Hunting for love and Pokemon go hand in hand
Connecting with other players can spark romance among game rivals
About a week into the Pokemon Go craze, Peregrine Teneo, 27, was trying to take over the Pokemon Go gym near a local zoo, and he was getting frustrated. He spotted a woman at the bus stop across the street, “finger-smashing” away — as he calls that signature Pokemon Go swipe — and realized that she was his problem.
“I’m trying to take this gym!” Teneo yelled across the street. “Stop making it hard for me!”
The gym was held by Team Mystic, you see. She appeared to be driving up the gym’s points, making it harder for someone on a different team, such as Teneo of Team Instinct, to capture it and install his mightiest Pokemon.
“Buy me a drink,” he recalls her yelling back at him, “and I’ll give you the gym.”
Later that night, Teneo did meet his Pokemon rival for a drink; afterward they hunted for Pokemon. That she was a member of Team Mystic wasn’t a deal breaker for Teneo, he said; they could bond over hunting for fictional creatures regardless of team alliances. But back in the real world, actual creatures that breathe, shed and lick got in the way.
“She ended up being allergic to dogs, and I’ve got two huskies,” Teneo said. “I knew at that point it wasn’t going to work.”
Pokemon Go has more daily active users than the dating app Tinder, so it was only a matter of time until it became the new way to find dates.
Players might meet in real life, help each other catch that Charizard or Jigglypuff lingering nearby, and then eventually go out. Singles are also connecting through dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble, dropping Pokemon mentions into their profiles, and then meeting up to hunt for Pokemon together. And then there’s the more direct play for a Pokemon paramour: At least three dating sites and apps launched to help Pokemon Go fanatics find each other.
Teneo, who’s bisexual, isn’t so interested in logging into a Pokemon dating app; that “would sort of take away the spontaneity,” he said. “I definitely like the fact that it’s an accessory to the act of dating rather than its own construct to dating.”
But he did meet a guy on Scruff, a gay dating app, whose profile noted he was into video games. They got to bantering about Pokemon Go, of course, and then met up recently to catch Pokemon along a waterfront.
“We’re still talking,” Teneo said, adding that his Pokemon meetups have been a good break from his first-date routine.
Some dating sites are banking on this summer’s Pokemon Go enthusiasm. For example, Project Fixup, a dating site that arranges dates for users for a US$20 fee per date, recently launched PokeDates. It will make all the arrangements, from matching its users to deciding the time and place to meet up. The first day the service went live, the immediate interest was overwhelming, said Daniel Korenevsky, the company’s chief fixup officer.
Meeting through video games is not a new concept. Couples have met while playing the fantasy game World of Warcraft, the military science fiction game Halo, or through the “random opponent” feature on Words With Friends.
But Korenevsky says that with Pokemon Go there is more potential for collaboration. For example, two players standing side by side can both catch the same Pokemon, rather than be forced to compete for it.
“They’re both looking at same screen,” he said, “not screaming at each other with headphones.”