Everyone's outside, and it's because of POKÉMON GO

My son used to think he could see ghosts in his room through his Nintendo handheld, since the shitty camera showed artifacts moving on the walls in low light.

So I can just imagine what his reaction would be when I told him there were invisible Pokemons running around that you could only see through the cellphone.

At an ice cream shop on Saturday and couple next to us was eating a flight of small shot glasses of ice cream. We were like "oh I want to do that, looks so cool" and the guy was like "Oh yeah I cannot believe how many people are doing this. It's incredible. I see people on the street now and we're like I know what you are doing!" I made confused eye contact with his gf and she was like "Honey they are talking about the ice cream flight not Pokemon...." And I was like wtf... Pokemon but obv this is a thing.

ahhahahahha

I was jogging in a park yesterday and saw occasional clusters of young people walking in tangents. At first I was like "oh cool, it's been a while since I've seen freaks shambling around a park on acid" but then I saw that they were huddled around a phone and I figured out what was going on.

flights of pokemon to sing thee to thy rest

https://twitter.com/IGIhosT/status/752357024156028928

i completely missed pokemon as a youth, know literally nothing about it --- is it really something that people grew up on? was it that ubiquitous? i always thought it was a p niche thing, like magic cards or something

that twitter video is straight insane.

pokemon felt pretty ubiquitous when i was a kid. i was 12 or 13 when the first games came out and i played them for hundreds of hours probably & all my friends had it too

there was definitely a divide between nintendo kids and playstation kids but all the nintendo kids played pokemon

there's a pokestop inside my office building. how is this legal. where did they get this shit.

the algorithm just selects arbitrary landmarks from google maps afaict

i heard the developer had a previous collection of locations for, like, coupon or drinking-game based promotions and so all the pokestops are just that information/data loaded into a different piece of software

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was pretty much the last kid thing I enjoyed as a kid. Pokemon came right after and joined Rugrats, Boy Meets World, and those Magic cards as something I knew nothing about.

But a scavenger hunt game involving maps? Sounds like fun.

I could see the appeal of Ingress because it was niche and geeky. This shit, where everybody knows what you're up to and everybody is doing it, just activates all my anti-herding instincts. That twitter video caused me a little twinge of nausea and I had to turn it off.

Not trying to be punker-than-thou but seriously I have a serious aversion to herd (as in physical herding) behavior in people, like a little bit of a phobia but also it makes me (extra) mad and unpleasant

yeah i decided i didn't want to deal w/ it after going outside and walking around my neighborhood and seeing just how many people were playing it

i don't really play games on my phone in general though, despite spending most of my free time at home pc gaming. i've had a smartphone for a couple years now and the only game i've had in that entire time is desert golfing

i'm sure a million startups are suddenly working up a plan to move into this space, and they'll all fail because they're not pokemon

I'm sure something like Warcraft could be successful in the space.

star wars, game of thrones, ninjago, basically anything with a big character roster would get the job done.
i think the main appeal is novelty right now though; my sense is there isn't much of a GAME yet.

yeah the point is that this blew up because it's piggybacking on a popular+nostalgic IP, and one that fits especially well with the augmented reality hook. the actual substance of the game from what i've seen is pretty half-baked

from what I've read pokestops are just copied from ingress landmarks which were crowdsourced from players over the years

there's a pokestop outside my building. there are suddenly people out there all the time everyday.

i played this a little bc my roommate wanted me to and the novelty of seeing pokemon on the streets of new york was cool at first, but ultimately i find the whole thing very unsettling in a way that is hard to articulate.... idk, i've developed a sort of technophobia over the past few months.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6jIrzie4ylI/hqdefault.jpg

#neverforget

I know I'm in many ways being a Luddite about this but I have no idea why anyone would play this game with the AR features turned on.

signed, the dude who hates and will never use Google Street View

Wh wh why do you hate Google Street View?

I think it's a cluttered representation of the data that doesn't give me any additional insight into what the area I'm trying to navigate looks like. I want to know the pattern/layout of the streets, not what they looked like at a particular snapshot in time.

It's like you're taking a perfectly good abstract representation of what an area looks like and dumping the uncanny valley effect all over it to me. I am so distracted by the representation that it lessens my ability to interpret the data and successfully navigate.

Ok, I get that. I use it mostly like one would use a coffeetable book featuring photos of Verona, Italy.

I use street view when I'm somewhere new and want to know what the place might look like if it doesn't have clearly marked signs.

my coworkers in a big meeting behind me were talking about this damn game so I have installed it

can you play this without paying any money

ifiact yes

(is far I as can tell)

that's a yes

welp

http://adamreeve.tumblr.com/post/147120922009/pokemon-go-is-a-huge-security-risk

so i don't get this you guys, if i challenge an enemy gym with my strongest pokemon and i lose, is my pokemon dead and gone or does it live to fight another day?

well now i know what this is

welp

http://adamreeve.tumblr.com/post/147120922009/pokemon-go-is-a-huge-security-risk

for what it's worth, i just checked, and ingress (niantic's previous game) has the same settings, so this has been the case for millions of people for a year or two

damn we don't get morbs cameos on ilg too often. this shit is major

and that's me erasing my account. bummer, i wanted to play with this a bit but full google account access + battery drain + stranger danger ends that.

Evidently a Animal Crossing game is coming out in the fall? Certainly wouldn't have the cult following, but there is some nostalgia.

Is Pokemon not a Nintendo property? I was thinking this would use the same Nintendo account as that Miitomo thing but it wasn't an option.

afaik The Pokemon Company is part-owned but not part of nintendo.

can't u just make a dummy google account?

reading the inevitable reddit tip sheet:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pokemongo/comments/4rlnmc/some_tips_from_my_last_days_playing/

...and thinking thru what this experience will be like as it gets established. all fremium games come down to some kind of grind/farm cycle that you can buy your way out of. i guess this on is, keeping control of gyms, up to 10. so the grind is going to be doing some kind of daily walk to your ~10 locations and battling? man who is going to do that. in the winter?

and that's me erasing my account. bummer, i wanted to play with this a bit but full google account access + battery drain + stranger danger ends that.

What is stopping you from creating a Google account with none of your actual personal information connected to it and using that?

will i be able to star my favorite pokemon in this?

important tips:
http://gawker.com/9-tips-for-mastering-pokemon-go-1783333597

having more than one google account is madness, that would be like having more than one ilx login