It’s no surprise that Pokémon Go has exploded with huge success recently. A free-to-play mobile game that allows players to find and catch Pokémon in the real world is just one step forward to actually being able to find Pokémon without the smartphone. My 8 year-old self would be losing his mind. Now I’m about to turn 24 and I’ve had little interest in touching a Pokémon game since Pokémon Gold and Silver. That is, until Pokémon Go made me go out and find the little nooks and crannies of my city.
Pokémon Go has very little to offer players who refuse to play games outside of their house. You can use Incense or Lure modules to make Pokémon come to you, but chances are you’ll keep running into the same three or four Pokémon over and over. The game encourages you to leave the comfort of your home and engage with the city around you. Yes, this means going for walks. Hell, it occasionally means walking for a long time. You gotta hatch those eggs somehow.
Let’s run down the basics of the game first. Pokémon Go allows players to catch Pokémon in their environment, pulling data from Google Maps to create an in-game map which reflects the real life one around them. So when you see an alley that connects to a road on your phone while playing, there is an actual alley that connects to a road that you are going to walk through. Sometimes there is a benefit to going off the beaten path, seeing that in real life there is a path which leads to a road that the app unfortunately doesn’t recognize. A shortcut that players who rely on Pokémon Go‘s map system will miss out on.
Now, along these maps are two things: PokéStops and Gyms. PokéStops are essentially a checkpoint for trainers to refill their bag with Pokéballs, potions, revives and, occasionally, eggs to hatch. Sometimes a PokéStop will have a Lure module attached to it which makes Pokémon (and subsequently, other trainers) gravitate towards that location. Gyms are a place where you can battle the current Pokémon within the gym. There are three teams to select from: Instinct, Mystic and Valor. If your team already controls a gym by beating the Pokémon within that gym from another team, you will only be able to train against Pokémon there. If another team owns it, you can do a full Pokémon battle.
I’m not gonna delve into the mechanics of Pokémon battles, but PokéStops and Gyms are important to note because they are located at specific landmarks in the area. For example, around where I live there is a PokéStop that is a statue of a man made of stone. The one I didn’t know existed around me was an inverted lamp post that was a PokéStop located right inside of a building. PokéStops are determined from Niantic Inc.’s previous game, Ingress, and its portals established from there. Every PokéStop and Gym is pulled from there, but not every Ingress portal is located in Pokémon Go. I would assume this is because Pokémon Go requires a minimum distance between PokéStops.
It is also worth mentioning that PokéStops do not have to be things like statues or landmarks. Even murals that are painted on the sides of buildings or power boxes can be PokéStops. I’ve discovered plenty of artistry around my city because of PokéStops being obscure things like a statue of a woman laying on a bench or a mural about recounting a moment in Native American history. The game works in plenty of ways to make these PokéStops more visible to players.
What makes all of this work is because I am discovering things in my city that I probably would never have seen otherwise. People complain that Pokémon Go is making people look at their phones too much, and that is a fair point. I look at my phone now more than ever, but I also find myself looking around more. Typically, I walk to work. When I do, I have my headphones on and a podcast playing, with my phone in my pocket as I just look straight ahead to my destination. Now though, I look around, sometimes I meander and take an alternate route because there’s a PokéStop nearby.
Or, I walk a different way because there is a Pokémon nearby. One of the other important features of the game is its “Nearby” function. It notifies players of Pokémon in the area. As the Pokémon moves closer to the top left of the screen, it means you are getting closer to that Pokémon. I caught a couple Pokémon this way, including a Voltorb (which I was stoked about) and a Machop. Sometimes I found the GPS locator on my phone to hurt the results nearby, but it was often effective to keep tabs on Pokémon. As I’m writing this, I just got back from a walk that had me travel through a nice resting spot with a fountain that I did not know existed, and Pokémon Go also didn’t recognize on its map. I discovered a Machop there and then proceeded to try and find a nearby Ekans. Unfortunately, I did not find it.
Instead what I found was a part of my city that I didn’t know existed. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was able to sit and relax for a bit. I firmly believe that something like Pokémon Go which has a built-in fanbase already of millions due to Pokémon’s huge popularity, is something that cities could find great use in exploiting. A tourism industry can flourish much in the same way that Ingress had players working with others across the world to get to portals. Think about cities like New York or Tokyo, where there are millions of people living there and tons of touristy locations.
Pokémon Go is already a huge cultural phenomenon. Even here in Canada, where the app was not officially launched until July 19, the amount of people I saw using the app was staggering, even more so now that it’s been released. And no, not all of these people are the most tech-savvy that I’ve met. Even friends I know that aren’t that into mobile games have downloaded the app and joined in on the fun. Pokémon is universal in its appreciation. For these reasons and more, the game is able to engage with a much larger audience than Niantic’s previous work, Ingress. It’s also a much more friendly version of the game that has made any social interactions I’ve had with fellow players far more pleasant. When it comes to a game where being the very best like no one ever was is the goal, it’s endearing to be able to walk away from fellow residents of a city with a smile on your face.