I’ll Write Another Blog Post Once I’ve Finished Playing Pokémon Go

Seeing as I’m not currently playing Pokémon Go itself, I thought that I may as well write a little bit about the phenomenon that’s currently sweeping across the world. Personally, this has been a long time coming. Everybody has their one thing that they’re incredibly passionate about and Pokémon is mine. I’ve been playing the games since Red and Blue came out so they hold a certain fondness for me, and this latest addition has amplified this affection, held by many, into a global experience that few saw coming, even with all the hype surrounding its release.

Hype can be a funny thing surrounding media releases. The build-up for Pokémon Go has rightly been enormous, as people clamoured for the closest thing to real, actual Pokémon we’ve got (so far). But in my experience a lot of hype can have both positive and negative effects on the enjoyment of the product. Films are the biggest example of this, with three in relatively recent memory being The Lego Movie, Wall-E and Anchorman. In fact, these three films perfectly sum up the potential problem with something having a lot of hype around it: I loved The Lego Movie immediately, hated Wall-E when I first saw it but liked it after rewatching, and Anchorman barely raised a smile after months of being told it was one of the funniest films ever. This is what I was nervous about in the weeks and months leading up to Pokémon Go. Could it really capture the adventure that so many people love in the main series, or would it feel more like one of the hit-and-miss side games? As the first mobile Pokémon game with any real momentum behind it, Go had a lot to live up to, both for Pokémon fans and gamers in general, with the new Augmented Reality (AR) technology being tried out on a major scale for the first time.

But, in case you haven’t noticed, Pokémon Go can only be described as an absolutely enormous success. Everybody’s social media is absolutely dominated by pictures of their finds, frustration at server crashes and weird articles about finding ghosts and/or dead bodies while playing, to the point where we’re already seeing a significant number of anti-Go posts. The app has already surpassed the number of daily users of giant apps like Tinder and Twitter, and appears to be changing the dynamic of mobile gaming forever. In this case the hype was fully justified; Pokémon Go has not only been a success, it has been a greater success than anyone foresaw. One of the most surprising elements has been Go’s integration with businesses, like that dog shelter who let people take their dogs out for walks while playing or a shop I saw that gave you a 20% discount if you tagged them in a picture of your Pokédex on Instagram. It has propelled Pokémon back into the mainstream consciousness and has even had a beneficial effect on many people, encouraging them to get outside and explore their local area in the hunt for the rarest Pokémon, with many saying that Go has caused them to discover things about their town or city that they haven’t noticed in years of living there. And yes, it’s getting people to talk to each other, crowded around Pokéstops (I’ve seen upwards of twenty people around a single stop in Bromley) or attending massive events like this weekend’s one in London. Pokémon Go seems to have had a weirdly positive effect on a pretty large portion of society, in ways that we haven’t seen from games or apps before.

Personally, and obviously, I love it. I love seeing groups of people all walking about with their phones, I love the increase in Pokémon-related media, I love the shared annoyance at the unreliability of the servers. Oddly it took me a while to get into (probably because I have no regular schedule at the minute) but I am now fully on board the hype train. It looks like Pokémon Go is here to stay, and I couldn’t be happier. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s a Pidgeotto outside…