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For some background into the phenomenon that was Lake Park last summer, there was a large concentration of Pokestops around Lake Park in a relatively small area. In Pokemon GO there are geographic boundaries that make up biomes in the game which determine which Pokemon to spawn, for instance if you're near a source of water there is a high chance you will encounter water Pokemon. Lake Park appeared to not have any biome, which led to anything from the game being able to appear, including more rare types of Pokemon. Pokemon GO also has something called a lure module that players can place down which will attract more Pokemon to a Pokestop for 15 minutes. All these factors working together caused a massive influx of players to Lake Park from players from the greater Milwaukee and nearby Waukesha counties.

The area surrounding Lake park has affluent people living around there (homes valued in the range of $500k - $950k), and the Lake Park Bistro upscale restaurant was just north of the park with the largest parking lot closest to the concentration of Pokestops. Prior to Pokemon GO it was a quiet area with a great view of Lake Michigan from many of the homes along Lake Drive.

I'm inclined to believe that it was not only a combination of the holy grail Pokemon GO location for the greater Milwaukee area, but also a bit of "Not In My Backyard" [1] that led to the augmented reality game ordinance.

[1] - http://milwaukeerecord.com/city-life/lake-parks-pokemon-go-m...

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Local government in places with a waterfront is almost completely made up of people who have a special interest to champion and spends 90% of it's time bickering about said interests.

That article reminds me of my hometown.

I spent a lot of time at lake Park for pokemon go almost exactly a year ago! It was basically a huge party and a great example of how AR could bring people together.

I was traveling a lot through the Midwest last summer and there were hoards of people staring at their phones while actively walking around in about a dozen states.

It was wonderful to watch.

I can't wait to see what form of communal AR we see develop over the next 10 years.

It was amazing. You could talk to anybody - everyone was very positive. I haven't seen anything like it since.

Wear and tear and cleaning up isn't some binary budgeted-or-not thing. You can expect a certain flow and behaviour, and something can radically change that. If some popular band said they were doing a goodbye concert and it was only available in AR at a park, you can bet it'd cause far more wear and tear in one day than they budgeted for a long time.

But trying to block the AR game is the wrong approach. They should instead implement a generic way to handle such things. Either fine people, or have some maximum occupancy rules.

> And the fact that so many normally sedentary people were getting up and going out and doing shit and getting exercise

A minor nit, but Pokemon go did not increase activity levels for most players.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/12December/Pages/Pok%C3%A9mon-no...

http://www.bmj.com/content/355/bmj.i6270

Well, it did, but only for a short while. And that may just be because of how bad it was.

It just increased general phone usage by ~16% per day. Daily path length stayed the same. (Source: study on 2800 phone users that played Pokemon GO. Data collected for at least 4 weeks having the first gaming session in the middle. Data was collected through an app that monitors your phone usage, no self-reported data. Will be presented at MobileHCI '17)

Too small a sample size for physical activity (fine for HCI, though) and was probably orchestrated after the hype of it. Does this paper live in those parameters?

Initial sample size was 21k users but we've reduced it to the people that filled some questionnaire regarding demographics and personality traits. To which parameters are you referring?

In my town it increased traffic (and road accidents). Players would drive up to the nearest Pokestop, collect their loot, and drive to the next one. I saw more than a few drivers make sudden turns or stops when an interesting spawn would occur. I don't really miss the craze.

It did increase their activity level for 6 weeks, which is probably about how long it took most people to get bored with it.

More AR games with more fleshed out gameplay could raise activity levels more long term.

I suspect that down the line, some group of clever people will design something like Pokemon GO, but with some real meat on its bones and a long, monetized lifetime. At that point, you have to wonder if there will be a measurable hit on childhood obesity. I suspect there might be, albeit relatively small, still a measurable reduction.

From your lips to Blizzard's ears....

If VR gets broadly popular it might also have some effect in this direction, since the most popular games so far (Echo Arena, Job Simulator, Climbey, etc) all require a fair bit of arm and body movement. It's not the most intense exercise, but it's way better than nothing, especially since the engagement of it means looking forward to it rather than dreading it as unpleasant exercise.

>> City officials were aghast at large numbers of individuals playing Pokemon Go who visited parks, littered, trampled grass and flowers, and stayed past park hours.

This seems like a legitimate issue though. How do you propose it be solved?

Staying past park hours for the most part is dumb... as far as being a big deal, its not. People walking around trying to play a game after hours is no something that needs policing in the first place...

Is the game responsible for people littering? Or tramping grass (seriously, its grass... lets get over ourselves) or flowers... Is the game responsible for that, or are the people who do the wrong thing responsible? This points at the overall shifting of blame for everything that is becoming so common in our culture... put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.

