Pic from cousin at dolores park rn. "Cannot believe the hoards of Pokemon people" pic.twitter.com/BK5Re2HWt6
— Julia B. Chan (@juliachanb) July 9, 2016
A guy just told his girlfriend to hold the train while he caught a Pokémon and she got on and left without him.
— Kate Feldman (@kateefeldman) July 9, 2016
“At least they’re outside in the fresh air, getting some exercise.” How long before Pokemon GO is proposed as an Olympic sport? From the Washington Post:
People are really getting into Pokemon Go, a new mobile take on the classic franchise. In fact, they’re maybe getting a little too into it.
The game, made by Niantic and the Pokemon Company, was released late on July 6, and allows players to capture Pokemon in real-world locations. The app makes the little monsters appear on your smartphone screen, through the camera, as you walk through your neighborhood — making it seem as if they are right in front of you. The game quickly shot to the top of the charts for Apple’s free apps and has gathered at least 100,000 downloads on Google’s Play store. It also quickly led to an unexpected side effect: a number of reported Pokemon-related injuries…
The Pokemon Go app itself includes a warning in the loading screen asking players to pay attention to their surroundings, but it’s clear that some people are getting so excited that they forget to heed it. Niantic, which partnered with the Pokemon franchise to create the game, has some rules of the road for it’s other major title, “Ingress,” that may prove useful.
“Pay attention to your surroundings; you never know what beautiful or interesting things you’ll see while playing the game,” the company cautions in its advice to players…
Buzzfeed, which aims for the kewl-kidz (as opposed to the WaPo get-off-my-lawn-you-kidz) crowd, helpfully posted “13 Pokémon Go Hacks To Help You Be The Very Best“. Some odd phrasings for those of us who didn’t grow up on the anime…
1. You can spin your Poké Ball for a nice curve…
3. To catch Pokémon properly without wasting Poké Balls, make sure you tap and hold…
6. If you have some time to play, use an incense to get a bunch of Pokémon to come to you…
7. If you’re out of incense and don’t want to spend money, try heading to a well-populated Pokéstop…
Which, I assume, is the real easter egg: The game is free, but if you choose to spend your money, they have a store where real cash can be converted into virtual “accessories”.
Not that I can be sniffish — if I had a smart phone, I could no more resist a game like this than a cat can resist a laser pointer.
tfw the president of the united states says you can't use the motorcade to catch that Clefairy two blocks away pic.twitter.com/vA0hlN6gVp
— Mike Case (@MikeACase) July 10, 2016
Elizabelle
Uncle Joe Pokeman.
Love me some Biden.
sukabi
Dang, from the title I thought this was going to be either about some weird Ailes fetish, or a tiny fingered pocket pool player…
JCJ
This game is genius. My daughter, despite her arthritis, is going out every day.
Baud
I can’t believe people are wasting their time with this when they could be hanging out at a political blog instead.
Renie
I had to stop playing Candy Crush when I started using money; then I knew I was getting ridiculous with it.
Keith G
Here is a Tweet (of a news photo) that might deserve a bit of attention
Baton Rouge PD moving in on a very peaceful protester. They are doing their best Robo Cop imitation while she is doing a very good Gandhi/MLK vibe.
Baud
How long until we get to this?
Lolis
God, I don’t think I could date someone into Pokemon, period. Then again, maybe that’s why I’m single.
Luthe
I’m surprised Uncle Joe isn’t going for the Pokémon Gym rumored to be on the White House North Lawn.
PaulW
There was a Pokémon in my mom’s living room!
PaulW
@Luthe:
Seriously?????
PaulW
My phone knew how to spell check Pokémon
Lolis
@Keith G:
Wow, those cops look like plastic action figures. How stupid.
Gelfling545
My nephew who is in the student affairs dept at a Midwestern university was just asked to be the faculty adviser for a Pokemon Go club there. Naturally, he said yes. I’d never heard of it until yesterday & now it’s all over the place.
