At its zenith in the summer of 2016, Pokémon Go was a surveillance capitalist’s dream come true, fusing scale, scope, and actuation; yielding continuous sources of behavioral surplus; and providing fresh data to elaborate the mapping of interior, exterior, public, and private spaces. Most important, it provided a living laboratory for telestimulation at scale as the game’s owners learned how to automatically condition and herd collective behavior, directing it toward real-time constellations of behavioral futures markets, with all of this accomplished just beyond the rim of individual awareness. In Hanke’s approach, economies of action would be achieved through the dynamics of a game.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 979