Frankly, I never intended to try Pokemon GO (I figure my friends have put in enough time for me) but I suppose I should have suspected that as a student of game design, I was going to have to see what this craze was all about. When I was given a class assignment to play the game and write about it, I decided to go into the game armed only with what I knew from talking to people about it. So here I am, to tell you my thoughts and reactions to the first (and most likely, only) hour and a half of Pokemon GO I played.
For starters, my phone won't even run the app, so I had to borrow my wife, Chelsea's, phone to complete this assignment. Because of this, I decided to create a female avatar that was more or less modeled after her. Picking a name was kind of a hassle - I'd say the first 10 or so options I tried were taken (seriously guys, why not have a feature that tells you that BEFORE you have to go through the whole submit button thing?) Finally I was able to come up with something that worked - SleepyStarz, because my wife sleeps a lot, and I like stars. Flawless logic.
A (tired) star is born
My Life as a Poke-Trainer
I selected Charmander as my starting Pokemon because I used to have the original Pokemon Red, and also dragons are rad. Then I made my first real catch from the comfort of my own home, but of course it wasn't long before I had to break out and walk around to find the little buggers (funny aside though - I literally just loaded up the game while writing this, then a Meowth appeared within my reach, and as I was catching it my cat jumped into the camera's view - that was kind of awesome.) I decided to take the game on a little walk to get a coffee.
I live right on the border of Oakland in Piedmont, so I walked down Grand Avenue towards the Coffee Mill, a favorite spot of Chelsea and mine. I didn't have much luck on the way, but as I appropriated the trendy area near the historic Grand Lake Theater, I was able to grab a few more Pocket Monsters, including a Krabby, which prompted a few tasteless jokes on my part that I won't repeat here. I also saw the landmark feature for the first time, as a little icon on the GPS map showed me a cool stained glass window in a shop across the street from the Coffee Mill. I didn't have much luck finding Pokemon on my first trip, though, partly because I wasn't too apt to be walking around in broad daylight with my nose buried in my (wife's) phone. I needed a better environment.
I decided my best bet was to take a nighttime walk through Piedmont (a quiet town with very empty streets after dark) so Chelsea and I strolled through the chilly evening air to hunt - er, catch - Pokemon. As we walked down our street, I snagged a couple critters (including a Mankey, which I was fair stoked about, as a primatology enthusiast) and had some luck as we ascend the steep street on our journey into upper Piedmont. Using the GPS map, I saw that there was a Pokemon Gym at the elementary schools in the center of town, but I was only level 3, so not high enough to fight at the gym.
We continued our walk, catching Pokemon as we went, and my level was slowly creeping up, I hit level 4 as we passed a few active Pokestops at the various businesses in the center of town. We'd already passed the school with the gym, but as we wound our way through the park I got some lucky catches, and finally made it to level 5. I joined Team Mystic (since they seemed to alight best with what I'd think Chelsea would want and I was using her phone) and we decided to wind back to the school and check out the gym battles. I had no point of reference, and no idea how to battle. The gym contained a sporty yellow dude called Alakazam. "How hard can it be?" I wondered.
My Pokemon are represented by the guy in the black trunks
What Am I Supposed to be DOING?
I lost - badly - to Alakazam. Twice. Before taking Pokemon GO for my walk, I talked to my friend Jorge, who has been playing the game for a while. He basically told me to fight in a battle I had to rapidly push the screen. I tried that, and Alakazam wiped out 12 of my Pokemon (6 in each battle). It was kind of disheartening. At this point, Chelsea's phone battery was dying, so rather than keep collecting the little monsters, I quit the app and we made our way home.
After the Meowth I caught while writing this, I ended with 17 Pokemon in my Pokedex. Catching them is fairly easy, but I still have no point of reference about how the game is really supposed to be played. There aren't really any tutorials or much in the way of helpful menus. Jorge basically said that part of the game is interacting with the community online or asking your friends how to play. I wanted to see how much I could figure out on my own, but having seen the gym battles, I know that - if I was going to play again, which I probably will not - I would need to watch some examples online and read up on doing battles.
Jorge also told me about some of the upgrades and the resources in the game, but I had a bit of trouble following. To my mind, the game has an uneven amount of depth for a system that is relatively basic. The turn based battles of the original Pokemon for Game Boy made sense to me intuitively, as someone who is well versed in similar combay systems like those in older Final Fantasy games and Dragon Warrior/Quest. For Pokemon GO, on the other hand, I kind of relied on word-of-mouth to know what was going on, but this was clearly a limiting factor. This is actually a decent implementation for a game that ostensibly is designed to make people more active and social. Crowd-sourcing information about mechanics is a fine approach, in my mind. People love Pokemon and are certainly using those resources.
For me, there simply isn't enough interest in the source material to be keep my interest. I picked up the basic stuff just because I am culturally literate enough to have known about Pokemon GO and had talked to friends about how it works before. I knew I had to walk around to find Pokemon, and I figured out the 'flick your Pokeball at the Pokemon and hope to catch them" thing, but the rest of the game seems to require either a lot of trial-and-error, or a level of commitment to the game that I simply am not motivated enough to dedicate to. There is a really good chance that if, someone made a similar game where you wander around and fight D&D monsters, I would be instantly on-board (and now I'm giving myself an idea). I feel like interest in this kind of game is likely primarily predetermined by one's existing interest in the series.
So, it seems that my future interactions with Pokemon will continue to be contained exclusively within Honest Trailers, and their great lists of Pokemon names.
Gah put it out put it out!
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