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. However, attempting to do this when I was younger (approximately around my early adolescent years) just proved to be exhausting to maintain momentum. My peers 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 on to the next thing. Regarding video games, whether or not they would finish a game was always an inconsistent variable as 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. Many 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 I proactively joined the Pokemon Go craze in the summer of 2016.
I have to disclaim that I do not actively avoid new things for 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 of 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 heights not seen since the franchise's inception in the late 90s. 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 when 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 about the Pokemon they encountered and sprinted down the streets to catch what they had found. The only people around at the time were people in the bars, 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 were doing. My friends drove fifteen minutes to my house after hearing 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 remained relevant in the public eye until the end of July, the same month the game was released in 2016. Pokemon Go had 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 reasons 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 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 app's downfall came when the mecca, as mentioned earlier in my area, fell victim to record-breaking flooding that destroyed the town. After that, Pokemon Go in my area was kaputt. Naturally, my 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 throughout 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 series staple since the second generation, and the surprise that Pokemon will 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, hatching 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 Every Day?” The daily challenges were enough to keep me playing almost every day to cease the eventual tedium of catching pokemon, and my daily walks could be complemented by hatching some pokemon.
Pokemon Go was made to bank on the whimsical nature of nostalgia. The pokemon offered at Pokemon Go’s launch was the original 151, the most famous lineup of pokemon that ring familiar to 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 would go to the trouble of adding every pokemon from each subsequent generation, especially after the game’s popularity had 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 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 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 once. 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,” adding more perks to sending gifts. Niantic has 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, 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 using 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 battle leagues, where players can fight random people worldwide 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. I persevered with Pokemon Go after so many detractors lost faith in it. I’m 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 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. Still, 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.
------
Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com
I have to disclaim that I do not actively avoid new things for 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 of 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 heights not seen since the franchise's inception in the late 90s. 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 when 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 about the Pokemon they encountered and sprinted down the streets to catch what they had found. The only people around at the time were people in the bars, 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 were doing. My friends drove fifteen minutes to my house after hearing 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 remained relevant in the public eye until the end of July, the same month the game was released in 2016. Pokemon Go had 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 reasons 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 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 app's downfall came when the mecca, as mentioned earlier in my area, fell victim to record-breaking flooding that destroyed the town. After that, Pokemon Go in my area was kaputt. Naturally, my 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 throughout 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 series staple since the second generation, and the surprise that Pokemon will 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, hatching 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 Every Day?” The daily challenges were enough to keep me playing almost every day to cease the eventual tedium of catching pokemon, and my daily walks could be complemented by hatching some pokemon.
Pokemon Go was made to bank on the whimsical nature of nostalgia. The pokemon offered at Pokemon Go’s launch was the original 151, the most famous lineup of pokemon that ring familiar to 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 would go to the trouble of adding every pokemon from each subsequent generation, especially after the game’s popularity had 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 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 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 once. 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,” adding more perks to sending gifts. Niantic has 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, 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 using 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 battle leagues, where players can fight random people worldwide 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. I persevered with Pokemon Go after so many detractors lost faith in it. I’m 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 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. Still, 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.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com