Members

About the members

Pokémon Go Sydney has, according to the Facebook group, approximately twenty-one thousand members, with English as its primary language. According to TechCrunch (2016), Pokémon Go players are forty per cent female and sixty per cent male, with a mean age of twenty-eight years old (Dogtiev 2018, para. 15). These statistics are reflected in a YouTube video posted by Pokémon Go influencer ZoëTwoDots, in which crowds visibly comprise mostly male-presenting people (ZoëTwoDots 2018).

To be part of the community, members must preferably live in Sydney, as content shared and produced is related to game-play specific to the city. Facebook’s private group, for instance, requires members to state their city of residence before admittance.

From observation, many members appear to belong to Sydney’s middle and upper classes, withstanding the notion that money and leisure time is required to own a mobile phone and participate actively in community sociality and play.

Sydney as a multicultural city (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016) lends its Pokémon Go community to a diverse array of culture and race. No official study concerning the racial demographics of this community exists, though from observation we conclude that the community composes a cluster of difference, in part due to the game’s universal appeal.