Pokemon Go has taken Hawai‘i and much of the rest of the world by storm, now with more users than the Twitter app. Last night businesses reported their biggest nights ever at the KS sponsored Pokemon night in Our Kakaako. Just minutes ago, a happy dad reported on the Pokemon Hawai'i Facebook page, "Me and my two son's finally got these guys. We had to grind it out to them lol. It was a blast making memories with them and traveling around the island looking for pokemon haha. And a big thank you!!! To the pokemon go hawaii group with all the tips and spots to catch pokemon. red,blue,yellow you guys are awesome. Thanks again." A lotta people are enjoying this!
Two weeks after launch, tech site BGR claimed a tenth of American consumers were playing Pokemon go daily for over an hour. Serious players wonder if recent updates are attempts to weed out dilettante players and open server space for players who will go deep and shell out for extras. The joke is Pokemon Go did more for daily fitness than Michelle Obama could do in two years. Learning the metric system is another bonus.
HPR’s Noe Tanigawa says developments over the weekend have dampened enthusiasm for some, but many players do persist.
Once upon a time a kid traveled from town to town finding and capturing Pokemon creatures, who all have different qualities and powers to help him in his adventures.
“It’s great! I feel like especially for people my age who grew up as a kid playing it on the Gameboy, now it’s like you can go out in the real world and they’re there, like in a mall or in a park or something.”
That’s pretty amazing for Grace, now a level 22 Pokemon trainer herself. She follows tips on Facebook, like “Kakaako has a lot of lures out now or something, and then you just follow the trends.”
There’s agony too, like “Hit up Sandys, Aquarium, & Coral Street. Overall Squirtle count = 3. Whyy!” and there are tips for incubator problems, tumors, how to use IV’s, etc.
The Hawai‘i Convention Center was teeming with trainers this past weekend at the Comic Con Honolulu.
‘It’s just a great time for everyone of the nerd culture to get together,” according to Jonathan Fujii, who attended all three days.
Want to see locals and military mixing it up? This is the place. There’s an interestingly strong representation from ‘Ewa here. Two hundred volunteers run this event which is a venue for skilled local superhero artists, cute in all its forms, weaponry, comics, Lego, cosplay accessories, tactical gear, Star Trek, Star Wars, and this year, Pokemon Go.
“Some businesses love it because it brings people to their stores. They’ll just drop luresall day.”
Sara Ishizaki-Shinsato grew up with Pokemonon on her Gameboy. She’s one of those responsible for a run on external batteries here.
“Restaurants, I don’t know if they like it as much, because you sit down and you don’t really leave. Like Highway Inn is a Poke Stop, but you just keep playing, so I don’t know…”
There's also a Bar Crawl.
There are 151 original Pokemon and “Gotta get em all” is the refrain, Some are restricted, for example, you can only find Taurus in North America, Farfetch in Asia, and Mr. Mime in Europe. It is possible, however, to hatch and raise your own restricted Pokemon outside those areas. That sort of activity brings you in contact with many opportunities to monetize this free app by paying for options to enhance or accelerate your experience.
An update this past weekend and disabling certain map apps has made finding Pokemon a little harder. In some cases, the update wiped out previous accomplishments, erasing hours and hours of “play.” Refunds are being offered.
“From what we’ve experienced, the more people are in a single area, the more things that are more uncommon or rare pop up.”
“It sounds like what they’re going for is to get people outside, get people together, have them interact with each other, in the real world,” observes self described nerd, Michael Choy.
“Because other games you don’t really have this interaction. You just play it by yourself and that’s that. Guess that’s whats so unique about this game.”
In less than a month, Pokemon Go garnered more world wide users than Twitter. Basically, Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game which has its roots in information gathered by players of Ingress, an earlier location based technology. More Pokemon are coming, as are partnerships with business, like McDonalds’s. You can already fill out an online form to get a Poke Stop positioned right at your business—or campaign headquarters.
“They’re introducing a trading aspect, and they’re doing battling so that you can interact with your friends directly.” Faisal Ahmed, CEO of Comic Con Honolulu recalls the days of kids standing around with cords connecting their Gameboys.
‘You know twenty years ago comics were considered like, you must be some loser sitting in your house, but it’s become mainstream, look at the biggest blockbuster movies. Slowly I think that division between you know, this is being a nerd and this is popular culture will just become one.”
Nintendo’s share price doubled in the first two weeks after the game’s release, but most recently, Pokemon Go slipped to 4th in Japan’s app download listings. Nintendo has suffered its biggest drop in shares since 1989, though it still is in positive territory relative to before the game’s release. Investors are still figuring out the bottom line as gamers look ahead: location sensitive games with collection features are expected in the next several months from other game powerhouses. Super Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda are in the wings and Nintendo is readying a new console for release next March.
All we know is the new update has frustrated gamers who are uncovering glitches and getting refunds. The latest problem reports captured Pokemon randomly transforming into totally different species. After an uproar, Niantic, the game’s developer, is promising to re-implement the little tracking footprints that indicate a Pokemon’s proximity.
At this writing, the Pokemon Go app has a one and a half star rating on iTunes because of tremendous user antipathy toward the latest update. Imagine exasperation on a global scale!
