Challenges in Preserving Augmented Reality Games:
A Case Study of Ingress and Pokémon GO
Jin Ha Lee

Stephen Keating

Travis WindleharthUniversity of Washington
Mary Gates Hall, Suite 370
Seattle, WA 98195
jinhalee@uw.edu

University of Washington
Mary Gates Hall, Suite 370
Seattle, WA 98195
keatings@uw.edu

University of Washington
Mary Gates Hall, Suite 370
Seattle, WA 98195
travisw@uw.edu

ABSTRACTVideo games, as an evolving medium, present specific challenges
to preservation, and with the introduction of newer technologies,
these difficulties are ever increasing. Augmented Reality Games(ARGs) present challenges unique to the technologies
implemented within them, blending the physical world with thevirtual world, the socializing factors embedded in play, and theincreasingly network-distributed nature of their content. We
examine two popular ARGs, Ingress and Pokémon GO, as casestudies and illustrate the additional challenges ARGs bring topreserving video games. Boundaries in ARGs question the
traditional understanding of gameplay, while preserving changes
in virtual and physical space present challenges to ARG
representativeness and authenticity. Metaplay illustrates behavior
based on non-deterministic situations, often as a result of realworld changes. We also review different approaches suggested inprior literature for preserving video games, focusing on preserving
the context and history of the game by collecting relevant artifacts
and documentation, and explain why implementing theseapproaches could be challenging for ARGs.

KEYWORDS
Augmented reality games, Video games, Ingress, Pokémon GO,
Digital preservation, Preservation, ARG

1

INTRODUCTION

Video games are a complex and multifaceted medium which
present many organizational and preservation challenges. The
pressing need for preserving digital games was articulated in awhite paper published by the Game Preservation Special Interest
Group within the International Game Developers Association -digital games are an important part of our cultural heritage and a
failure to take action to preserve them now may result in asignificant loss of content and the contexts in which they arepresented, within but a few short decades [9]. However,preserving video games is not a simple task, as noted in priorliterature. For instance, the final report from the “Preserving
Virtual Worlds” project led by McDonough et al. [8] presents a
number of issues pertaining to preserving games and virtualworlds, such as the obsolescence of game hardware/software,
scarcity of media, third party dependencies, complex andproprietary code, difficulty in verifying object authenticity,

intellectual property rights issues, problems in determining
significant properties, and the importance of preserving context.
Additionally, McDonough [7] and Lee, Clarke, and Perti [5] also
point out limitations of existing game metadata and difficulties incollecting useful metadata due to the nature of games and theirunique publication process. Multiple versions, relationships withother non-game objects, modifications and additional content, andcomplicated intellectual property situations are but a handful ofissues important to video game preservation. Barwick, Dearnley,
and Muir [3] also examine the same problem from thepractitioners’ perspectives by interviewing representatives fromthree different museums/archives (Computerspiele Museum,
Strong National Museum of Play, and The National Videogame
Archive) with extensive video game collections, examining thecurrent status of digital game preservation. They also note thelegal challenges in the long-term preservation of games as well as
the difficulties associated with presenting games to the museum
audience, and preserving the cultural significance of the game andthe game’s relation to its cultural context.
In addition to the multitudes of challenges of preserving digital
games, McDonough et al. [8] raise an important question inpreserving specific types of virtual worlds or games such as
Second Life or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games(MMORPGs) like World of Warcraft. In these environments, “thevalue and meaning of a virtual world is primarily derived from theactions and interactions of its players (p. 29)” and experiencing
the world outside of their prime time would mean that the player’s
interactivity would be more akin to an archaeological study,
attempting to envision how the virtual world might have looked.
Winget [12] elaborates on the challenges of preserving
MMORPGs, including technical dependencies, representation,and collection development. She argues that in addition to solving
technical and legal issues, other challenges such as determining
the nature of primary and secondary artifacts, modelinginteractivity, and collecting contextual information, need to beconsidered as well.
In our work, we aim to expand the discussion on video gamepreservation by examining Augmented Reality Games (ARGs).
ARGs are generally understood as games that blend the virtualworld and real world via gameplay, although some scholars argue
for a more precise definition. For instance, Azuma [1] specifies
three characteristics that defines ARGs: “1) combines real andvirtual, 2) interactive in real time, and 3) registered in 3-D” (p.2).
Generally, the term ARG would include a game like Pokémon

