Pokémon Go? I wish it would

Monday morning: one hand trapped beneath the fat and guzzling midget, with the other I idly opened the gates of hell — meaning I downloaded the game Pokémon Go. Pokémon Go is an ‘augmented reality’ game. It requires you to trot about in the real world, staring at your smartphone so as to find and ‘collect’ coloured goblins from different locations. Perhaps that doesn’t sound terribly exciting, but it’s the most successful phone game there’s ever been. On the day I played, more than 75 million people had already downloaded it, and when I first opened it I too became obsessed. A day later, however, I suspect it of being semi-diabolical and portending some terrible but perhaps unavoidable future.

This is the way it works. After selecting the app, a little map of your actual location pops up on the iPhone screen, with markers in the places where goblins lurk. The map tracks your progress as you walk, using your phone’s GPS, and when you’re hard up against a goblin you switch to your phone’s camera function, look at the screen, and there it is! A little cartoon monster, transposed on the real outside world.