Is Pokemon Go a racist game? While we see the Pokestops, this doubt arises. While playing the popular augmented-reality game Pokemon Go in Long Beach, a city that have nearly 50% white, Aura Bogado found an unsettling discovery, that there were far more PokeStops and Gyms, than in her predominantly minority neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Urban Institute researchers found an average of 55 PokeStops in majority white neighborhoods and 19 in majority black neighborhoods. Similarly, New York boroughs Brooklyn and Queens, both of which have high numbers of Hispanic and black residents, had significantly fewer PokeStops than in Manhattan and white and Asian neighborhoods.

"It turns out Niantic, which makes Pokemon Go, relied on a map from a previous augmented reality game called Ingress, which was crowd-sourced from its mostly male, tech-savvy players," she wrote in a blog post. "The result is a high concentration of PokeStops in commercial and downtown areas of some cities, while there are typically fewer PokeStops in non-white or residential areas, if there are any at all."

“We now have a game where it looks like people who are already disadvantaged are playing it, now also are the more likely candidates who have to pay to play it,” Bogado said.

By Premji