GO, which may or may not meet the third criterion depending on
the use of the AR feature in the game. In either case, mapping
physical space virtually is an integral piece of defining the ARG
experience and creates unique preservation challenges due to thedemands of location-based play.
The unprecedented success of Pokémon GO in 2016 has
resulted in an increased interest in ARGs, including academic
perspectives examining the benefits and drawbacks of thesegames, impacts on real-life player behaviors, emergent issues
regarding safety and privacy, as well as interest from gamedevelopers wanting to understand how Pokémon GO was able tocaptivate such a massive and diverse audience. Preserving ARGs
will undoubtedly be an important task for conveying the cultural
heritage of paradigmatic play (i.e., play specific to a time andplace) and how such games have impacted our current society.
ARGs amplify existing challenges in preserving digital games byphysically mapping context-sensitive and social events in the realworld. Here, we specifically discuss two examples of ARGs as
our case studies to illustrate some of these challenges. We willconclude with a discussion of the impact of ARGs on various
game preservation approaches.

area, and “shard events”, where players must coordinate thecapture and movement of in-game items called “shards” to certain
target portals to “score” them.

Figure 1. Screenshot of Ingress (left) and Pokémon GO (right)

2

Two Example ARGs
2.2

2.1 Ingress
Ingress was developed by Niantic, a spinoff company from
Google, and was released in 2014. In 2015, Niantic reported thatthey had over 7 million players 1. The game uses Google Maps asa base for overlaying game elements onto real-world locations. In
Ingress, there are two factions (Enlightened vs. Resistance) that
players can choose from. The main goal of the game is to takecontrol of “portals” which are mapped to various real-world
locations such as landmarks, public places like parks, or local
businesses. Capturing these portals is done by placing a resonator
at a portal which marks it based on team affiliation: green for
Enlightened and blue for Resistance. If players come acrossportals already controlled by the opposite team, they can remove
opposition control by using in-game weapons like bursters or
ultra-strikes. Players aim to take control of as many portals as
possible and control an area by deploying “fields” connecting
three portals into a triangle. These game control actions canhappen at varying scales; connecting portals highly concentrated
in a small local area is called “microfielding”, while a large-scale
operation which can cover multiple states or even countries iscalled a “megafield”. The larger fielding endeavors require many
participants and tight coordination, and are referred to as “field
operations” (“field ops”). Field ops typically involve anywherefrom a dozen to hundreds of players engaging with the game inreal time. There is an elaborate out-of-game narrative that
establishes relationships between player actions and story events.
Niantic also hosts global community events called “anomalies”
where player teams compete to take control of portals in a local1

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/endgame-proving-grounds-beta,news-20650.html

Pokémon GO

Pokémon GO is undoubtedly the most popular and well-known
ARG of all time. Niantic recently announced that the game has
been downloaded over 650 million times and has made over one
billion dollars in revenue 2. In Pokémon GO, the players’ objective
is to locate and catch virtual creatures called Pokémon that appear
in real-world locations. Pokémon was already an extremely
popular media franchise from Japan and has multi-generational
appeal to users across the world. The overarching goal of the
Pokémon franchise is to “catch’em all”; collect all the Pokémon,train, and battle with them. In the game Pokémon GO, Pokémon
randomly spawn in different real-world locations, as well as at
locations called “nests” where a substantial number of a specifickind of Pokémon spawn. Players can also use incense and lures toattract Pokémon to a particular location. Incense can be used byindividual players to lure Pokémon to the current location of theplayer. Lures are used at PokéStops to attract Pokémon to thatlocation and benefit multiple players who are close by. PokéStops
are mapped onto real-world locations just as in Ingress. In fact,
Niantic used some of the portals in Ingress to populate PokéStops
in Pokémon GO. Players can receive resources like balls (tocapture Pokémon) and berries (to help improve some aspects ofthe catch experience, such as increasing catch rate or restricting
Pokémon movement) by interacting with PokéStops. There arethree different teams (i.e., Instinct, Mystic, and Valor) and players
can battle with players from other teams at Gyms using theircaptured Pokémon in order to take control of them. Gyms, justlike PokéStops, represent particular locations in the real world.

2

http://www.polygon.com/2017/2/27/14753570/pokemon-go-downloads-650-million

3Issues and Challenges in Preserving ARGs

In this section, several issues and challenges for preserving
ARGs focusing on the aforementioned games will be presented,
including 1) determining the boundaries of the game in ARGs anddealing with subsequent preservation scalability issues, 2)
recording changes in physical and virtual spaces while preserving
a game’s representativeness and authenticity, and 3) preserving
metaplay, social gameplay, and interactive contexts.

