Pokémon GO is the most recent worldwide phenomenon, taking the world by storm. It is the latest Pokémon game released by Niantic and published by Nintendo for mobile devices rather than Nintendo’s, a first for the Pokémon series. It currently has over 130 million downloads worldwide, and during its first few weeks it was one of the most used mobile apps. During it’s peak back in mid-July, it managed to reach over 21 million daily active users. That’s even bigger than when Candy Crush first released, which was rumored to have peaked at 20 million daily active users.
While Pokémon GO hasn’t completely retained those huge numbers over the past month-plus, it is still a wildly popular game, and most city parks are still flooded with players daily. A large sum of these players are high school students, who had a lot to say about the game.
“Pokémon Go is a virtual game made by Niantic [Labs] in which the real world is mapped onto a virtual world and virtual Pokémon are inserted to the world and generated. It is the goal of the player to capture the Pokémon and to use real life monuments and local attractions to their advantage, and walk around and explore,” Rolla High School Junior Mingway Wang, explained.
So what exactly is it that keeps players hooked to this repetitive but aesthetically pleasing game?
“Because I want to catch ‘em all. It’s worth it because it is free and you go outside a bit more. It gets people outside and keeps them healthy and what not and it’s rewarding when you catch a pokemon. I think if they update it and stuff like that, and add more stuff to it, then it will last” Junior Benjamin Edwards said.
“It makes me go out a lot more, and go to popular landmarks in Rolla. I hang out at parks sometimes and walk around and talk to friends (if I had any that played this game). I can’t necessarily say if it’s worth it or not it’s just a fun thing to do. I heard about the idea many years ago. I never really followed it, kinda forgot about it and then when it released it became huge on the internet. It sort of drove my interest and I saw a couple of friends playing it and I joined in.” Wang said.
While Pokémon Go can be fun, it can also be quite dangerous. There have been numerous accounts of muggings at Poké Stops with Lure Modules on them around the nation, and there is the possibility of kids staying out later and possibly being at risk. However, most students here at Rolla High School haven’t encountered any of this malicious activity.
“I almost got hit by a car. Don’t get hit by cars. Look both ways before you cross the street,” Junior Mattie Dean warned.
“Dont pokemon go while driving.” Wang said.
Like many video games, Pokémon Go isn’t perfect, the game does have some technical errors within it.
“Some of the systems are a bit wonky at least some of them don’t really work right,” Junior Benjamin Edwards said.
Most people have positive feedback about the game, but there is some active criticism towards it as well. One of Rolla High School’s video game aficionados and his responses weren’t too approving of the game.
“It’s a fun little thing, it gets you to go outside, but honestly there’s a lot of stuff missing. It’s not in-depth, it’s not actually that fun, and it bugs. I think the Pokémon community as a whole really benefitted [from it] but I’m not a part of it so it doesn’t really benefit me. It’s simply not fun. It’s not meant as like a game-game, it’s more of ‘Hey I’m bored I’m gonna open my phone a little bit,” Junior Matthew Fan said.
While it is very popular currently, Pokémon Go is a fad, and only time will tell if this particular fad will last.
“If the developers keep adding stuff it will last a while. But if they leave it here it will die off eventually,” Fan said.