Pokémon GO

To think there was a time where I was suckered I to the Pokémon craze that resurfaced in the mid-2010s, admittedly this game did have good intentions of getting people to interact with society even if it resulted in a bunch of zoomers and Pokémon fanatics well into adulthood crowding out areas to catch their favourite Pokémon’s, however the game didn't work half the time and the novelty of capturing a Pokémon with your smartphone wears off surprisingly quick after a while, to say nothing of the microtransactions. I've since gone back to team Digimon which is for the best.

This game was really good when it dropped in 2016 and kind of got worse as time went on up until 2020. Since then, battling has become smoother, the game has regular events (worth attending), and updates/balancing have become much more frequent. People who stopped playing ~3-4 years ago would do well to revisit.

I’m not usually the person who jumps on any hype train; in fact, I’ve often voiced dissension about fads in general. When it comes to something I’m passionate about, I tend to march to the beat of my own drum. I consistently explore the annals of the media I consume like a kid looking under rocks to see what different kinds of bugs live in their backyard. Admittedly, I’d have more friends if I was more proactive with current trends, but attempting to do this when I was younger (approximately around my early adolescent years) just proved to be exhausting to maintain momentum. My friends would listen to the top charting albums, see the latest blockbusters, and play the newest video games just to erase them from their consciousness after about a week to move onto the next thing. In regards to video games, whether or not they would finish a game was always an inconsistent variable to when they were going to toss it to the wayside. Everything they consumed was an “in one ear and out the other” scenario, and yet this is the way they preferred it. My adolescence taught me many things about people and the world, but I learned something important regarding art and entertainment. A lot of people look at art and entertainment through a social lens, not an artistic one. Their purpose for indulging in media is so they won’t have to suffer in solitude on the playground or at the water cooler. It’s absolutely fine if you fall under this category, but I cannot see it in the same light. That being said, I’m glad that I proactively joined the Pokemon Go craze in the summer of 2016.

I have to make the disclaimer that I do not actively avoid new things in fear of seeming like a desperate contrarian. I will only invest interest in something new if that interest was piqued initially (and if I can afford it). Given that Pokemon was once a rabid obsession of mine as a child and I had a revival period in my first year of college, Pokemon Go immediately activated my sense of curiosity. Besides its lack of initial monetary fee to play it, the captivating point of interest for me was Pokemon Go’s initiative to “catch em’ all”. Somewhere along the line, the Pokemon franchise forgot this core tenant to what made kids eat up the franchise like birthday cake. In 2016, the children who were introduced to Pokemon with this indelible sentiment were all adults and might have still carried a nostalgic wonderment for Pokemon in their consciousness. The software developer Niantic capitalized on Pokemon’s immortal initiative to catch 'em all by emulating the appeal of catching Pokemon through the advent of mobile technology. Suddenly, Pokemon were appearing in people’s backyards and on city streets, encountering Pokemon almost exactly like in the games. Pokemon Go was the closest realization to my endearingly dorky wish as a seven year-old for Pokemon to exist in the real world.

Apparently, I was not the only kid with this wish. Pokemon Go exploded to the heights not seen since the franchise's inception in the late 90’s. Pokemon Go pandemonium swamped the summer of 2016 as streets were bustling with people scampering around to catch all these creatures. I distinctly remember going to the nearest metropolitan area near my house with my brother to play the game and was astounded by how the streets were swarming with Pokemon Go players. It was around 11:00 PM, a time where all but the bars were closed, and I still could not find a place to park because there were so many people. Once my brother and I joined the raucous, several excitable people exclaimed the Pokemon they encountered and sprinted down the streets to catch what they had found. The only other people around at the time were people in the bars, which were mostly boomers who made fun of all the “youngins” for playing Pokemon Go. Even though they were of an older generation and inebriated, they all knew exactly what we all were doing. My friends drove fifteen minutes to my house after hearing there was Snorlax in my area, like Pokemon Go was like the new exodus for the information age.

So how and when did the hype of Pokemon Go dissipate? Pokemon Go managed to stay relevant in the public eye until the end of July, the same month the game was released in 2016. Pokemon Go had both the majesty and short impact of a shooting star, as is the case for most fads. While one should expect trends like these to be fleeting, there are some core factors as to why Pokemon Go didn’t last beyond July of 2016. Many people credit Pokemon Go’s downfall to Hillary Clinton, an old, out-of-touch reptilian woman who referenced Pokemon Go during a campaign rally as a cringe-inducing attempt to cater to younger voters. A more likely factor is due to the many casualties people caused while playing Pokemon Go, namely distracted driving and trespassing. It could have been due to the procedurally generated Pokestops at tasteless locations such as the Pentagon and even concentration camps. My experience with the downfall of the app came when the aforementioned mecca in my area fell victim to record-breaking flooding that destroyed the town. After that, Pokemon Go in my area was kaputt. Naturally, my trend-chasing friends quit playing after that and most of them closed the app for good. I on the other hand kept playing Pokemon Go, and it has slowly reinvigorated itself after its initial peak of popularity.