3.1 Boundaries of the Game and Scalability
One of the foremost challenges in preserving ARGs isestablishing the boundary of the game object. Does the reflectionof real world elements in gameplay warrant preserving real world
data not represented in the virtual world? Does this mean, forgames like Ingress or Pokémon GO, that we need to save theGoogle Maps data used to create them? One may argue that
preserving the object itself, in this case, the digital game, should
remain the primary goal in game preservation. However, Niantic
has made it clear that real-world interactions of players in
Pokémon GO are the foundation of their games: as Niantic CEOJohn Hanke says, "From the very beginning, our games wereabout encouraging people to go outside and see interesting
places." 3 If this is indeed the case, completely disregarding therepresentation of real-world data in ARG preservation does notseem ideal, as it may be impossible to replicate intended or
meaningful player experience, at least as it is described by thedevelopers. However, even if we were to accept that real-world
data should be part of the object we preserve, it is unclear how
much and what kind of data we would be preserving. Is thecurrent version of Google Maps data enough? What kinds of legal
challenges exist in obtaining and preserving such data? Does itneed to include a visual representation or description of each of
the real-world locations beyond what is provided by the gameitself? How will this information be obtained for all the real-world
locations across the globe? Additionally, how would we go about
replicating gameplay that involves real-world data and movement
between locations (e.g., walking to hatch eggs in Pokémon GO;
linking portals or creating a field in Ingress) in ARGs to recreate asimilar experience for players in a museum setting?
As Winget [12], Newman [11], and Kaltman [4] argue, thescalability of data preservation for video games gets more difficult
as more content distribution becomes network-based. ARGs are
entirely network-based and their particular scale is often
determined by their players. As more players are added to a gamesuch as Pokémon GO, the scale of data becomes increasingly
dense and as a result, difficult to meaningfully track, describe, oremulate. Based on recent estimates from Android Central andBusiness Insider, an average Pokémon GO play session uses about
20MB of data 4. For a single user, that figure may seem rather
benign, but if we scale that up to the actual Pokémon GO userbase of roughly 20 million active daily users of the game 5, that isroughly 400 terabytes of data per day. The amount of informationnecessary to account for the representative game experience ofjust an average day for Pokémon GO is extraordinary, and these
are the information needs for most network-distributed games,
including ARGs. The result of such needs is a product that is
likely impossible to preserve in its entirety at scale. Rethinking
what or how to preserve becomes necessary for ARGs without asignificant revolution in the quality, quantity and availability ofdata storage. Pokémon GO is but the start of what is likely to be alarger trend, where franchises attract large audiences and players
create large amounts of data, making it increasingly difficult totrack pertinent and meaningful information about these games.

3.2

Changes in Physical and Virtual Spaces

ARGs are played in the real world, with specific geospatial
points in the real world corresponding to an analogous location in
the virtual world. As mentioned in Section 2, portals in Ingress
and PokéStops/Gyms in Pokémon GO correspond to real world
locations such as monuments, public art, and businesses.
However, changes often occur in the real world (e.g., construction
removing a business) or the virtual game world (e.g., a newversion or update removes PokéStops), that do not get updated
accurately in its counterpart.
For instance, Pokémon GO or Ingress players looking to orient
themselves to a particular place in a virtual environment may findthat while the location exists in the game, the actual object
associated with it has since disappeared (e.g., mural, naturalobject, business). On the University of Washington campus,
players may look for the Washington Elm tree reflected as a portal
in Ingress or PokéStop in Pokémon GO, but will not be able tofind it in the real world, as the tree has been removed from
campus. Similarly, a quarter mile away a chocolatier is still shown
as a portal in Ingress, yet the business is now closed. These
virtually or physically missing elements leave a legacy of sorts,
marking a space’s historical past. As ARGs age, elements withinthem intended to reflect places and objects in the real world
disappear as the physical or virtual game environment change.
Such environmental mismatch could certainly become an issue
as gameplay is affected by changes in an ARG’s physical andvirtual game environment. Furthermore, descriptive information
about the game, as a result, will make less sense with the different
versions of the game due to discrepancies in physical and virtual
game environments. For example, if someone wants to experience
an aspect of Pokémon GO, such as PokéStops that wereparticularly contentious, they need a version of the game frombefore these PokéStops were removed due to requests fromindividuals or organizations owning the associated locations.
However, much of the external information about the game, suchas popular media coverage, or user-generated discussion, tend tonot specify which version of the game they are referring to,sometimes making it nearly impossible to track down a specific3

http://www.recode.net/2016/9/19/12965508/pokemon-go-john-hanke-augmentedvirtual-reality-ar-recode-decode-podcast
4
http://www.androidcentral.com/how-much-mobile-data-does-pokemon-go-use

