Pokémon go is not green-rolling Stone

Cet été, le succès record du phénomène de société Pokémon Go, jeu en réalité augmentée, a été accompagné de conduites choquantes. Les critiques ne cessent de s’accumuler : incivilités, délits, inconscience, oubli du réel, de soi…

Les développeurs et les utilisateurs l’application smartphone Pokémon Go, devenue en peu de temps énergivore autour de la planète, ignorent-ils notamment le fait que s’amuser à « capturer » des monstres virtuels contribue gravement à l’extinction d’espèces animales bien réelles ?

Apart from a few recent decreases in downloads since the beginning of September, Pokémon go's global business records have been accumulating since its launch, two months ago. The game has just surpassed 500 million players.

According to a report published by slice Intelligence, a company specializing in digital data analysis, the app alone would now generate about 28% of the revenues of the entire mobile industry.

A phenomenon of summer, a social phenomenon, in just 5 days it has become one of the most popular games on Android, surpassing candy crush and angry Birds. During her release in the USA, she briefly succeeded in defeating the number of pornographic searches on the Internet.

The app now competes with Facebook, Twitter, tinder, Google maps, Snapchat, and Instagram. It competes with them in terms of the number of daily users. According to the SensorTower survey, it has reached ten million downloads in just one week.

Developers Niantics Labs, the Pokemon Company and Nintendo have decided to continue their investments massively after raising $4.5 billion on the same day of their game launch and $35 billion in two weeks. From morning to evening, iPhone subscribers earn an average of 1.5 billion.

Niantic CEO John Hanke said in an interview with the Financial times that he would continue to set up virtual monsters with sponsors, in order to promote certain merchants. They may be able to host Pokemons in their shops, which will attract players and encourage purchases.

The success of Pokémon go was so rapid that the CEO of the French video game company Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, said he was particularly impressed: he said he was preparing new titles based on augmented reality with his teams.

Un succès qui n’est pas sans conséquences sur l’environnement !

Like web giants, such as GAFA (short for Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon NDLR) and their derivatives, the Pokémon go app, which now competes with the latter, consumes a lot of electricity: smartphones, datacenters, and the one related to the explosion in sales of external batteries, among others. Therefore, in a very short period of time, it has developed a considerable carbon footprint (Co2), which contributes in part to global warming, and in addition to the extinction of species.

As pointed out on its website Global footprint Network (UN partner), which just published its expert reports on the 2016 exceedance Day at the beginning of August: "Energy consumption by households accounts for 36% of total electricity use in the United States, 33% in Europe and 20% in Asia. Because electricity is still mainly produced from non-renewable sources, it is responsible for 38% of the overall carbon footprint. " For all these reasons, the NGO has repeatedly invited Pokémon go players to pay close attention to their energy consumption.

Documentaire : Internet, la pollution cachée

« Aujourd’hui, 247 milliards de mails transitent chaque jour par la toile. Quelle énergie le permet ? Propre en apparence, le monde virtuel est en réalité aussi polluant qu’énergivore. Si Internet était un pays, il serait le cinquième consommateur mondial d’électricité. Mais ses besoins, immenses, se heurtent à la diminution des ressources énergétiques… »

Asked by the magazine Reporterre about the possibility that the phenomenon of Pokémon go society is an opportunity to bring man closer to nature, the specialist of environmental philosophy, Catherine Larrère, President of the Foundation of Political Ecology, replied negatively, stating that "this game shows to what extent we are locked in our conceptions, our representations of the world".

The philosopher Francis Métivier shares this view. He evokes the same "contempt for reality":

Par-ci, par-là, quelques bonnes nouvelles néanmoins :

Recently, two Pokémon go players luckily stumbled upon about 20 abandoned animals and saved them.

WWF had the idea of hijacking the mobile app to make players aware of the animal condition.

And Swiss young people hijacked the mobile app by initiating "Poké-déchette go", the aim of which is to move around with garbage bags in search of waste. The players who collect the most can win gifts.

Jean-Eudes Nouaille-Degorce

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