The factor that actually contributed to Pokemon Go’s downfall was that beyond the notion of catching Pokemon, there wasn’t much else that the app offered players. Catching Pokemon was a simple mechanic that required nothing but tossing a Pokeball at a pokemon with an enclosing ring to determine the success rate. After catching a Pokemon the player would earn three candies for that pokemon and after a certain amount, the player could evolve that Pokemon. This simplified gameplay element has not changed over the course of Pokemon Go’s lifespan, but it didn’t necessarily need to. I think it’s a fine way to catch Pokemon, and this mechanic even crossed over into a mainline Pokemon game. The problem was that it got a bit repetitive over constant pokemon encounters. Niantic’s solution was to incorporate other methods of capturing pokemon and evolving them. Pokemon eggs have been a staple of the series since the second generation, and the surprise of which pokemon is going to pop out of the egg is always an exciting gamble. Physical activity was always a byproduct of Pokemon Go, so Niantic found a way to incorporate this into catching pokemon. Similarly to how it works in the game, the player will walk a certain length to hatch an egg. Pokemon Go offers three different kinds of eggs which will hatch at various walking lengths depending on the egg. The player can also pick a partner to walk with to obtain more of that pokemon’s candy at a certain distance. Pokemon Go’s daily challenges incentivize rewards for catching pokemon like only using curveballs, getting a streak of great throws, etc. Remember that song one kid wrote called “I Play Pokemon Go Everyday?” The daily challenges were enough to keep me playing almost everyday to cease the eventual tedium of catching pokemon and my daily walks could be complemented with hatching some pokemon.

It’s pretty obvious that Pokemon Go was made to bank on the whimsical nature of nostalgia. The pokemon offered at Pokemon Go’s launch were the original 151, the most famous lineup of pokemon that ring familiar with most people. In 2016, Nintendo had just released the franchise's seventh generation of pokemon, accumulating up to 800 of the buggers. My biggest anticipation was wondering if Niantic were going to go to the trouble of adding every pokemon from each subsequent generation, especially after the game’s popularity has dissipated only after a month. Soon enough in February of 2017, Niantic added every pokemon from Gold and Silver and every Pokemon from Ruby and Sapphire in December of that year. Since then, they’ve been adding a new generation of Pokemon annually and are now up to the seventh generation, the newest era at Pokemon Go’s launch. I might not be familiar with the pokemon after a certain point, but adding new pokemon is a fantastic way to keep people playing. Some of my friends who had deleted the app even started to play again at the announcement of incorporating a new generation of pokemon.

Another problem with Pokemon Go’s algorithm was the spawn location of the pokemon. Niantic tried to make the geography of the pokemon encounters loyal to the games such as grass pokemon in rural locations, electric and poison pokemon in urban locations, water pokemon in wet locations, fire and ground pokemon in dry locations, etc. However, this system is incredibly impractical in real life. The real world’s geography is much less condensed than that of the Pokemon world. Unless the player has supernatural teleportation abilities, they are limited to the kinds of pokemon that fit their location. The game’s encounter rate also favored people living in more populated areas with more pokemon popping up at a time. People in rural areas were not only restricted to the same types of pokemon, but at much slower encounter rates as if the app ran like dial-up internet in those places. In late 2017, Niantic fixed this predicament by shifting the encounter rates not by geography, but by weather conditions. Niantic made a system that coincided appropriately with the types of pokemon. For example, rain would garner a higher spawn rate of water, electric and bug pokemon for fairly apparent reasons. A sunny, cloudless day would inspire fire, grass, and ground pokemon to rear their heads over the surface. I thank this update for my extensive Pokedex entries because I refuse to fly out to California/Arizona to catch Charmanders and Geodudes out of principle.