>> This seems like a legitimate issue though. How do you propose it be solved?

> Is the game responsible for people littering?

I feel like you didn't answer my question?

Edit, to clarify: I'm asking what the actual solution is: expecting the city to pay for skyrocketing enforcement? Or letting the park get trashed and then blaming the citizens? Or just closing the park and blaming people for it happening? etc.

I think they did:

> put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.

While I agree, I think the problem is affording blaming the person who does the wrong thing.

Perhaps more permanent solution to the problem is in order such as fencing around the flowers getting trampled. End the drug war if you want to save money elsewhere for this.

How does that answer the question? I'm asking how to solve problem, the response is who needs to receive the blame?

Edit: See edit above. The question isn't whom to blame, the question is how to resolve the issue. Blaming people doesn't generally resolve an issue, but enforcing it or putting in place mechanisms for preventing it or some other tangible action might.

Enforce existing laws on the people who are to blame. Fine them for littering.

As far as flower-trampling, just shrug and wait for the fad to pass. It's not a big deal.

A city may cite a citizen for mischief or perhaps vandalism for flower-trampling.

Great, sounds like a solution to me!

If parks did not have hours enforced, they would become permanent homeless tent encampments.

Thats a bad argument... There are plenty of places that rules in place to prevent "homeless tent encampments" from being a thing. The same laws that prevent you from camping in city parks. Thats a bad example...

Obviously you haven't been to Portland lately. Any plot of land that doesn't have an overnight closure turns into a homeless camp.

Lets look at an open park that can't be easily locked up.

How much easier is it to enforce no one in the park past $10 than no camping in the park.

The idea of parks having opening hours is so completely alien to me that I don't even know where to begin...

If you leave parks open at night you have to provide quite a bit extra policing. Otherwise they get taken over by hookers and junkies, and normal people won't go there. That kind of policing is the first thing that gets cut when cities run out of money, at least in my area, so they close the parks at night.

And if you close it, then you either need a big impenetrable fence around the whole thing, or you still need to police it.

You do, but not as many.

In my city they close the small parks (1-10 blocks, surrounded by cast iron railings) but can't do anything about the huge park that covers several square kilometres and has important roads running through it. There are some hookers and junkies and doggers there at night, but they have to go somewhere and they don't bother the "normal people" who are, after all, tucked up in bed at that time.

All this suggests that locking parks overnight is more about every government's burning desire to "think of the children" and control everything possible than any legitimate concern for public safety.

By enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc.

They were complaining the enforcement was what was expensive... "It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars in additional law enforcement."

Government doesn't have a right to cheap enforcement that trumps rights held by the people, like those protected by the First Amendment.

Yeah, I totally agree with you.

I was just pointing out that "enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc." isn't the solution to them, they see it as the problem.

I don't quite understand the issue. It's the government's job to keep up public infrastructure regardless of how heavily it's used—that's something the left _and_ right can agree on.

The right does their best to cut government revenue via lower taxes, so how do you propose maintaining infrastructure with less income?

Make people that use the resources pay for them.

the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

I do not use any of the Local Parks, I do not pay Pokemon Go, I do not have a use for either

People that use the parks should pay for them, then if there is an increase in activity from something like Pokemon Go that means Revenue also increases to pay for the increased costs to maintain the asset.

Unfortunately, if parks were mostly paid by the people using them, we would have no parks. Most people won't pay to use a park, and would instead just no go. Additionally, it's often extremely difficult to force people to pay to use your park. It's different with national parks which people travel to for the sole purpose of going to the park, but local parks, lakes, etc will have a much more difficult time making people pay for it.

You should check out the parks/beaches in some towns in Westchester and CT (e.g. around Greenwich). It is a disgrace that they have people sitting there enforcing access (e.g. residency).

>>Unfortunately, if parks were mostly paid by the people using them, we would have no parks.

I am fine with that, it is not ethical to take money from people by force to pay for things like this, if their was value in the community for a park then the community would find a way to voluntarily pay for it, if there are not enough voluntary support in the community to fund the park then the park should not exist

Ugh, it's a park... relax.

> the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

Even if that were true, National parks are big, which means the additional space taken up by toll collection infrastructure at parking areas (and the staff to man them) aren't a big deal, and they present lots of needs for people to stop and buy things which creates concession opportunities.

This is significantly less true of most (but not all) local parks.

But, anyway, even National Parks funding comes mostly from appropriated funds; fees (both directly from visitors and commercial services) are on the order of a couple hundred million of the single-digit billion dollar annual parks spendibf. And even that amount actually spent doesn't meet upkeep needs; the National Parks have deferred maintenance costs on the order of four times the annual budget.

