Pokemon GO Out and Play!

The explosive success of Pokémon GO is more than a bright spot for the future of mobile gaming, it is also helping to create a more social gaming community that has started to cross generational barriers.

Even though the initial release server crashes have hindered my quest to catch ‘em all, it has not stopped me from finding new Pokémon to catch and PokeStops to raid for items. The town I live in has a lot of PokeStops and I have created a “farming” system to hit them all in one walk. Before Pokémon GO I used the path for walking/jogging, it takes me along a river and through a small park. The river has moderate pedestrian traffic but the park is usually always vacant.

I was shocked when I entered the park and found upwards of 30 people looking down at their phone. Some were walking together in groups, some were riding bikes, others were talking and some were by themselves. But what they all had in common was Pokémon GO.

Now I can’t say for certain that every single person was playing Pokémon GO but I have never seen so many people together in this little park, and the fact that PokeStops were clustered in this area, it is safe to assume that many if not all were playing. The significance of this, is that Pokémon GO has done something that no other mobile game has been able to do, and that is bring people physically together in the real world.

It is a historic moment not just for Niantic but also for an entire generation of gamers. The emergence of online gaming took away the social aspect of inviting your friends over to play multiplayer games. Long past are the days of split screen enjoyment on one television. Niantic has reversed the rules by creating a game that depends on your GPS location on your smartphone, requiring players to leave their house in order to catch Pokémon and what better way than with your friends?

When I saw the kids playing together in the park, I didn’t just see their enjoyment of catching 50 Pidgeys, I saw the genuine enjoyment of spending time with their friends.

Pokémon GO can also be used as a way for parents to better connect with their children. Millennials who grew up during the Pokémon sensation of the 90’s can use Pokémon GO for a nostalgia trip to their childhood, but they can also use it to connect with their own children in a way that parents of other generations have not had the luxury of doing.

Pokémon GO is shaping up not just to be a fun and addicting game, but also a way for gamers to break down the walls that online gaming has placed between them. By incorporating the name brand of Pokémon, and location based play, Niantic has laid the foundation for the future of mobile gaming that depends as much on the social connections of its players as it does on the internet. 

- Jonathan