He weeps as he defiantly asks the universe, “What happens when I catch them all?”

As of the week of this writing, you cannot go on Twitter or Facebook or any news site without seeing something about the unstoppable popularity of Pokemon Go. It is everywhere. People are walking around the real world (outside!) trying to catch imaginary creatures, and having a ball sharing screen grabs of cartoons in funny places like on the toilet or next to celebrities. It’s a lot of good clean fun.

But as a more, let’s say, discerning fan of video games, my question with this game, and most free-to-play mobile games where you tend a farm or build a fortress or any other task of accumulation, is why?

Once you get the Pokemon, you have them. You can make them better, by training them. You can fight other Pokemon with your Pokemon, but all this finding, collecting and powering-up of pretend pets is in service of… having lots of Pokemon? Why is that compelling?

I wonder if the real draw isn’t the novelty of AR; the wildfire spread of this game seems in part attributable to the social currency of funny animals superimposed on otherwise mundane places, the appeal of which is obvious (and articulated well here).

But I’m more interested in what comes next. Once people have realized the appeal of an augmented reality game, when do we get one with a real story, a real point of view, as a work of creative art? Getting me out of the house is fine, giving the world another funny little trifle to feed small talk is fine, but how do we make it mean something more?

What kind of game would be a more interesting use of the AR that Pokemon is popularizing?

Is there a different property that would make a better AR game, like Star Wars or Mission Impossible or the Kardashians?

Is there a more tangible good for society an AR game could drive people to participate in, like voting or pothole reporting or recycling?

Angry? Upset? Press X to axe your ex.

Here’s a topic I probably wouldn’t have thought about until reading this excellent Vice article. Apparently, there is a cohort of video game players who like to digitally recreate the ex- or current girlfriends or boyfriends in the video games they play. As you can imagine, this can be for both good and bad reasons…

It would seem designing and controlling avatars that resemble significant others past and present can add a special twist to the gaming experience. For some, using an avatar of their lover, or at least interacting with their digital incarnation, is a benign way to get more into a game, or even add a fun dynamic to their real-life romance. Others, it turns out—the majority of whom are men—enjoy the thrill of subduing and controlling avatars of lovers past.

And the article deals only with how people are doing this in today’s video games, using existing technology. One can only imagine how this ethical dilemma gets more complicated in a more photo-realistic, VR-enabled future… So:

Is it morally wrong to recreate real people in your virtual world? Where’s the line of what’s ok and what isn’t?

How does this change once it’s more than just a character you play in an RPG? What if it’s creating a virtual simulation of someone without their permission?

How does the same question extend to celebrities, for example? Once we have the technology to go on virtual dates with digital copies of famous people, what are the ramifications?