Let's Go, Pikachu: Gaming and Its Consequences in the Ecosystems of Opaque and Apparent Algorithms

Gaming, that is, the act of manipulating a system for rewards without genuine contribution toward its goals challenges the quality of work performance. In traditional organizational settings, managers may try to curb gaming by imposing new rules and increasing monitoring, but such a strategy is not available in distributed online settings, where data-mediated actions are monitored by platform algorithms outside of managerial authority and where contextual knowledge and actions of gaming come from distributed actors. We study how the transition of a popular augmented reality mobile game Pokémon Go from using Google Maps to OpenStreetMap data opened the door to large-scale gaming by the Pokémon Go players who started adding fictional map features. We compare and theorize distributed online settings that operate on opaque and on apparent algorithms. We highlight three necessary practices that can lead to positive impacts from gaming: community normalizing, community instructing, and algorithmic normalizing.