Our fogey-in-chief says No to Pokèmon Go
HE’S NEVER SEEN STAR WARS AND HE HATES COMPUTER GAMES, SO WHAT BETTER PERSON TO SEND OUT ON TO THE STREETS OF SCOTLAND TO PLAY POKÉMON GO THAN THE SUNDAY HERALD’S VERY OWN FOGEY-IN-CHIEF RUSSELL LEADBETTER
AFTER an hour of wandering around Glasgow city centre, footsore and tired of apologising to people for bumping into them, there was only one solution: delete the Pokémon Go app from the phone.
Some people, it seems, just aren’t cut out to chase virtual monsters called Pokémon. But I’m in a minority here. The mobile, augmented-reality game is currently the hippest thing on the planet.
Globally, it has been downloaded an estimated 75 million times in just a few weeks. Its US launch took place less than a month ago. In the UK, where it has only been available for a fortnight, it has been downloaded some five million times. It is still being rolled out across other countries.
“For most mobile games and apps, even reaching 10 million downloads is a marathon,” Randy Nelson, head of mobile insights at app research firm Sensor-Tower said. “Pokémon Go made that and 50 million in a sprint.”
There’s no gainsaying the game’s addictive nature. Some people just cannot put it down, like the American newsman who was spotted playing it during a State Department press briefing by spokesman John Kirby. “I’m just keeping an eye on it,” the journalist said when Kirby brought up the subject.
Time magazine reports that Pokémon Go has restored gaming to a communal experience and has inspired countless meet-ups, bar-crawls, and even dates.
On Thursday, Sam Clark, 33, from Southampton, Hampshire, claimed to be the first player to have caught all 143 characters available in the UK. He walked 140 miles hunting for the virtual creatures and shed more than two stones in weight.
Pokémon Go – the work of a US-based software development company Niantic – cleverly harnesses your smartphone’s GPS and camera. Your screen shows a 3D map of your current location and also where virtual Pokémon creatures are lurking. You physically walk in the direction of the creature and capture it by flicking a PokéBall at it. This particular action is projected onto whatever scene is in your camera lens at that moment, hence “augmented reality”.
There are also numerous PokéStops flagged up on the 3D map – real-world locations which you can walk towards on your screen to collect PokéBalls and other items.
Some of the PokéStops listed in Glasgow city centre include Buchanan bus station, the back entrance to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the gates at Glasgow Caledonian University, the Cineworld cinema – and even a random fence in Hill Street. The map also denotes virtual “gyms”, where team-based battles can take place. And, in exchange for real money, you can buy in-game resources.
I think I’ve explained all of this correctly. It has to be said that I really was the wrong person for this story*. I’ve never had any aptitude for computer games. My own phone, which offers only text and calls, was magnificently unsuitable, being the puny kind of handset that gets sand kicked in its face on the beach by smartphones.
After an abortive attempt at playing the game on an iPod Touch I borrowed a colleague’s Android smartphone.
The app itself is easy to download, after which a cartoon called Pokémon Professor Willow makes an appearance. “Hello there!” he says. “I am Professor Willow. Did you know that this world is inhabited by creatures known as Pokémon? Pokémon can be found in every corner of the Earth. Some can run across the plains, others fly through the skies ...” Thanks, prof, I thought. You had me at “hello”.
I tried to register a player name, but successive suggestions, all of them more or less appropriate – “Amateur”, “Reluctant”, “Baffled” and even “Too Old for This” – were not available. At length, “Russell-Sunday” was accepted, prompting Prof Willow to enthuse: “Oh, what a cool nickname! Nice to meet you!”
Capturing the first Pokémon was disarmingly easy, and it has to be said that there’s a certain novelty in wandering down a real life street, following a route suggested on the 3D map, and flicking a ball at one of the little creatures.
It’s interesting, too, to see familiar landmarks cropping up as PokéStops, such as a memorial plaque outside the Sunday Herald offices commemorating four Glasgow firemen who died in an explosion and fire in Renfield Street in 1898.
It struck me that there are Pokémon players who will come across that plaque for the first time, thanks to the game.
Lots of places have benefited from exposure in Pokémon Go – the Cardwell Garden Centre in Gourock among them. On Facebook, the garden centre has asked Pokémon fans to post a picture of any Pokémons they catch there. Others have praised the fact that the game encourages players to explore their environs and get exercise through walking. But accidents can happen. Two of the most recent cases were reported in Israel: a man of 35 smashed into a glass door and a girl of 15 suffered a fractured skull and intracranial haemorrhage after falling off her bike during a chase. In Oregon, a player was reportedly stabbed when hunting Pokémon at 1am. He refused to get treatment so he could keep playing. If you’re not totally hooked on mobile or computer games – and, moreover, if you’d really rather not walk down a street with your gaze locked on to your phone screen – then Pokémon Go might not hold any immediate appeal. For me, the initial novelty gave way to feelings of boredom after an hour. There was also, it has to be said, the small matter of the colleague wanting his phone back.
* No you weren’t. I wanted a fish out of water story, and you were the best man for the job – Ed.