The past few weeks have seen me come as close to regularly playing Pokemon Go as I was during the first month it was available back in 2016, at which point the summer of Pokemon took the world by Sandstorm. I sign in every morning and catch whatever is around me, sporadically check my phone for new spawns throughout the day, and if I head out to meet someone or do something for the evening, you’d better believe Go is being covertly pulled out at least once. The issue is that despite mostly enjoying my time back with the game, I can’t help but see it as a footballer who has shot themselves in the foot, therefore no longer being able to use said foot to kick said ball, rendering the entire act of putting foot to ball futile.
Pokemon Go doesn’t work in accordance with a pandemic. The entire premise of the game is immediately made redundant - you have to stay at home, socialising with anybody not in the same residence goes out the window, and the game as a whole is drastically superseded by almost every other game on the market on account of the fact they are still, you know, playable. As a means of remedying this and ensuring that a) people could still play, and b) the company could still make money - I wonder which one of those options was deemed more important, eh? - Niantic implemented a whole host of quality-of-life changes into Go, most of which have either been removed, pared back, or wasted.
About two hours ago, I went downstairs to make coffee. The kettle was empty, which meant I had to fill it up with water, which in turn meant said water would take a couple of minutes to boil. To pass the time, I booted up Go and noticed there was a Raid going on nearby, although it was unfortunately too far away for me to participate in. I was only half-paying attention and something as relatively insignificant as this would usually slip my mind before I had the chance to even consider getting annoyed about it - and yet it annoyed me. Pokemon Go’s best ideas are the ones that could have been implemented to improve its pandemic features but weren’t. They’re intangible concepts that may never have truly existed because it’s unknowable whether they were ever considered for full-scale development. And yet Pokemon Go in its most brilliant, unrealised form is entirely dependent on them.
The thing about Pokemon Go is that it no longer needs to pigeonhole itself into its original selling point - that it revolves around actually moving. This premise was novel in 2016, while Go’s impressive AR tech and attachment to the world’s most profitable entertainment franchise made for a surefire way of establishing it as a trailblazer in the mobile space. Now, though, it serves as more of a nuisance than an incentive. There are gadgets out there that automatically catch Pokemon for you as you go about your day; Remote Raid Passes exist, they’re just trapped within the anti-consumer artifice of an invented economy; and most importantly of all, after over a year of being unable to socialise, the last thing I want to do at the pub is sit in the corner fighting someone from Team Instinct’s OP Tyranitar.
Put plainly, actively going out to play Pokemon Go just isn’t that enticing anymore. If I’m out anyway, I’ll probably launch the app for a few minutes - I especially like checking Go when I’m travelling to see what kind of ‘mons are on offer away from home. I don’t want to go for a walk on the beach with my head stuck in my phone though. If I’m going for a walk on the beach, I want to, you know, enjoy walking on the beach. Novelty alone permitted Pokemon Go to evade that very basic rationale five years ago, although I think we’ve all been given a pretty solid reason to reevaluate how we view being out in the real world these days.
Despite what people say, Pokemon Go is as big now as - if not even bigger than - it ever was. At the same time, we’re not living in the summer of Go. People don’t walk around supermarkets with their heads buried in their iPhone. I rarely, if ever, see people attempting excellent throws on public transport. I can’t for the life of me recall the last time I saw more than one person taking on a gym or participating in a Raid. All of this, I think, is down to the simple fact that Pokemon Go has transcended its own reliance on its original gimmick. This was probably true prior to the pandemic, but it’s even more irrefutably the case now.
For what it’s worth, I like playing Go outdoors. For Community Days, global events, and even just seasonal celebrations, there’s still nothing comparable to what Go offers. And again, when I am out, there is a very good chance I will at least temporarily play for a bit. What I’m saying is that people should have the option to access pretty much everything the game offers remotely.
I’m not arguing for a WASD function to be added into the bottom left corner of the screen that allows me to swim from Dublin to Liverpool while I’m panned out on the couch. What I mean to say is that anything you see on your screen - a PokeStop, a gym, a Raid - should be accessible from where you are instead of forcing you to move closer to it. It’s not as if the draw distance spans kilometres - anyone serious about playing the game who isn’t in one of the world’s densest metropolises would still need to move to have as much content as they want. But for the ordinary person who is busy at work, at home, or at the pub with their mates, it’s much easier to ditch that premise and focus on making the game more readily playable.
The pandemic gave Pokemon Go its best ever ideas, but instead of good ideas begetting better ones, all we’ve done is seen Niantic shy away from potential. Here’s hoping Pokemon Go learns the value of staying.