It's not my kind of game either, but was definitely interesting and to me a good thing because it got people out of house.
I used to walk my local park daily for years, only ever saw a few people. Seemingly out of nowhere, the park seemed always packed...kids, adults, you name it. It was kind of jarring to me, to be honest.
I mentioned it in passing to my brother, kinda complaining about the sudden crowds but later describing it down to details...how people seemed to be taking pics of the ground for no reason...he said "they're playing pokemon go, dummy." I had no idea such a thing existed and thought I was going nuts.
But ultimately what I saw was a lot of people venturing out and about, enjoying the day, having fun solo or in groups... and thought it was a net positive to society, for once, unlike most modern apps and games.
COVID neutered quite a lot of that. Though in retrospect it was a bit silly to be that scared of being outside…let’s not go there…
But more so, Niantic’s responses really killed in-person gameplay. You had Remote Raids, where you could be invited to join a raid at a gym from a friend. A good idea, but one they never really weaned the player base off of, because it was way easier for players to stay on the couch. (Well, and Niantic made fat bundles of cash off the Remote Raid Passes IAP.)
They also made totally sensible changes to interaction distances—which is to say, they doubled (was it doubled…whatever, a non-trivial increase) the distance you could be away from a Pokéstop or a Gym to interact with it. A really nice change, and one that I think made the game better even outside the pandemic. And they rolled it back, right when Omicron took hold. And they barely spoke a word about any of the changes. It felt fickle. Arbitrary.
I think they panicked when the pandemic arrived and did not consider the long term ramifications of the changes. Without those changes many players would quit the game.
I used to walk my local park daily for years, only ever saw a few people. Seemingly out of nowhere, the park seemed always packed...kids, adults, you name it. It was kind of jarring to me, to be honest.
I mentioned it in passing to my brother, kinda complaining about the sudden crowds but later describing it down to details...how people seemed to be taking pics of the ground for no reason...he said "they're playing pokemon go, dummy." I had no idea such a thing existed and thought I was going nuts.
But ultimately what I saw was a lot of people venturing out and about, enjoying the day, having fun solo or in groups... and thought it was a net positive to society, for once, unlike most modern apps and games.