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

this is like the grand revenge for the fact i play team sports

http://www.mediaite.com/online/gotta-pander-to-em-all-hillary-clinton-has-finally-found-out-what-pokemon-go-is/

games that end with "Go," ranked:

5. Stratego
4. Lego Battles: Ninjago
3. Grim Fandango
2. Go
1. Pokemon Go

https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/videos/10157309144940725/

games that end with "Go," ranked:

5. Stratego
4. Lego Battles: Ninjago
3. Grim Fandango
2. Go
1. Pokemon Go

― a simba man (Will M.), Thursday, July 14, 2016 5:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u missed lara croft GO

Where in the world is carmen sandie go

both wonderful games that did not make the cut i'm afraid

see also hitman go, chroner triggo, super mario brgo

this game has made me walk 90 km/124,000 steps in four days. everything is sore. everything.

Your commitment is laudable. I'm weighing up walking home from work, which will take 3 and a half hours.

three and a half normally, or stopping every 45 seconds for a capture?

Yeah, the increased walking for everyone is great, but it's barely amounts to a crawl because I have to stop and capture all the time.

Make that 5 hours. Going to brave my first gym at lunch, but figure they're going to be more competitive in Central London than South of the Thames.

I started playing in London because I was there most of this week, and having come back home to the midlands the thinning of landmarks is kinda shocking. I've gone from having 15-20 pokestops within a five minute radius to having the nearest pokestop be five minutes walk away. On the upside, the gym at the pub across the road is currently controlled by a cp72 drowzee so I'll be taking that down as soon as I wander over there.

You are the problem with decentralisation, Jim.

HA!

my 10 km egg hatched during a bug-out and i got nothing

really? the same thing happened to me but he was still in my inventory after all

just went through my inventory, only pokestop collections in that time

went to my first gym this morning. I chose a pokemon with 130 cp (whatever that is) and thought I was fighting one with about half the cp. Lost, then tried again and lost. Not sure how to attack but was just tapping on the enemy. I even saw his health go down to zero...what gives?

the gym stuff is really poorly documented. you're supposed to swipe to avoid attacks. best way to do that is wait until the screen flashes yellow (which indicates an attack coming) and immediately swipe left/right, then tap to attack. keep doing that until they drop dead.

btw the gym stuff is a bit of a wank. you can defeat a gym and claim it, and within 2 minutes someone else will have taken it from you. if you watch a gym in a populous area, you can actually see it change colour constantly.

Great advice, thank you. Went to my first gym just now and maybe slightly overestimated the efficacy of my team...dead in seconds. Knew nothing of this swiping method, which will definitely help in the weakly defended gyms near my house. Also, why is Zubat such a shit in every game? I'd rather not have the points.

zubat is shithouse but golbat (evolved zubat) is formidable.

Not even messing with gym stuff right now. I just want to collect them all.

The proposed slogan - Pokemon: Want To Collect Them All! - did not test well with the 6-9 year-old demographic and was sent back downstairs for a rewrite.

Am playing this but slightly embarrassed about it. Like walking down the street covertly checking my phone. Have not yet worked up the nerve to go to a gym yet. Drove by one in my neighborhood the other day and there were like a dozen teens hanging out on their phones.

games that end with "Go," ranked:

5. Stratego
4. Lego Battles: Ninjago
3. Grim Fandango
2. Go
1. Pokemon Go

― a simba man (Will M.), Thursday, July 14, 2016 5:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u missed lara croft GO

my favorite game is HBO Go

has this been linked yet? It's incredible:

https://vimeo.com/166807261

Hitman Go is pretty rad. It's basically just a board game in videogame form.

http://www.polygon.com/2016/7/13/12173204/boston-detailed-pokemon-go-google-map

lol

that vimeo vr piece is excellent

wow

a friend of mine works for squeenix and hes wondering why they havent sued pokemans over the 'go' thing since they have hitman, tomb raider, etc go games

i caught a squeenix yesterday

it's nuts to me how much of a wild fad this is, like it's already bigger than major social networks

we just don't seem to get ubiquitous almost monocultural fads like this anymore, everything is a slower burn. haven't seen anything like it since 20 years ago when pokemon happened

i tried to get it on my S3 using an apk but it runs so horribly ;_; i got way too excited

haven't seen anything like it since 20 years ago when pokemon happened

I don't think even that blew up this far. This is closer to Pac Man Fever levels.

i agree it's bigger now, inevitably, esp because pokemon was mostly a ~kids~ thing and Go is a ~kids then plus kids now~ thing

but in terms of how the media talks about 'crazes', this is so late 90s. this actually feels as ubiquitous right now as the media was treating pokemon back then. the star wars revive might come close. maybe the first avengers movie but the whole marvel thing took forever to build up. i'm probably forgetting stuff.

there was never this much unavoidable meta-content about any Pokemon game before this. And before you say "oh yeah social media buzzfeed etc." I mean mainstream entertainment sites that traffic in movie reviews, tv recaps and celeb gossip are now making listicles of every creature in the game http://www.vulture.com/2016/07/151-pokemon-go-ranked.html

I don't play this but I do read while walking so I am kind of in the club right

I was in the occasionally-get-yelled-at-by-cyclists club long before this came out
Usually on the work phone, too, which is even more hip, imo

Workemail GO is a lot easier on the battery, too

xxp If you're reading this thread, yes.

Now instead of yelling the cyclists will be like "ayyyy powerballs amirite" and you can go "sure thing! You betcha!" and they will go "awesome sauce!" and carry on and you will go back to your longread

servers down in the uk
got an egg at 9.97km haha

servers down in the us seems like

Walked over to the park last night, attacked the gym there, took a few goes to figure out that oh, you're just meant to tap on the other monster etc. But eventually I took down the gym leaders! Turns out when you defeat a gym leader, the game doesn't say "ok you're the new gym leader", it says "ok, this gym is now neutral". And in the 10 seconds it took me to figure that out, some other dude had claimed it. So I did all the work and someone else (from a rival team!) gained. It wasn't a fun gaming experience.

Worse though, the guy then strolled over and wanted to chat. "Hey, you're catching pokemon? I just took over the gym back there! I don't really understand it, all my pokemon seemed to die really fast but then I tapped on the gym anyway and it said I'd claimed it!". I explained what had actually happened and did my best to be jokey about it but in truth I totally failed to hide how salty it'd made me and I think he came away with the impression that I was a bit of a dick. It wasn't a fun social experience.

https://vimeo.com/174821377

the dude who pulls over with his car still running and just jets into the park.
i am curious how this is gonna play tonight.

Town full of people starting and stopping and swearing all day as servers dropped out at various crucial junctures of egg incubation/lure use. It's riddled with errors but I have never loved anything so much. I have the original theme music playing in my head constantly. I wish it was as hysterical in London as the above video.

Sure a ton of trenchant think pieces are being written on this as I type, but this kind of mass phenomenon really attests to the overwhelming destruction of societal belief systems we've suffered this year. Suddenly people (even non-gaming folk) feeling the need to form ultra-escapist countercultures. Everyone desperately seeking an easy new unity that can't be found in politics, but which might just be found in the universal adoration of Psyduck... Not saying it wouldn't still be enormous under more 'normal' circumstances, but the end times atmosphere is certainly escalating the need for camaraderie.

otm