Pokemon Go mania drives delighted gamers into ‘wild outdoors’, worries cops
SAN FRANCISCO: There are video games that go viral overnight, causing people to coop themselves up in their homes for days to play.
But the opposite has happened with “Pokémon Go,” a free smartphone game that has soared to the top of the download charts: It has sent people into streets and parks, onto beaches and even out to sea in a kayak in the week since it was released.
The game — in which players try to capture exotic monsters from Pokémon, the Japanese cartoon franchise — uses a combination of ordinary technologies built into smartphones, including location tracking and cameras, to encourage people to visit public landmarks, seeking virtual loot and collectible characters that they try to nab.
“Pokemon Go” represents one of those moments when a new technology (in this case, augmented reality or AR, which fuses digital technology with the physical world) breaks through from a niche toy for early adopters to something much bigger. The technology overlays digital imagery on a person’s view of the real world, using a smartphone screen or a headset.
Pokemon, launched 20 years ago, has been adapted to the mobile internet age by Niantic Labs, a company spun out of Google last year. Nintendo, Google and Pokemon Company all invested in Niantic.
By Monday, Pokemon Go had been downloaded millions of times, topping rankings at Apple and Google Android virtual stores.
According to the research firm SimilarWeb, the game was downloaded in more than 5%of Android phones in the first two days of release and had outpaced dating app Tinder.
The high demand crashed the Pokemon app’s servers in Australia on Tuesday, while attracting safety and trespassing warnings from police.
It also sent Nintendo Co. shares 12.7% up on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday following a 25% surge in the stock on Monday, pushing the company’s market capitalisation above $30 billion.
A young woman playing Pokemon Go came upon a dead body in a Wyoming river while hunting a water monster in the game, according to US news reports.
“If you use this app (or other similar apps) or have children that do, we ask you to please use caution,” the O’Fallon, Missouri Police Department said on its Facebook page.
The department also warned that robbers were preying on players drawn to rich troves of Pokemon monsters in parking lots or other places where victims might be vulnerable.
“It’s cool to actually play as a Pokemon trainer in real life,” said Lucas Garcia, a 17-year-old California boy who has been a fan for more than a decade.
“Itisnicetohaveavideogame that makes you actually walk around instead of sitting in front of a TV screen holding a controller,” Garcia said.
AFP, NYT & REUTERS NEWDELHI:Laying to rest rumours that Pokemon Go leeches users’ Google profile, Niantic said the game only accesses basic Google profile information (user ID and email address).
“We recently discovered that the Pokémon Go account creation process on iOS erroneously requests full access permission for the user’s Google account... Google has verified that no other information has been received or accessed by Pokémon Go or Niantic... Google will soon reduce Pokémon Go’s permission to only the basic profile data, and users do not need to take any action themselves,” it said.