What Do Gaming Companies Owe to Society?
- i-ben
- Dec 18, 2025
- 3 min read
A Manifesto for the Future of Outdoor Play
Never before have games been more social, connecting millions of players across continents. Yet, never have we been more physically isolated, tethered to screens, sedentary in our living rooms. Have you thought about that? Is it due to design flaw or intentional?
Gaming and Tech giants like Google, Meta, Nintendo, Apple, etc. have profited immensely from our attention. They have built empires by keeping us and our children glued to screens. But with great influence comes a moral obligation. It is time to ask: What do these companies owe to society?
I believe they owe us our health back. They owe us our outdoors back. And most importantly, they owe our children a new way to play that bridges the gap between the digital thrill and the physical world.
The Missed Opportunity of "Map Games"
When Pokémon GO and Ingress launched, they promised a revolution. They succeeded in getting people out of the house, which was a massive first step. But let’s be honest about the limits: these are travel games, not activity games.
They require you to traverse a city, which is often unsafe for unaccompanied children.
The physical engagement is limited to walking (or often, staring at a phone while standing on a sidewalk).
When titles like Harry Potter: Wizards Unite failed and shut down, it wasn't because people didn't want to be wizards. It was because the game didn't offer a truly new experience. I am sure there were other issues with the game, but I was sad to see it being terminated.
I think, that at this point we don’t need more reasons to walk around a city block staring at a screen. We need games that turn a backyard, a football field, or a local park into a high-intensity playground.
The "Hyper-Local" Revolution
The technology to break free from the "Global Map" is already in our pockets. We don't need to wait for the future; we just need developers to use the tools differently.
The Basics (Available to All): Accelerometers and Gyroscopes can already detect jumping, squatting, and running speed.
The Visuals (High-End): LiDAR sensors (found in newer iPhones) and advanced computer vision can map the 3D geometry of a room or a field instantly.
The Future (Coming Soon): AR Glasses will eventually remove the phone screen entirely, blending the UI with our natural vision.
We have the tech. We lack the imagination (and motivation?).
Let's search for inspiration in existing games: The Treasure Hunt
Imagine an Easter Egg hunt, but reinvented for the iPad generation. We don't need a global map; we need a "Play Area" defined by parents.
The Setup: A parent marks the boundaries of a backyard or local park on the phone. The game distributes digital "treasure" randomly within this safe zone.
The Gameplay: A team of players physically runs around the field. Their phones act as Geiger counters or metal detectors, guiding them with audio cues.
The Discovery: When a player locates a spot, the game demands action. Not a thumb-swipe, but physical effort.
The Cost of Digging: To "dig" for the treasure, the gyroscope detects 10 squats, or the GPS tracks a 20-meter sprint.
The Magic: Perhaps two players must sync their phones and jump simultaneously to "break the lock."
This is Exergaming. It is social. It is safe. It is physical.
The Moral Mandate
We are facing a crisis of childhood obesity and a "loneliness epidemic" among youth. The solution isn't to ban screens—that ship has sailed. The solution is to make screens the catalyst for physical activity rather than the substitute.
Gaming companies have the resources to build these engines. They have the talent to gamify a sit-up or a sprint just as addictively as they gamified "likes" and "loot boxes."
This is a call to the developers at Niantic and Meta, the visionaries at Google, and all talented engineers: Stop building worlds that trap us inside. Start building tools that set us free.
Our children are ready to run. Give them a game worth running for.
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