MomSense
My son and I played on Friday night and it was fun. I say this as a person who doesn’t play video games. He took my phone and went off on his own for awhile. He said the game gives some information about the sights as you walk past.
justawriter
No doubt the Pecksniffs will soon declare the next wave of youth have been unalterably corrupted just as mine was destined for hell because of D&D.
JPL
@Keith G: from twitter
.
hmmmm
Baud
chopper
it’s all fun and games until somebody gets run over by a bus.
gogol's wife
@MomSense:
Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re one of “us.” Some miscreant has been posting a megaf–kton of live Ham–n videos on YouTube. Not that I would dream of watching any of them. Just sayin.
MomSense
@Keith G:
I saw some horrible footage of police officers rushing people and arresting them for just walking peacefully. It was excessive.
JPL
How does the game work? Does it decide where you are and then draw up a map?
MomSense
@gogol’s wife:
Oh yes. I’m a total hamilmaniac.
Emma
Keith G: One of the reasons I stay away from social media in general is the comments section. Some of the people tweeting back are putrid. Social media allows them to let it all hang out. Ugh.
gindy51
@chopper: Or finds a body in a river like one young lady did…
Schlemazel Khan
I had to wait for someone so I decided to use the wasted time for something frivolous.
Ladles and gentile bums, I present you with
The Drumpf Family Circlejerk
Scenes from America’s second favorite cartoon family, words from the Drumpfster fire himself. Let me know what you think, I can make more, the guy is a gold mine
Baud
I wonder if we airdrop this to ISIS, they’ll give up the fight.
JCJ
@JPL: It uses GPS to know where you are. There are things called Pokéstops located at public places like the library or a sign where you can get things. It is quite fun.
RandomMonster
@Baud:
Baud wins.
RSA
I thought Pokemon and its spin-offs were designed for small children. Has it always been played by adults, too? Or is it adults who started playing when they were kids?
ETA: Also…
Hordes, unless people are being collected, too.
justawriter
@Baud: Or at least be able to use their phones to target our drones.
JPL
@Schlemazel Khan: Nice!
trollhattan
Hmm, crime solving via Pokemon?
My 14YO is hooked, anyway.
Troublesome Carp fka Geeno
This works with women too, but I guess the pokemen haven’t tried it.
Baud
We’ve solved the voter turnout problem. Pokémons at the voting booth!
JPL
They need an app for an Easter egg hunt. Imagine, never having to dye an egg again.
Miss Bianca
@RSA: I was picturing a dragon scooping up hordes of Pokemon Go players and bearing them off to its hoard in the the mountains…
Shana
@RSA: Well, my kids both liked Pokemon when they were younger. The 26 year old isn’t playing it because she’s got the bar exam at the end of the month, but we took the 23 year old and her boyfriend on an hour and a half drive to meet the 26 year old for a belated birthday dinner last night and they both played it in the car, there and back.
Schlemazel Khan
@Baud:
I was thinking more of Idiocracy but the Star Trek one is funnier
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: What is this world coming to? Damn kids!
Troublesome Carp fka Geeno
@Schlemazel Khan: I need to know what the original caption to the second image was
SiubhanDuinne
@Troublesome Carp fka Geeno:
@Schlemazel Khan:
And I need to know in what context the Drumpf said those words! I mean, even for him….
jibeaux
I don’t really have much interest in Pokemon, but I really like the concept, the melding of the screen and the real world. Can someone do it with maybe the Doctor instead? Catch a Dalek, zap things with the screwdriver, that kind of thing?
cokane
how do you not have a smart phone nowadays? i resisted it for a long time but the thing ends up saving you time and money and there’s no reason to be glued to it like some folks
Schlemazel Khan
@Troublesome Carp fka Geeno: @SiubhanDuinne:
That second image was doctored (I assume) by the beloved internet. That quote was “Whose your new friend daddy?” The quote with it now is from a New York Magazine article from the 80s.
