Lauren Christ
If you’re anything like me, you have fond yet fuzzy memories of the summer of 2016. That fateful July when strangers were friends, everyone had a portable iPhone charger, and cries of “there’s an Abra in that parking lot!” rang out in the night. When Pokemon Go was released, it was impossible to find someone who hadn’t downloaded the app. Businesses everywhere were announcing themselves as “Pokemon Go friendly” and petitioning to be named a Pokestop to drive sales – except churches, who notoriously hated the Pokestop status foisted upon them. Every night, we charged up our phones and went roaming the streets, on the hunt for digital buddies.
It ruled.
A Pokemon Go day always counted as a gym day.
But life is different now for a Trainer in 2018. No longer can hordes of nostalgia-chasers be seen crossing intersections, eyes locked on their screens as they stalk a starter. Now, I get weird looks for the hand motion I use to throw a curveball when I’m walking down the street to work. There are way more Pokemon that have been released in the past two years than there were at the game’s start, but though the need to catch them all has never been higher, I don’t feel the same half-crazed fervor that used to make me walk for miles and miles every night. My co-workers got me back into it, so playing the new Raid Battles with them is pretty cool, but by and large, the tone has shifted. It’s lost the old luster it once had when I was evolving my first Pidgeotto. I don’t have the same giddy feeling when an Egg finally hatches. But it’s the same game. So, what changed?
What hacks did you use to get these Yoshi-like eggs to hatch faster?
Apps have a terrible shelf life, and pretty much everyone knows this. Pinch Media even has data to suggest that iPhone app popularity lasts less than a month. TechCrunch’s breakdown gets even more grim from there: for free apps, less than a quarter of users return to the app after a single day of use. By the time the 30-day mark has passed, that statistic is less than 5% – pretty much no one. Audience retention is a huge problem for web content creators, who are on a never-ending quest to make their platforms “sticky” – a quality to describe the ability to attract repeat users. And many people believed the very concept of Pokemon Go would be sticky enough to keep the world watching long after the 30 day mark. I would say that the popularity of the Pokemon franchise accomplished this at least in part. Users clung on for weeks after the launch, but all good things eventually come to an end. And so it was with Pokemon Go. You had the boom of the launch, but it gradually tapered off as people realized they were accidentally getting exercise or whatever else it was that makes people stop playing games. For me, it’s just a matter of attention shift. Something new comes along, something I’d rather be doing than endlessly grinding Weedles for my next level, and I chase it. Plus it didn’t help that the app is enormous and sucks battery harder than anything else I do on my phone.
The more muscles your Pokemon had, the more phone battery power they drained.
I digress. I think, ultimately, what makes playing the game now so much different than before is how absolutely bizarre and magical it was to be interacting with complete and total strangers in the street with no regard for social anxiety and cultural norms. That was something that was integral to the 2016 experience, but now I exclusively play with people I already know. Back during the first few months after the launch, we were all craning our necks at each others’ screens as we walked by on the streets. Honest to God, you could genuinely tell that someone was playing Pokemon Go by the way they were holding their phone as they walked. And that became a signal. It was okay to talk to those people, to shout from the window of your car “What team?!” at red lights. Hell, it was fun. When someone told me they were also team Mystic, I pretty much acted like Oprah’s audience after checking under my seat at a live taping.
Niantic seems to know this was a large part of their initial appeal. In an effort to get trainers to start interacting with one another again in the present day, they recently made it part of a game quest to “make three new friends”. I have to wonder whether that worked, or if everyone just did what I did and went onto a Pokemon Facebook group to farm three friend codes, only to immediately delete them once I’d gotten my prize.
The true heart and soul of Pokemon Go was that novel experience of playing a video game out in the world. It was the first app of it’s prestige to break free from the traditional gaming background and actually require players to get outside and walk around in order to play. Many people – myself included – believed that would lead to the game flopping, but I couldn’t have been happier to be wrong. Instead, it was the best thing about the game.
I recently recaptured the trainer spirit this weekend when I accidentally attended something called “Community Day” for Pokemon Go. I happened to be in Media, PA, a town with a disproportionate amount of gyms for the size of the place, when a special Moltres event began to happen. My friend and I didn’t know this, but we endeavored to hit a few Pokestops before we left after having lunch. As we were walking, every gym in town suddenly swapped to a raid.
In-person Pokemon Go events are still happening!
That’s when we saw them: the nerds. A group of 5 men in large backpacks, cords protruding from their pockets connecting to the phones in their hands. They were headed straight for us, as was an adjacent pair of dudes with truly excellent beards. We met at the intersection where a raid had just begun, and they asked us if we were going to join in.
We spent the next hour and a half marching from gym to gym – never more than two blocks between them – catching multiple Moltres and cracking jokes about how “blue team rules” with these people. And it was really, really fun. When it was over, my friend and I both agreed we would find out when the next Community Day would be and make actual plans to be back in Media. Because what we did back there, catching legendaries and laughing with fellow trainers, that’s what it’s all about.
If you try to play Pokemon Go like any other video game, you might come to the conclusion that its time is over. True, players are no longer seen roving in the tens and twenties through the streets every night. But there still is an excitement for the game, on these special Legendary days and other events where people flock to the streets and gyms. Though it’s no longer the summer of 2016, the community is alive and well, and if you play Pokemon Go the way it was intended – by engaging in that community and encountering them in the wild – you’ll see (like I did) that this game is far from finished.
We may never have achieved world peace, but we came pretty freaking close in the summer of 2016. With friends like these to unite us…maybe we will again.