> the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.

Source on this? I feel like if this was already the case then the issue of cutting national park funding wouldn't be such a big deal, and yet it is.

A common method supported by the right (especially the libertarian right) is to sell off the (non-defense, non-law-enforcement) infrastructure, so that it is no longer a public thing that government needs to maintain.

Sure, and the left just takes that money and spends it on "entitlements" (quotes used on purpose). We could play this game for days if you wanted.

I specifically omitted my own value judgement so it's amusing to see value judgements projected upon me via downvotes and snarky comments. If you think a neutral restatement of commonly trumpeted goals and their direct outcomes is a political jab then I think it says more about you than it does about me.

Judgement does not need to be blatant in a statement for it to have been cast. At any rate, I think my response was sufficient in that I don't really care which party has control of the pocketbook, they both have an obligation to spend money on infrastructure and they both find ways not to, even if it's a common goal.

selectively enforcing laws against Pokemon players... E.g. enforcing parking hours including threatening to immediately tow cars except they'd ignore cars in the same lot that looked like they would belong to patrons of the restaurant frequented by the area elites.

Large numbers of people visiting part sounds like a success - the only purpose why the park exists in the first place is so that the residents can go there and visit, so if they're doing it more than before then the park is achieving it's goal and it's great!

It would be reasonable to expect that the job of these city officials should be to (a) encourage the people to visit parks even more; and (b) maintain the parks adequately to their usage - if people use the parks more then it obviously costs more to maintain, but it also obviously means that people are getting more benefit from the parks and they want them to be maintained more.

Enforcing the rules about littering and trampling flowers is part of maintaining the park; but if people are routinely staying past park hours (the whole concept of park hours is a bit strange to me, I'd expect parks to simply be unserviced but otherwise available 24/7), then likely that's a sign that these hours should be extended - the purpose of littering restrictions is obvious but the only legitimate purpose of restricted hours is that the population wants the hours to be restricted for safety reasons or whatever; if now it turns out that the population doesn't want that restriction anymore, then it shouldn't exist.

I agree with you entirely about the success but I don't think that implies a lack of a failure. Yes, the entire point of a park is for people to visit, and I love that people are doing that, but "visiting" a public place is not the same as trashing it. Especially given that there are rare flora there -- the point is for people to be able to enjoy them, not destroy them. How do you respond to that? Do you just think "who cares about rare plants, just plant grass or everyday flowers or something", or do you think there's value to having something less commonplace? Obviously these all need care, and fining people doesn't really fix the problem of letting the plants grow, since when the crowd is large there's always going to be someone messing something up, even if it's a small percentage of the people.

They weren't there though to enjoy there park they were there because of the game. Not even because the park is a great environment to play there have but because the game encouraged to be in that place. If the game had put all the rare Pokemon in a parking lot that's probably were people would have gone. Were people there to enjoy nature? I doubt it.

They enjoyed the park because they were able to play the game in a nice park instead of on that parking lot. The park is there so that people can spend time in a nicer place, and it is "doing its job" no matter if they're just walking there, having a picnic, playing ball, sitting on a bench, jogging or playing a game.

then when they get used, they cry out legally to stop the use.

The parks weren't just being "used", people were littering, staying after hours, trampling on flowerbeds and stuff. Or did you miss that part of the article?

So many normally sedentary people were getting up and going out and doing shit and getting exercise .. and people still went out of their way to be dicks about it... I don't get it.

Say what you want about the city's misguided attempts at enforcement. But by no means was it in response to "normally sedentary people getting exercise."

> The parks weren't just being "used", people were littering, staying after hours, trampling on flowerbeds and stuff. Or did you miss that part of the article?

These are problems that any park that has high traffic has to deal with. The judge offered reasonable solutions that didn't involve dissuading people from using the park.

> But my no means was it in response to "normally sedentary people getting exercise."

From the article: "Requiring Candy Lab to secure insurance, portable restrooms, security, clean-up, and provide a timeline for an 'event'"

That is very directly a response to normally sedentary people getting exercise - the city wants them out of the park.

These are problems that any park that has high traffic has to deal with.

No, they're not problems of "high traffic". That would be things like too many people on the lawn above intended capacity, and what not.

The point is that by any common sense definition, the kinds of activities noted by the authorities constitute "abuse", not "use" (as there is no intended allowance of things like trampling flower beds, etc, at any level of capacity). And hence, in any place where you have actual working municipal governance, you'll find that they're dealt with appropriately.

If you don't see the importance of this distinction -- sorry, but you're very confused.