By the time I transferred to a four-year university in 2017, playing Pokemon Go became SERIOUSLY uncool. It could be forgiven for the rest of 2016 that I was clearly looking for pokemon to catch at my community college, but it would be a massive social faux-pas to be caught playing it from 2017 onward. I remember around early 2019 I was walking to class at my university and a girl was teasing her boyfriend for “catching pokemon” when he slightly wandered off the beaten path for a bit. I was a little taken aback after hearing this, for I was actually playing Pokemon Go at this moment. The slight ribbing this man received would escalate to utter humiliation for me for keeping this fad alive three years after its release. However, it surprised me that other people at my university were maintaining the longevity of Pokemon Go as well. Coincidentally, many people from my social group were still playing Pokemon Go, and Niantic added plenty of features to make Pokemon Go a more social experience. The player can send their friends gifts (an overhaul of them if you ask me) with a smattering of goodies inside like visiting a Pokestop. Doing so will increase a “friendship level” which will add more perks upon sending gifts. Niantic have found a way to preserve the social aspect of Pokemon Go far past collecting pokemon together.

There is another feature in having friends in Pokemon Go as well, but it falls under a bigger umbrella than a simple social aspect. Pokemon duels are as essential to Pokemon as catching them and were the largest omission during the launch era of the game. Niantic soon added gym battles where the player could champion over a location with their chosen team, but the combat was far too streamlined. The addition of raid battles helped spur more intrigue, but they didn’t feel like Pokemon. Niantic’s solution to supplementing Pokemon’s other big appeal was Team Rocket and the battle league. The notorious syndicate from Pokemon would appear at random at pokestops and take a portion of items with them. Battling six grunts will give the player a “rocket radar,” which will find the location of a Team Rocket boss, including the enigmatic Giovanni. These battles include the use of three pokemon per team with two shields to block charged special attacks, making the combat portion seen in the gyms slightly more intricate and engaging. The new features also translate into the battle leagues, where players can fight random people around the world for a series of prizes per win. The turn-based combat Pokemon fans are used to is more nuanced, but this system is supplementary enough to warrant plenty of engagement where the gym battles didn’t.

As of this day, I still play Pokemon Go on most days of the week. While most people remember Pokemon Go because of the phenomenon that occurred long ago, I had to reach back in the crevices of my memory banks to recall how Pokemon Go was that fateful summer lucidly. They’ve taken the time to develop Pokemon Go to the point of competency. Maybe if the game had all the features they’ve added since then, it wouldn’t have fizzled out as quickly as it did. I persevered with Pokemon Go after so many detractors lost faith in it, and I’m quite impressed that Niantic has maintained its killer app (no pun intended) after so many people gave up on it long ago. The question is this: is Pokemon Go now at the point where it rivals a mainline Pokemon game? Sadly, no. Pokemon Go still inherently has many attributes that I find unsavory about most mobile games. I might come across as a hypocrite and contradict all that I’ve said, but I feel like playing Pokemon as often as I do feels more like a habit that comes from boredom and or procrastination more than anything else like masturbation and watching cat video compilations on Youtube. Am I reviewing a video game here, or am I reviewing a vice? My repeat plays of Pokemon Go do not fulfill me with the same sense of enthrallment as playing Dark Souls, Paper Mario, or any of my all-time favorite games. At this point, all I can give is kudos to Niantic for not giving up on Pokemon Go and at least offering more for those few that still play it.

I have to say, the Summer of '16 playing this with hundreds of other players downtown, making friends with strangers to triangulate monsters, and sprinting across the city with other players to catch rare Pokemon is some of the most fun I've ever had. Unfortunately, the magic didn't last. The game was plagued with server errors, buggy locations, and aggressive micro-transactions. The game was also next to bare bones in terms of content. They've made good strides to make the game better with a few egregious issues (new gym system isn't as good, triangulating Pokemon was removed from the game) which brings the game to a state that it probably should have been at at launch. Giving a 3, as it is generally one of the better mobile games out there and has a ton of content if you are willing to dedicate the time, just having played it for so long every new update is formulaic and more of the same.

I think this game is pretty dumb, but I also love it because my mom plays and texts me every time she catches a new pokemon

A fun experience for a while when it was popular. First game to really demonstrate the potential for a massive geo AR experience. Unfortunately Niantic didn't do much with that potential. Only released updates at a snails pace, provided little communication and were constantly plagued with server issues.

Gameplay was very simple being based almost solely around catching Pokemon. Had little direction or endgame purpose and stopped making sense once the player reached higher levels.

What about massive multiplayer? What about friends and chat? What about trainer battles? Either Niantic wanted to play it safe or they lacked vision. Probably happy with all that money they made. Either way the result was everyone got bored of it pretty quickly and is now just a forgotten memory.