The finger comment came from one of the GOP debates when Rubio went after him about his finger length with the suggestion that finger length indicated the length of a guys Drumpf . . . er . . . dick
I am looking for just the right image for a quote from his 1991 Esquire interview, “You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass”
Troublesome Carp fka Geeno
@jibeaux: Well I saw a memebase illustration of why you can’t do Dark Souls Go. So not every game is compatible to the “open” format.
RSA
@Miss Bianca: Nice!
@Shana: Thanks, that makes sense.
burnspbesq
@Keith G:
Looks like a major threat to public safety.
Mary G
I won’t link to Breitbart, but they say that Paul Ryan’s primary opponent has made up a gap of more than 30 points in polling to 43-32 Ryan. Ha ha.
Aleta
Wonder if there’s a game in which kids score a point per minute by turning off their devices.
Frankensteinbeck
@RSA:
Never fall for the stereotype that cartoons or video games of any kind are just for kids.
burnspbesq
The Pirates just made up eight games on the Cubs in !0 days.
Premature coronation? Time will tell.
satby
@Schlemazel Khan: I like it!
RSA
@Frankensteinbeck:
Oh, I don’t. It’s just surprising that “E for everyone” is ever accurate, in this case ranging from beginning readers through young adults. That’s effective game design.
SiubhanDuinne
@Schlemazel Khan:
Thanks. Of course I remember the whole short fingers thing from the primaries. And I have heard, or read, the “piece of ass” comment. But I missed “You have to treat women like shit,” which strikes me as, on the one hand, exactly what I would expect him to say, and, on the other, over the top even for Drumpf.
Aleta
@Miss Bianca: Kids would love that! Especially if they could all swim in the hoard once they got there.
Miss Bianca
@Aleta: goodness me! or, since it is Uncle Scrooge we’re talking about here, perhaps “badness me!” would be more appropriate.
Mnemosyne
I should find out if my teenaged niece and nephew are playing. They really do need to get out of the house every once in a while, so I can’t help but see this as a good thing.
BillCinSD
@cokane: well personally, I almost never use my cell phone and my whole life and career is based on my memory, so doing things that promise (but often don’t deliver) expedience I find counterproductive
Matt
On a horrifically morbid note, anybody wanna start a pool on how long it takes before a brownish kid playing this is gunned down by trigger-happy cops?
Mike J
I dockmastered yesterday and today. Dozens of pokemoners walking by in the park. 50? 60? A lot of them.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no Magikarp in Lake Washington.
redshirt
@RSA: There’s a Venn diagram with a large overlap of BernieBros and adult fans of Pokemon and My Pretty Pony. Disturbingly large.
Mike J
@Mnemosyne:
A guy in the sailing class today was saying that one of his kids loved sailing, the other was just meh, and they were the same way about geocaching. I suggested pokemon go to him as sort of cacheless geocaching.
Anne Laurie
@cokane:
Oh, I couldn’t live without my flip phone (and just as importantly, the Spousal Unit’s — we got our first so I could track him down when he got distracted) but since I’m mostly housebound I haven’t needed to upgrade yet.
S.U. is a devout cheapskate, but I’m trying to convince him that it makes sense for one of us to have a smartphone for those occasions when we’re trying to find somewhere to eat or to check whether a business is open from the car.
Part of the problem is we’ve got a grandfathered contract with TMobile, and I haven’t seen any smartphone promotions for that particular “urban” company…
JeffH
@jibeaux: Pokemon Go is built off of information gathered in an earlier game called Ingress, which is still quite active. No critters to capture, but the same idea of going out and having game play elements overlaid with the real world is there. Also the potential for draining your wallet is much less in Ingress.
Right now a lot of long-time Ingress players (myself included) are sort of feeling like hipsters. “I liked this sort of game before it was cool.”