5

http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pokemon-go-statistics/

version containing relevant location information. In ARGs,
version control is uniquely challenging due to the necessity ofkeeping track of multiple environments and their relationships.

3.3

Metaplay, Social Gameplay, and Context

To fully understand the dynamics and gameplay of ARGs, it isnecessary to understand how people interact with one another inboth physical and virtual environments. The major ARGs thathave been released share several challenges with that ofpreserving other virtual worlds, such as those in MMORPGs.
These include preserving the players as an intrinsic part of agame’s historical context, and recording the changes in MMOs
and their players over time [2].
ARGs present several additional challenges to preserving
gameplay and dynamics, including gameplay taking place out inthe real world with players competing, cooperating, and reacting
to one another in real space. As a result, there is a strong andunique social dynamic among players of the game that takes placein the real world. In MMORPGs, one might argue that it ispossible to at least preserve part of the non-social gameplay, suchas PvE (Player vs Environment) components that can be played bya solo player. In games like Ingress, the kind of game interactions
one can have is severely limited if you do not account for social
play (play with other players). PvP (Player vs Player) actions areintegral to the gameplay. Once you take control of the portals
around you, there is essentially no game unless players from otherteams come and take them down. Even in Pokémon GO, where
social action may be perceived as less important than Ingress,
luring PokéStops to attract players is a common behavior.
Also, while MMORPGs require players to play together tofully experience the game, and various communities emerge andsocial gatherings happen, because some ARGs require players tointeract with people in close proximity in the real world, a numberof additional issues emerge. In the case of Ingress, because it isinherently a social game that forces players to interact with otherpeople in real-life, a large amount of information is shared amongplayers regarding who they should work with, based on theirpersonalities, mobility, and level of commitment to the game.
Players who have shown dangerous behavior (e.g., stalking,physical confrontation) are actively watched and avoided via
third-party tools that allow people to track the location
information of all players. High-profile players from the opposing
team are identified and any of their unusual movement is reported
back to the community to alert the possibility of a field operation
being deployed. None of this information about the players isrepresented anywhere within the game itself. Furthermore, muchof the gameplay regarding Ingress occurs outside of it. Examples
include expanding and maintaining local player networks,
collecting intel about players on the other team, mapping routes
for a mega-field operation, and so on. These types of metaplay are
not something recorded anywhere within the game itself, yetremain a critical component of the play. Ultimately, the problem
is that interactions happening within a digital game only make up
part of the overall play experience of an ARG.

It is also difficult to preserve temporal factors in the physicalworld that impact the game state. The nature of ARGs present
unique challenges in preserving real world factors that impact andalter gameplay, particularly as it pertains to location access in thegame world. For instance, in a traditional online game, access to
in-game areas is dependent upon the developers changing thegame code and in-game environments, or in some instances,
player behavior. With augmented reality games, any number offactors in the real world can change access to physical areas, andby extension the game state, even though those real-worldchanges are not reflected in the game’s world. For instance, wintersnows make ARG play in some areas seasonal, and the timing andduration of play is dependent on the weather, not player behavior
or the game. Additionally, some public spaces once available forplay can become blocked by construction, road closures, newrules and regulations, or other access changes. Some players
utilize such tactics to their advantage. For example, Ingress
players will make strategic use of portals in amusement parks thatclose for a season, or claim portals high in the mountains justbefore snow storms hit. Some Pokémon GO players reportlocating and claiming gyms that are in less accessible areas in thereal world so they can have access to the secure, steady supply of
resources owning an inaccessible gym provides. Understanding
such temporal conditions builds the foundation allowing forstrategic play, and establishes a form of competitive advantage
conferred by knowledge of both the game and how it is affectedby temporal conditions, such as the seasons. Yet the question
remains as to what the best way might be to preserve thetemporal, real-world, events frequently occurring in ARGs.

