Pokémon Go touches the real world

Unless you haven’t been keeping up with the news this weekend, you can’t have missed it: Pokémon go is live in a large part of the world. If you live in Japan, Australia, New Zealand or North America, you are in luck. The game is downloadable on both the App Store and Android. And where normally the non-gamer world is totally oblivious of major game releases, this time even people who have never played a game in their life are aware that this is big.

Short explanation for those of you who just wandered in here and don’t know what Pokémon Go is, exactly. It’s a mobile game for your phone, that combines catching Pokémon by flicking Pokéballs at them with the map of the real world around you, like the ones we know from Google maps. You see the streets and the outlines of buildings and houses. Once you see the rustling of grass a Pokémon might pop up out of nowhere for you to catch, so you’re prompted to walk over there. When you’ve reached the spot, you’ll see the Pokémon you found on your phone against the background of your real life surroundings.

Along the way you can see Pokéstops, where you can find free Pokéballs and often eggs. And you will encounter Pokégyms, that you can interact with once you reach level 5 (by walking around and catching Pokémon). Empty gyms can be claimed by you by assigning one of your Pokémon to defend it, but by now I doubt that there are any unclaimed gyms out there. When you find a gym that is already claimed by someone else, you can battle for dominion. Battling isn’t turn based, you just have to chip away at its defense by throwing the right Pokémon into the mix. Elements help, you know, the normal routine of Fire against Earth, Earth against Water and Water against Fire and every variation we’ve come to know so well.

I’ve found that the game is experiencing some start-up problems. For instance, I’ve more then once seen the screen that the server is having problems. Plus, I had a hard time figuring out just what the game wanted me to do, exactly. No learning curve, I just saw my first Pokémon and trial and error taught me how to flick the Pokéball (and losing a good many until I had it right). This article on Kotaku will show you in depth though what to do and when if you are in the dark, like I was.

As the initial problems have to be ironed out first, the company decided that Europe will have to wait a bit longer. No problem for many avid fans, as there are way to obtain an American or Australian copy of the game like I did, no problem there. If you want to give that a try, this article on NintendoLife has you covered.

This is what we gaming fans see: a great opportunity to incorporate the little creatures into our everyday life. The public however, those that aren’t walking along staring at their mobile screens, see something very different: There’s the fact that a lot of the Pokégyms are in real life places that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a game: churches, police stations, office buildings. The news articles try to tell us that people stop at nothing to catch the little critters, even flooding these official buildings. I must say I find this hard to believe, as there’s no real need to get that close. I’ve often caught a Pokémon that is in my vicinity, but not really inside my circle of influence.

It makes me wonder why the public and media are doing their utmost to make this into something horrible or ridiculous. Sure, people must take care in traffic or on the street, making sure you can play safe. And I do understand some parents being worried if their child will pay enough attention to its surroundings while playing. But there’s an upside: people are getting so much exercise walking great distances just to get that special addition to their Pokédex!

So, on the one hand there’s this image of gamers who dwell in their parents basement, never leaving the house, ridiculed because they don’t have a social life and the complexion of one who seldom sees the sun. And then when those same gamers go out to catch them all, they are met with ridicule and argument. I say let them, there should be more games like this who reward you for being active!

Pokémon Go has given us lots of funny tweets by now, people excercising, having fun with it. There are concerns too, that by using a google account to log in, you are giving Niantic access to all your google stuff. Players have been robbed of their phones, one teen found a dead body in a canal instead of a Staryu. I doubt that we’ve seen the last of the news coverage. But for now, I’ll just have fun with this. And enjoy the way this game has so many people actively playing!