Pokemon Team Leaders

Team Neutron Is Blasting Off Again!

I'm not usually much of an early adopter, by gamer standards. I've purchased only one game within a week of launch this year – and that was partly because Stellaris launched at $40 and was on sale. But Pokémon GO was easy. It's free, I can pull it down on my phone while I'm doing something else, and if I reach back to my memories of the late '90s, I even feel like I understand the universe. When I found out that it rewards walking around, I was sold. After all, I live and work in a major city – walking is as central to my life as driving is for many others.

I downloaded and signed up before lunch and spent my break walking around near work, capturing pokémon and flipping pokéstops. After work, I passed a number of more locations and caught more creatures on the way home, and was pleased to see how many locations in my neighborhood had been populated out in the Ingress days.

I also noticed, though, that a lot of the locations weren't the same as they were tagged anymore. The religious institutions were the same, but a lot of the street art had been repainted since the old map got populated. I zoomed out and noticed that the industrial area a short ways away wasn't quite so populated, but I didn't really plan on walking around there much, anyway.

Then I noticed the gyms.

I was still at a very low level at that point, too low to access a gym or join a team, but I was starting to figure out what that process looks like, in broad strokes. You hit level 5, poke a gym on your screen, pick a team, and then go around fighting gyms to turn them your team's color. I wondered if I wanted to keep playing.

You see, colors are meaningful in my neighborhood. There are a couple houses near me where teenagers hang out on front steps, all wearing red. I know that if I were to go half a mile away, the kids hanging on stoops would be wearing blue. Oddly enough, both of those groups associate more with the color yellow, but blue and red show that they associate with larger alliances of other color-affiliating front-step-socializers in my city.

When I first paid attention to gyms close to my home, they were all red, matching the preferred sartorial option among the kids closest to me who follow such trends. There's a chance that it's pure coincidence, but if anyone was around during the day, and just messing around outside such that they'd be in a position to capture those gyms, then the IRL Red Team was on the list of suspects. So it was at least worth considering.

But what color do you pick? Team Mystic sounded coolest, but that was out the window if the real world was going to be crossing over into the game world. Red could lead to both local advantage and the start of getting to know my neighbors better. Briefly, I pictured myself as a young Edward James Olmos. "Gangster's Paradise" started playing in my head. Do I have time to really engage well with any group of teens, let alone that group?

Given that this happened more than two weeks ago and I'm only now getting this all typed out, I think it's clear that I do not have the time to do that well.

So Team Instinct it is. Yellow is the ambiguous default when the others would mean a more obvious allegiance. And maybe there's some possible future where the two yellow groups in my area unite in a stunning act of neighborhood unity. Stranger things have happened.

I can just barely access a local gym when I take the garbage out, so I made my choice the next evening and went to bed.

The next morning I started really noticing how many people were playing. Almost a third of my bus stop had their phones out and swiping. Small packs of teens milled about downtown, intermingling with cadres of business-casual trainers on breaks. After work, the parks teemed with locals. There was a public event on Facebook that already had 8,000 expected attendees, with tens of thousands more who were interested.

The stories started. Players who found interesting or even frightening things. Players who made friends with strangers. Amid rising tensions between cops and others in my city, we were hearing stories of officers approaching folks and pulling out their phones. Parks that were usually abandoned by sundown now thronged until after midnight due rumors of electric-type pokémon spawning by the pond.

I met my family on the way home from work. We passed a graffiti mural and saw a middle-aged guy sitting on the sidewalk, leaning on the paint and looking at his phone. I nervously shuffle a little sideways as we start to walk past. In my most conspiratorial stage whisper, I ask, "What team are you?"

We're both yellow. He invites me to hang out and train up with him, but I have to excuse myself – it's bath night for the kid – but I'll keep my eye on the gym. Maybe next time.

I get home, and I can see in the app that the local art gallery is surrounded by lured-up pokéstops, pink petals showering the map against the dark sky. It's a four-block walk, and they have free showings tonight like every third Friday of the month, but I haven't made the trip in over a year.

On Saturday, I plug my son into the stroller and we go for a hunt on the way to the bakery. We only grab a few common birds and a Drowzee. On the way back, we pass a young boy and his dad sitting on the steps of a monastery, which now doubles as a pokémon gym.

"Catch anything good?" I interrupt. The kid is just starting out, but is already getting frustrated with the difficulty of throwing a pokéball accurately. I muster up an expression of sympathy for the kid, wishing I could donate a spare Pidgey.

His dad smiles at me while hugging his son with one arm, rubbing the boy's far shoulder. "Keep trying! You're getting better!" The boy smiles back.

This neighborhood is pretty OK after all.

Comments

My house-mate is playing, because she gets out and about for her work. I haven't started yet, mostly because I work from home and don't get out and didn't figure there'd be much here. But watching her play at various times shows me there's a lot more out here in the hinterlands than I expected there would be, even with the Ingress pre-pop.

You're tempting me again. She and I could play together.

I didn't really think the Go in Pokemon Go meant much of anything when they unveiled it, but it continues to show that it's the best part of the app.

garion333 wrote:

I didn't really think the Go in Pokemon Go meant much of anything when they unveiled it, but it continues to show that it's the best part of the app.

Absolutely!

I love Pokemon Go, and I'll freely admit that the "game" part of the game is pretty awful.

Clearly, though, the GPS + real-world-location part of the app, plus the perfect-fit Pokemon theme, way more than makes up for that.

I found myself explaining Pokemon Go to three parents and my wife earlier this week. The parents had come over with 4 of their kids. All the kids played, none of the adults. There's a few Pokemon stops nearby, so I offered to take the kids to them.

When we got back, I found myself explaining the game and it's beginnings.

I'm not quite level 5, so I have yet to experience a gym.