of groceries (or books)… and nothing’s delivered anything to my basket yet.

Reassuringly, the airspace regulations are proving somewhat difficult for ambitious retailers to, well, deregulate.

On the other hand, self-driving cars are steadily moving towards normality in UK life: Jaguar just announced that 100 of its robot vehicles will be operating on British roads, starting later this year.

No point in throwing up the Luddite “stop” signs to all this – if the Brexit trauma teaches us anything, it’s that stop signs hardly reduce the disruptions of the age.

But as we figure out how to make the best of yet another digital challenge, let’s at least enjoy that what pulls us into the future can sometimes be playful and joyful, as well as urgent and grim.

Press the pause button on seriousness, just for a blessed moment.

Pat Kane curates the Play theme at FutureFest (www.futurefest.org), September 18-19th, at London’s Tobacco Docks. Tickets on sale now.