At this time of year there is a race between the walker and the sun. Either you must go for a walk earlier in the day or you must be ready to walk after the sun has set. Both of these are possible. The days are getting shorter and the temperatures are getting lower. They are getting low enough for gloves to be tempting. I haven’t worn them yesterday, or today, but yesterday I almost felt the need.
There are a number of reasons which make Pokemon Go popular. I believe that the Ingress User base plays a key role, that marketing had an effect and that curiousity also played an important role.
Ingress has a large and vibrant community of players. These players are so passionate about this game that they are willing to walk 30 or more kilometres a day whilst staring at their phone. They are ready to climb to the peaks of some mountains and brave rain, sleet, snow, high winds, mud, heat and the cold. How many of us have had our fingers go numb as a result of playing ingress after all. That passion for the game was seen by children and Ingress playing parents let their children play. The children found it fun and so when they heard that Pokemon Go was coming out they automatically wanted to use this game. This adds a second dimension. Parents who enjoy playing Ingress are likely to have more than one mobile phone and more than one data sim. These parents are ready to give a mobile phone and sim card to their children. These children are then likely to play with friends. Yesterday evening when I was with Ingress players they had already switched to Pokemon Go and they kept commenting on the number of children they saw already playing the game. Remember that we live in a globalised society. Whether you live in France, Belgium, Germany, Australia or the United States you will have heard about Ingress, about Pokemon Go and you will have been curious to try the new game
My first thoughts on Pokemon Go are that we can level up fast. They have taken all of the Ingress Portals that Ingress players and I have created and turned them in to whatever the locations are called in Pokemon Go. I could research the names and terms but I am not that obsessive. Pokemon geeks can let me know in the comments. Is this why they stopped accepting new portals a year ago, to make porting the data from one server to the next easier? This morning I walked and went from a beginner to level four and a half. I was able to collect many pokeballs and pokemon creatures. Levelling up is easy. You get 100 points per pokecreature and 500 points for every new creature. You can upgrade or evolve individual creatures as you collect the required resources. One of my favourite features so far is that you can incubate eggs by walking. So far I have eggs that require 2-5km of walking to spawn. This means that you can go for a hike and keep your phone active. Every two to five kilometres a creature will hatch and you can start incubating the next one. This is a nice feature because it implies that we will not be stuck in a city. Walking in the countryside will have the same effect. The second pleasant aspect is that although there are “portals” as I would call them as an ingress player creatures also spawn all over the place. This means that as a person who spends a lot of time in the countryside I am free to play in a rural setting. One of the reasons for which I stopped playing Ingress was because of the time it took to farm and the need to spend time in towns. With Pokemon Go these challenges are now neutralised. [gallery columns=“4” ids=“3119,3120,3121,3122”] According to the Tribune de Genève this game is only available in the US and New Zealand for now. As I am part of an early adopter community in this part of Switzerland we have been able to access and test the game ahead of its official European release. The software still has a few bugs, at least on the Sony Xperia Z5 compact that I use.