Code-breaking spatial practices of Pokémon GO players in Shenzhen, China: Fubao industrial park as a laboratory for studying human behaviour in infrastructure space

Abstract This paper studies human spatial practices in an industrial park in Shenzhen, China and asks how people make space for themselves through ‘code-breaking’ behaviours even in strictly coded, programmed, and predetermined special economic zones (SEZs). The study draws upon Keller Easterling’s concept of ‘the zone’ and research into geographic aspects of hybrid reality game (HRG) play. Pokémon GO, the world’s most popular HRG, is inaccessible in most of the Chinese mainland due to internet regulatory restrictions. However, the game is accessible in a small portion (approximately 0.4 km) of the Fubao industrial park in the south of Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong. We describe and analyse how HRG players navigate and claim mobility and publicness within this site that was designed to serve the extrastate capitalist and corporate logics of the special economic zone, as well as how other actors within this space respond to and engage with these HRG players. Many of these behaviours represent code-breaking that challenges top-down systems spatial governance, though without necessarily challenging wider social, economic, and political systems.