During the latter half of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, like many kids my age, I was swept up by Pokémon fever. Whether it was the games, the trading cards, the TV shows, or the movies, I couldn’t get enough. Like most stuff I loved as a child, the expectation was that my love of Pokémon would fade over time. Yet here we are, 25 years later, and I’m still waiting. Although I’m not the only one, many of my friends fell by the wayside as my fandom continued.
The only thing I couldn’t do as a child that I desperately wanted to was go out into the real world and catch ’em all for real. The closest I could get to that feeling was playing Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow a little while later. Fast forward to 2016 and Niantic came up with a way for Pokémon to live in the real world. Pokémon GO, the AR mobile game which took the world by storm in 2016.
One Glorious Summer
It felt like everyone was playing Pokémon GO that summer, literally. All of those friends who fell by the wayside 15 years earlier were back, even asking for my know-how in some cases. Then it happened again. The hype died down and Pokémon was left to its hardcore fans once again. That would have come as a relief to a lot of trainers, but not me.
Not only is Pokémon GO more fun when playing in a group, but some of the features added over the past four years rely on it. Trading, giving gifts, but most of all, Raid Battles. Higher tier raid battles can only be completed by groups of trainers. Since legendary Pokémon were debuting in five-star raids, in most cases exclusively, I felt like a large part of the game was closed off to me. Without access to that part, my Pokédex would never be complete.
That led to me losing interest in Pokémon GO. If you had told 11-year-old me that I would one day lose interest in tracking and catching Pokémon in the real world, he might well have questioned his very existence. I kept the app and would poke my head in from time to time, mainly to keep up to date on new features so I could write about them for work. My love of the game had gone though, and playing it felt more like a necessity than a want.
Catch ‘Em All From Your Couch
Then the global pandemic hit. Pokémon GO wasn’t the first thing that sprung to mind when the world went into lockdown, but eventually, a game that relies on people meeting up and going outside was a point of conversation. Niantic acted fast. So fast, in fact, that it felt like the developer might have had a contingency plan. “Break glass should everyone who plays Pokémon GO be stuck inside for an indefinite amount of time.”
In typical Pokémon GO fashion, it trickled out features slowly but surely to keep players interested. Remote Raid Passes, doubling the distance from which gyms and Pokéstops can be activated, Throwback Events filled with research tasks that can be completed from home or alone. As I kept track of the changes, before I knew it, I was fully entrenched in the AR world once again. In fact, I had become more obsessed than I ever had been before. Even more so than the summer of 2016.
The moment I realized I had fallen back in love with the game was during the Kanto Throwback Event. Completing all nine levels of research was of the utmost importance to me - so much so that it felt like I had an Incense burning every hour of the day. Battery life also wasn’t a problem, something that was the bane of my life when Pokémon GO first hit my phone. I could keep my device tethered to an outlet the whole time, so the Pokémon just kept on coming.
The Throwback Events have ended, but my love for Pokémon GO has endured. My only concern now is that when the world goes back to whatever normal is after all of this, that Pokémon GO joins it. My hope is that the spike in spending the game has experienced has made Niantic realized they may have stumbled on to something here. That the game doesn’t need to rely on groups playing together. That was basically Pokémon GO’s mantra from day one, though, so perhaps my hope for the game I love once again to stay as it is right now is a pipe dream.
