One of the real cool things about Pokemon Go is that it IS played in the real world. Yes, it is a map based augmented reality game which encourages you to get out of your couch and explore your surroundings. That means your city (it is still mostly an urban game), and believe me that you haven't seen or explored most part of your city (coming from someone who lived in Houston, TX for the last 12 years).
It is just so much fun to explore local parks, like the Sam Houston Park in downtown Houston featured the the AR picture here, and meet with other people of similar interest and relax, chill, talk about Pokemon or life in general. Yes, sometime with toddlers and people from all age groups and socio-economic background for that matter.
I do not want this blog to become a Pokemon Go guide, simply because there are some very good one already out there. I personally like gamepress a lot, I go there almost daily. Instead what I like to write about is how I am playing the game with my family. How technology (read: phone usage) can sometime brings a family together in a urban setting as well. I say this specifically because today there is a lot of backlash against too much mobile device usage. Without getting into the argument, I like to say, almost all of it is apt and justified. We do look at our phones a lot, and we don't need to. But may be there is some room for wisdom, as we invented these devices, may be we can use them effectively to our advantage. In my case spend some quality time with my older daughter.
Initially when the game was first launched, it was very glitchy and most you can do in the game for a long time (nearly a year) is just to catch wild Pokemon, battle in a gym with other trainer's Pokemon, hatch a Pokemon by walking a set distance. All these activities were a lot of fun, but gym battle become very restrictive very quickly, so only a select few high level trainers usually controlled key areas of the city. But during summer of 2017 new gym mechanics were introduced with more inclusive battle mechanics and soon after during Pokemon Go Fest is Chicago, legendary raid bosses were introduced on July 22, 2017. I generally consider this was the time the game became matured and more cooperative and social.
Why? Because, these legendary Pokemon requires advance coordination for a group of 4 to 10 players to defeat. So just even a couple of friends going out for a evening hangout is not enough. Therefore, by design you must ask strangers for help! And therefore Discord is introduced as a free mode of communication and coordination. Very quickly it was understood that you must expand your social interaction and actually talk to people and ask for help. This was the original vision of the game and it only took about an year to accomplish. More on this later.
All images are various forms of in-game screenshots and AR images taken by me on my iphone