Just after I arrived at work on Saturday, I checked my phone, looking to see if my co-workers needed anything. It was graduation, and I thought I might have a message asking to bring along programs or name tags before I went to help set up for the ceremony. Instead, I was greeted by a message from a friend in town for graduation. On the day of his eldest child’s graduation from college, when he should have been attending to his duties as a parent, he texted me the following:
By the way, our goal today is meet up so I can give you a Hawaii regional pokémon.
When most people learn I play Pokémon Go, I’m met with a mix of disbelief and incredulity. I understand; for most people the game is a relic of the early summer of 2016, a year that feels separated from now by more than just time, before any of Donald Trump’s presidency or the pandemic.
Pokémon Go is an augmented reality game, where players walk around the physical world, encountering creatures to catch, battle with, and trade on their phones. While it is possible to play sitting in place, the game is much more engaging if you play while walking around, as there’s more to encounter.
I didn’t own a smartphone when the game was released, so I lived vicariously through those around me. One evening that summer a friend interrupted our round of Mario Kart with a, “Guys. There’s a kadabra outside.” Immediately everyone hurried to throw on their shoes and jackets, and the same friend sent groups of people in three directions to triangulate the monster’s location. Once the direction was ascertained, everyone set off, and as we ran across a main intersection, phones out and illuminating faces, someone from a passing car shouted at us. “Yeah, Pokémon Go! Live your life!”
I started playing myself at Calvin. Campus was full of points of interest and enough monsters appeared that I could fill out my collection (except for those regions-specific pokémon like the Hawaii-exclusive comfey). I would walk from my dorm to class with the app open and my phone held at the side of my leg so no one could see what I was playing. Even then, a year on, people had mostly forgotten about the game. There was, however, a small community of people who played on campus. The Friday afternoon debut of a new legendary pokémon in a raid was always fun, with a group of ten or so of us all teaming up to take down the boss, struggling to catch it once we defeated it.
The game took over my life for a period of time there. You wouldn’t find me walking anywhere without my phone open, and the first time I arrived in a new space I’d open the app to see what was around. It became easier as more and more was added to the game.
Since graduating, I’ve started to play less. Niantic, the company which makes the game, made some changes during the pandemic, allowing people to play from farther distances, but more recently they’ve made changes to the game which have annoyed players. These include increasing the cost of items and limiting the number of raids players can participate in remotely instead of in person. Personally, I don’t know as many people in my immediate area playing, so it’s less fun to walk around my neighborhood hunting for pokémon.
But I do still play. Trading pokémon is a way to connect with friends from out of town, even as their children roll their eyes at us. “We thought this was just a phase when they started playing,” they tell me later, to which their parents reply, “It’s NOT a phase,” in a fun subversion of the typical teenager-parent dynamic. Though most people roll their eyes, I still hope that sometime in the future, someone will notice me playing the game and I’ll once again be met with the cry “Yeah, Pokémon Go! Live your life!”
