The Pokemon Go mobile phone game started almost 3 years ago in July 2016. In the beginning, whole families like mine got into it big time. We had numerous family outings specifically to “catch them all”… The servers crashed as Nianti (the game developer) couldn’t have anticipated how successful it would be globally.
If you look at how the game was created, Nianti was indeed very ingenious. It leveraged on a well-known franchise that had started in Japan and which remains very popular even after more than 20+ years. There was a naturally large niche group of game card players that would initially hop on the new game quite easily.
In order to create and map all the Pokemon stops and gyms, it had also developed another game prior to launching Pokemon Go to collect this data. This new game rewarded players for geotagging and naming interesting locations as the main game objective. Using this crowd gaming effort worldwide, it was able to utilize the mapping data as the building blocks of Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go had all the elements of being a first in the world of mobile gaming which on hindsight, was totally revolutionary and took gaming to the next level. It also had mass appeal to many different age groups. Young and old took it by storm as it becomes a family bonding exercise for parents and grandparents to connect with their kids and grandchildren. It has also become an obsession for some hardcore players who spend a lot of funds to buy the virtual stuff to enhance your game. As you can guess it, Asian countries were the top revenue contributors in the world.
The unintended consequence was that a whole generation of older players from the age of 40 to 80 would be hooked to the game. Because you need to walk in the game, it was also a form of exercise for couch potatoes. Older folks started to treat this as an opportunity to stay healthy, walking many kilometres every day. New friends were made and groups of strangers interacted frequently, to share the passion of completing the tasks.
New online stars like TrainerTips were born overnight on Youtube. He was a fanatical player of Pokemon game cards as a young boy and hence developed an encyclopedic knowledge of all the game characters. Coupled with his efforts to being a budding influencer on his Youtube channels to create video content, it was a natural jump for him to eventually become the go-to online Pokemon guru. He created daily videos and sold merchandise on his Pokemon channel, travelling the world to events and becoming an ambassador of Nianti. Not bad for a twenty-something who was developing a career out of a passion and making good money too… https://www.tiredofmydayjob.com/trainer-tips/
As for me, I am the only Pokemon Go player left in my family. I have been faithfully playing this over the past 3 years to develop my player levels (38 now). It was also a form of distraction to make my half marathon training runs and overseas trips more interesting. I don’t think I have spent more than $50 on this game so far though. There are news reports of an elderly man in Taiwan that holds 21 accounts and spend almost $500 every month! He reasoned that he has lots of time to kill and this game has given him a purpose in life, to set objectives and make friends. Well, good for him! As long as he can afford it and this makes him happy and healthy, why not?
The reason I wrote this blog was that for the first time in S’pore history, the company decided to have a Safari Zone event in our waters. Sentosa was the designated location and it was over a 5 days period. I decided to apply for a gaming pass and got one for the last day, which was on Monday. Apparently, they issued a total of 125,000 passes for this event and they were all eagerly snapped up by the trainers. 90% of them were allocated to local players. Imagine! I was not that lonely player after all!!
I had a nice breakfast at Vivo City on Monday before the event started at 10 am. I then took a nice walk over the bridge to the entrance of Universal Studios to “check in” using my account and the QR passcode. Once in, a lot of features were unlocked and special monsters were visible for capture. I had a short walk towards the beach where the main event was held along the beach shoreline.
I saw so many people there and wondered if most of the adults and students took leave from their jobs/schools on a Monday or were actually playing truant instead? There was a sense of community as they had set up big tents for the 3 different clans of the game (Red, Blue, Yellow). Instinctively, I went to rest in my clan colour only. Laughable? It sure was to a non-gamer.
There were so many Pokemon Stops to spin and new shiny monsters to catch. People were walking up and down the beach and taking cover during the occasional rain showers. Everyone seemed to have a determined purpose to catch as many as they can. The tourists there must be wondering who all these crazy people were from, all concentrating on their handphones and blindly walking in a zig-zag matter, up and down the beach. Before I know it, I had spent 4 hours there and caught quite a few specially featured monsters there. Time to have a late lunch.
For the rest of the week, I was down with a flu bug I had caught from my recent China vacation. Then it was to Yangon for my monthly financial consultant job. Friday was to attend an event linked to skills upgrading for mid-career PMETs. It was a bit disappointing as it was different from what I have imagined it would be, based on their website information. It was actually targeting the younger age group and not us 50+ uncles.
Anyway, my family rounded off the start of the weekend with the much anticipated Ed Sheeran concert. It was better than I expected with the talented young singer who gave a brilliant 2 hours performance. Time to get back to my online classes and exercises next week.
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