Sloegin
It’s a smart game in a way. You actually have to walk around to play properly. One way to get pokemon is to incubate eggs; your egg ‘timer’ is based on the number of kilometers you walk. Incubating rare eggs might require you to walk 10k, and it’s based on your phone pedometer, driving 10k doesn’t count.
M. Bouffant
Crikey, had never heard of this, suddenly it’s everywhere!
Best quote:
Luthe
@PaulW: Yup.
Carl W
@M. Bouffant:
The reason you never heard of it before is because the game was only released 4 days ago.
Prescott Cactus
Yeah NY Daily News a rag of a paper, but…
Gotta snatch ‘em all.
At least 11 Pokémon Go players have been robbed because of the app, as thieves used traps to lure in their victims, the O’Fallon Police Department in Missouri said.
The four alleged thieves were busted prowling around in a BMW with a handgun, looking for Pokémon Go players enticed by the prospect of catching them all about an hour outside of St. Louis.
The majority of the victims were playing alone when the armed robbers encountered them, Sgt. Bill Stringer told the Daily News
Fun for the whole family !
WarMunchkin
My feet are blistered from this. Game says I walked 50 kilometers, and I’ve only had it for two days.
Prescott Cactus
@BillCinSD:
I’d be under a viaduct in a cardboard box, eating roadkill and drinking from puddles.
RSA
@WarMunchkin:
Ten-plus hours of walking in two days? Good exercise.
WarMunchkin
@RSA: Yeah, all of us pokemon GO players are doing this, but it’s not like we do anything except sit around all day otherwise, so our bodies aren’t ready for that volume.
Unless you’re a marathon runner and hatching your eggs while training, in which case, take my phone with youuu
different-church-lady
Today the term “reality deprived” popped into my head to describe the phenomenon of a person paying more attention to one’s mobile devices than the actual world around one.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Yes, you kid, but for about a year now I’ve been convinced that we could get voter participation to about 90% if we just create a hot app for it.
We’ve reached a point where we can get Americans to do anything at all as long as it involves playing with their phones.
Temporarily Max McGee (Soon Enough to Be Andy K Again)
@Gelfling545:
I was once a student at a major Midwestern university. Do you want me to share a story from my time there, just as I shared it with the editor’s of Penthouse Forum?
pseudonymous in nc
Niantic’s first game was Ingress, which was simultaneously simpler from a tech perspective and more high-concept in its strategy, and it really caught on in places with lots of walkable public space like Paris and Dutch cities.
Pokemon GO is going to be a hard test of perceptions of public space across the sprawly privatised landscape of the USA. I hope Niantic’s geodata is good enough to identify and exclude the kind of sidewalk-free subdivisions where strangers run the risk of getting shot by paranoid residents.
Paul in KY
@MomSense: I hope they don’t put that virtual stuff on someone’s private property.
Paul in KY
@cokane: Will be retiring soon & I guess I’ll finally get one.
Get off my damn lawn you kids!!!
daddyj
My spouse is a level 14 Ingress “smurf” and the addictive behavior the game inspires worries me. She’s prone to jumping into the car at midnight to go hack some vital portal. We live in the burbs and there’s a lot more distance between portals, so she does a lot more driving and sitting in an idling car than I think is rational. She’s been stopped by cops on a couple of occasions for “suspicious behavior” — in one recent instance, an opposing team “toad” was the one who dropped the dime on her.
But Ingress takes a lot of work and dedication; it’s like bird watching. Playing it well requires strategic planning. It’s also fairly abstract; the map is stylized, not a live video overlay.
By layering animated avatars on live video, Pokemon GO is going to have much greater mass appeal. All kinds of people of various ages and levels of brain wattage are going to be playing this game and being clueless about their surroundings. In addition to car/pedestrian conflicts, I fear that people are going to get shot for suspicious behavior. And there will be ineffective calls for legal restrictions.