4

How Do We Preserve ARGs?

In prior literature on video game preservation, varying
solutions have been posited by scholars, responding to thenumerous challenges that exist for preserving the game andgameplay experience. Lowood [6] calls for initiatives to build
game performance archives containing documentation of gameplay and relevant artifacts of participatory culture as well asarchives of artifacts and documentation representing the history ofgame design. Murphy [10], also noting the challenges inpreserving MMORPGs, suggests several approaches for better
preserving the context of games, such as ethnographic writing andvideo documentation of gameplay, as well as preserving
crowdsourced contributions from game players. While theseapproaches indeed offer a better model of preserving games ingeneral, for ARGs, we also anticipate additional challenges in
implementing them.
Ethnographic documentation has specific limitations due to theamount of information volunteered. In the case of Ingress, certain
information is withheld due to the value and impact it can have
while playing the game. High-value information is often protectedwith the same confidence as company secrets, wherebycompetitive advantage is lost if certain information becomes amatter of public, distributed record. For instance, informationsuch as strategies for successfully running a mega-field operationin Ingress are often intentionally not recorded and instead only

orally disseminated to players. Additionally, such high-value
information would also require deep integration of an
ethnographer into the game’s social context in order to escape theproblematic scenario of being seen as an outsider and thus not
being privy to such scenarios.
Video documentation of gameplay would be able tosufficiently record the gameplay itself, but again in the case ofARGs, much of the play experience is often outside the gameitself. The planning of social events and strategic contexts inrelation to the game, or metaplay, often makes up a great deal of
ARGs, particularly competitive games like Ingress. The result isthat even with video documentation of the gameplay, it would notprovide much context for what makes competition within thegame compelling or meaningful to many of the players.
Preserving crowdsourced contributions can also be achallenging task, due to the large amounts of misinformation,
disinformation, trolling, and fake news based on speculation or
false information 6 . These stories often happen as a result of agame’s sudden popularity, and nowhere has this been truer thanperhaps in Pokémon GO. In Pokémon GO, there are reams ofintentionally fabricated information online about what is possible
or not possible within the game, such as whether or not certain
Pokémon are in the game (e.g., Ditto), or whether it is possible tohatch region-specific Pokémon, or acquire Gen 2 Starter
Pokémon. Additionally, there are numerous stories recounting
different players undergoing physical harm, others making money
off the game, and many varying pieces of difficult-to-verify
information about the game, much of which is also related toacquiring a competitive advantage within the game.
Historical account generation is also difficult due to the factthat many ARGs take on a shared narrative, whereby the gamechanges based on player interaction with the game world. As aresult, for a game like Ingress, whose narrative is constructedbased on the competition ongoing within the game, an official
story is being continuously generated but does not definitively
exist until after certain events occur. As an example, an anomaly
in Ingress often has the two teams in the game compete over acertain area, and the story branches based on how players performin that event. This means even though it is known that the gamedevelopers often account for multiple different outcomes, the only
official story is the one that gets told after the event. The
developer often does not intend to act as a moderator of the gameworld and as a result it is often up to the players to self-reporttheir own historical accounts, thus making an authoritative
historical account difficult. Player bases change and shift overtime, and with that fluctuating player base is an evolving story,
making it particularly difficult to pin down an accounting of
events.
As ARGs are still a relatively new phenomenon, many of thequestions we asked here have yet to be answered. However, it isalso the case that early ARGs, such as Parallel Kingdom, havealready been shut down with information about the dynamics and6https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/24/pokemon-go-quiz-can-youcatch-the-fake-news-story

culture of the game only remaining in blog posts or forum
discussions, demonstrating that the loss of ARGs is alreadyoccurring. Perhaps what first needs to happen is to better
understand what the “significant properties” are when it comes to
ARGs. McDonough et al. [8] explains the challenge of trying topreserve games without knowing what portion of them will beconsidered significant by future scholars. This does seem to be thecase for ARGs we examined; ultimately, what makes Ingress,
Ingress? What does it mean for players to play Pokémon GO? Is it
the discovery of real-world locations, some social aspect of play, arenewed concern for personal health, the metaplay, or somethingelse? We have yet to understand what playing ARGs means tocurrent users, let alone future scholars. Our future research will
involve a detailed investigation of player behaviors in ARGs, inan effort to elicit user attitudes toward ARG gameplay, and togarner insight into better preservation strategies for these games.

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