Niantic, developer of Pokémon Go, has acquired Seismic Games
nianticlabs.com
nianticlabs.com
The Niantic was a ship from the California Gold Rush. Sailors were so eager to secure their fortune that they would often abandon ship as soon as they anchored in San Francisco. At one point there were hundreds of abandoned ships floating in the bay. You can see them in this [1] photo from 1851. The Niantic was one of the comparatively lucky ships that got converted into a warehouse and hotel [2]. You can still visit it to this day, at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco [3].
[1] http://www.foundsf.org/images/b/b4/Downtwn1%24yerba-buena-co...
[2] https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I0VV5z4rats/Ws-ns4ikAOI/AAAAAAAAG...
[3] https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Niantic_stern_and_...
I met an old friend the other day for board games and he spent more time playing Pokémon Go than actually interacting with me (or the board game). I told him he was being rude and he just laughed like that was absurd.
I don’t know that there’s anything I can do, or anything I SHOULD do. I’m just making an observation of how people playing these AR games is going to increasingly become this strange phenomenon of walking around for cheap dopamine hits, oblivious to the world around you.
When I meet people for coffee, lunch or whatever. My policy is phone face down and on vibrate. Only if it's an emergency do you pickup and answer.
I tell people respect my time, it's pretty valuable. If you want to occupy your space with someone, at least have the decency to be there at that moment.
Anyone fails to do that, I simply do not spend my time with them. You soon get to find out, who not only respects your time and values theirs. Verses people who don't do both.
Are you upfront with your policy, or do you only state it if people act like jerks with their phones?
Look, I'm GenX. Take that what you will.
> Are you upfront with your policy.
That am I. People who know me, know I value my time very well.
If someone doesn't know me, I tell them up front. It's down to them whether or not to continue forward or not. I don't mind.
It helps that I am an objectivist at heart. It makes things very very simple. I don't spend my life walking on egg shells.
Bear in mind, although I am a developer. I have spent many years in sales environments, with upper management teams such as working with VP's and CEO's directly.
In such environments you learn very quickly how to say a lot without saying anything.
If you need more information take a look at channels such as [0] and [1]. There are plenty on youtube.
It's like common courtesy and human decency is eroding while at the same time people are caught up in this overly-virtuous mindset of "not offending anyone". The moral catch-22 of the 21st century.
Maybe you just have not much to talk about with your friend if he is more interested in playing Pokemon Go than a board game with you? Or you are so focussed on seeing Pokemon Go players wasting their time that it just appears to you that they are acting like zombies? Sure, there might be some players that are addicted, but I they are the majority of the Pokemon Go community.
The interesting part was more the amount of people that were out and about playing in those areas -- and as you said, they were all interacting and seemingly having a good time. I spoke to a few people (I generally don't venture out much in my own neighborhood), and got to know some of my neighbors in the area. It was pretty interesting to see the bond that playing the game was really producing.
I find it interesting how we are always doing value judgements based on what we ourselves prefer. In a millennium, if we are still around, I doubt very many will even have a body.
Although maybe this is a virtual world too...
Everything we do game our neurochemicals for addictive behaviours. Conversations, hugs, kisses. My question isn't how they are different on the surface, but how the intrinsic value is different. Try to leave any values you might hold out of it.
As for depression; one reason for this could be that the game is able to stimulate some parts of your brain (dopamine receptors), but might yet not be able to stimulate oxytocin and serotonin at the same level. Who says we won't be able to do this going forward?
I'm in no way an expert in this subject, but given neuro-plasticity (I don't really know how this relates to the amount of neurochemical receptors, so I might be totally wrong), we might even adapt to these new worlds rather quickly.
I've had similar issues with friends, girls, associates, coworkers, just about anyone.
It is a social problem, but there's an easy fix: set your boundaries, communicate them, and make it clear that this isn't acceptable (how you go about phrasing it differs on the person and their relation to you, wing it). If somehow you end up stuck with someone that can't respect your time, then maybe they're not worth your time. Setting a hardline helps me filter out different sorts that would otherwise waste my time, not just now, at this one lunch, but would continue to do so in the future.
I think it's important that as technology advances and becomes more pervasive that basic social courtesies also need to evolve in lockstep. It takes individuals to start addressing this on a case-by-case basis, but I'm optimistic that given enough people putting in enough effort that we'll get closer to the ideal of a civilized society that doesn't just know how to use their technology, but when and where it is appropriate.
The old friend is just rude, I agree.
But with families with strollers and multiple kids, walking through that garden is not something special, it is something you do every day and after years of doing that it becomes old. For involved fathers, they spend a lot of time with kids, so each moment is not special anymore and sometimes you are tired and in bad mood and tired of kids, but you still have to take them out.