Unless you have taken refuge at the bottom of a garden pond or somewhere similar, you must have heard about the Pokémon Go, which has taken the entire world by storm.
Read on to know more about the Pokémon Go and all the hype that it has created:
What is Pokémon Go?
Pokémon Go is an online augmented reality game. It is a location-based, free-to-play mobile game which can be played in multiplayer mode. The game also has its own customised wearable tech.
The game was rolled out on July 6th and since then, the Pokémon Go app installs on Android have surpassed Tinder. It is expected that Pokémon Go will soon have more daily mobile users than Twitter.
Pokémon Go is based on the basic Pokémon game. The players need to find the creatures, catch and train them, and battle with them. Pokémon Go uses the GPS sensors in your phone to track your location. The Google map serves as the basic game board. The character being chased moves in the game as the players walk around in real life. PokéStops are the specific locations in the physical world related to some location or event.
The layers can interact by walking up to a place in the real world. The display of your handset serves as a viewfinder and incorporates reality with the game; thus “augmented reality”.
Playing Pokémon Go
Pokémon Go is a very natural game where you rely on your instincts to catch ’em all. For instance, the fire Pokémon is often located somewhere around a gas station while the grass Pokémon usually shows up in parks. The players can win points by catching more Pokémons and collecting free items from the Pokéstops. After Level 5, that game allows the players to train their Pokémon at a nearby Gym, often a local landmark.
Pokémon Go is configured to alert you to the presence of a Pokémon in your vicinity by causing vibration in your phone. An official Pokémon Go Plus wearable is also on the way.
It will be a wrist wearable that will connect to your smartphone via Bluetooth and alert you to the presence of a Pokémon by buzzing. A button on this $35 wrist device will allow you to catch the Pokémon.
Global Rollout
It has been well-established that Pokémon Go is still to hit the global market. (If you have any doubts you can ask this Australian who was laid off by his Singaporean employers after his social media rant about the unavailability of Pokémon Go in Singapore).
Pokémon Go was supposed to kick off its global launch with its Australia release on July 6th. The plan was to launch it in North America followed by Europe and then Asia.
However, by the time Pokémon Go hit North America, the demand for the app was huge and servers faltered under the immense load. The game skyrocketed to the top spot on both the Google’s Play store and Apple’s the App store. Once the user complaints regarding failed logins and freezing and crashing of the game began to roll in, the global launch was paused. Pokémon Go will make its global debut in the following week.
Pokémon Go Transforms the World
Pokémon Go has indeed changed the world for better or for worse. The Ohio state is using Pokémon Go to drive up the sales of the tickets for its home football game. Business Insider reported that the users are making restaurant choices based on the availability of their Pokémon in the area.
On the other hand, some people have voiced their concerns about the extent of permissions for the Pokémon Go. Some Apple users of the app were hoodwinked to give up the keys to broad information from their Google account, including Gmail and Maps history information without their express permission. The makers of Pokémon Go said they are working on the fix.
Some players of Pokémon Go have been involved in unfortunate accidents like the 19-years-old Shayla Wiggins whose search for a water-based Pokémon in Wyoming led her to a dead body near a bridge. The St. Louis Police reported that four teens were caught when a robbery victim called authorities from a convenience store. Apparently, the robbers employed the geo-location feature of the Pokémon Go to predict the location and isolation of a prospective victim.
Have you played the game yet? How did it go? Let us know in comments!