On My Shelves (well, Phone): Pokémon Go

I was never a big Pokémon fan. I never played any of the games, and I'd seen just enough episodes of the anime (plus the first movie) to be familiar with the basic concept and main characters. So when Pokémon Go was rolled out, at first I didn't have much interest…

… except there were so many people on my list playing it. I figured I might as well give it a try, the way I had MMORPGs like WoW, just so that I'd know what it was.

To my astonishment, I rather like the game. Collecting various strange (virtual) animals, trying to level them up ("evolve"), and competing for control of the gyms is actually pretty fun.

Certainly part of the appeal is that it is an active game… yet one that doesn't demand the player be able to do more than walk. I'm not very athletic, for several reasons. But I can walk, and the game's controls and options help encourage that – and don't require or encourage running or other really strenuous effort.

One of the really positive design aspects I appreciate is that for the most part it is not a competitive game. Oh, there can be out-of-game competition in the sense of collecting more and rarer Pokémon, or in the friendly competitive spirit between the three Teams, but for the most part it's a game that can be played by oneself or with others without it becoming a chase. If a new Pokémon appears in an area, I don't have to worry that someone else is going to catch it; we can all catch the same Pokémon. Similarly, one of the most common items is a "help everyone" item: a lure module that can be placed on any Pokéstop and which increases the Pokémon appearance rate for everyone who comes to that Stop.

This means that I can go out for a walk with my not-terribly competitive wife and my competitive friends and not feel that this is going to end in tension if someone loses out on getting that fancy new creature. Instead we can compare our successes and losses, get together and see what each of us have caught, without it impacting our own gameplay.

Catching the Pokémon themselves is interesting. At its base, it's a trivial exercise – look at the Pokémon, put your finger on the Pokéball symbol, and try to flick the ball at the Pokémon; if you hit the creature, it's captured by the ball.

But once you get past the earliest levels, the play can gain some depth. The contracting circle you see in front of the Pokémon can earn you more XP if you get the ball to hit inside of it, as well as somewhat improve the chance you actually catch the Pokémon; the color of the circle tells you just how hard it's going to be to catch the creature. The Pokémon can break free, or even flee; but there are items such as Razzberries that can encourage them to stay and give you more of a chance to capture them, and more advanced Pokéballs that are better for capturing powerful creatures.

Moreover, as time goes on there's some strategy/resource management involved. You can only carry so many things – from Pokémon to balls to other items – before you run out of room. Acquiring new balls or items from Pokéstops is somewhat random, and depending on how many Stops are easily accessible you may find it's quite possible to run out of capture balls or other items. It is possible to purchase some of these things with real money (which has an actually pretty reasonable conversion rate), but it's more of a game challenge to avoid spending much money.

One thing Niantic has done to limit the impact of money, however, is to prevent you from being able to buy the two most crucial resources of the game: "Stardust", and the "candies" specific to each Pokémon group. If you could buy these, then those willing to spend money would easily dominate the game because they could power up their creatures to maximum and evolve them whenever they wanted. Instead, even the richest player still has to go out and catch (or hatch from eggs) enough of the right type of Pokémon if they want to evolve it to the next level.

I've actually seen Pokémon Go have quite a salutary effect on socializing and exercising. People (including myself) who normally don't like expending the effort are making explicit plans to go for fairly extended walks… just to capture these imaginary creatures. And while doing so, they may run into other players, and most of those players are pretty friendly; the shared, mostly noncompetitive nature of the game encourages people to talk and share information and experiences. It's been particularly good for my son Gabriel – giving him lots of ways to work off energy and exercise while learning how to interact with people.

There are other things I'd like to see. As a purely aesthetic issue, I'd like to have the individual Pokémon get their more advanced voices. At the moment, the only Pokémon that speaks in something other than an electronic squeal is the game's long-running mascot Pikachu; I can't imagine that getting the rest of the voices would take that much space in a modern phone, and it would individualize them more.

Some mechanism to increase the maximum power of a lower-evolution Pokémon might be nice – that would emulate things like Ash's Pikachu who refuses to evolve to Raichu and yet still becomes stronger as time goes on. More evolutions, too – there's a lot of creatures that have zero or only one evolution. That could also be addressed by adding more Pokémon to catch.

The ability to trade Pokémon might be good, too. This would help encourage more personal interaction, which is one of the game's points. More personalization and personal iteraction in-game might be nice, too; my avatar is pretty much identical to a vast number of other "trainers", and it'd be nice to be able to choose not only a unique name but a unique appearance.

Still, for a relatively simple phone-based game, this is a strikingly fun game, and one I'm likely to continue to play for quite some time!