dead serious here, that was such a great summer--my siblings and I had so much fun walking around our town. one night we heard a kid screech "SNORLAX" outside the Catholic church, and a bunch of people came running.
If this helps folks get it: when I was at Pokémon, one aspect of my job was to red-team this game. As I tell people in privacy conversations: I launched a worldwide geolocation app for children with zero regulatory inquiries.
I tell at conferences the story of the one thing I completely missed in red-teaming: minefields in Bosnia; and how I remedied that. I also gave a conference keynote about the game for Games For Change from a hospital bed after my stroke; I’ve never watched it but am told it was good.
this is so painful to hear--I'm so sorry that the very real, very human cost, something that never really occurred to goofs like me, impacted you in this way. I hope life is a little gentler for you now. 💜
Please don’t be. Knowing how much people enjoyed the game was what got me through getting it out the door. That summer, every Sunday, my wife used take me down to the beach near our house so I could watch families playing it together, saying “you did this”. I didn’t write the code but even still.
There was a specific moment in July 2016 when 1 in 4 mobile phones in the world was playing Pokemon GO. That was a surreal thing to have been a part of.
I was once staying in a hotel in a strange town and late at night I couldn't sleep and starting playing. So I was a few blocks away from the hotel and a young lady walking in front of me looked back a few times and finally I was like "It's OK, I'm playing too!" and we both laughed. Magical.
I still PoGo. Every day. I'm a dog walker and "of a certain age" to be the target audience of the first Pokemon games, so naturally it's a good fit all around. And like that other guy said, in dark days it helped me get out of the house. That summer was the bright spot before the dark election night
I recently recovered from long covid after having been unwell for twenty-one months. One of the things I did to celebrate being able to go on walks with my family again was to re-download Pokemon Go.
Yesterday was a community day (our kid and his friends are still very into the game), and at the park near us there were people ranging from I would guess ages 5 to 75 out walking around and playing. It’s still making a lot of people happy.
All of Niantic's games are still going, aside from the Harry Potter one, which was shut down after jkr got really bad (I hope that's related). Pimkin Bloom, Monster Hunter, I think there's an NBA game, and others. Still love Ingress (which becomes a large scale team game if you want as you advance).
as one of the guys who writes code for things, the people who handle all the non-code aspects often have a lot more to do with the success of the product than we do
Did you work on Ingress too? Loved that game, definitely got me out and walking more, and taking an interest in my local area suggesting and photographing portals
I remember hearing a story about a white guy in his 40s who got up at 2AM because he had to get his Pokémon GO fix. He ended up at a local park, where he found 2 young black guys sitting on a park bench. THEY were playing PG and were eagerly showing him what they had just found. Then a cop car
Pulled up, and they all fell silent.
The cop wanted to know what they were up to at that hour. When they finally explained they were playing PG, and had just found something big, the cop went back to the cruiser to get his personal phone, and was soon playing right along with them. 😂😂😂
In fact, I remember playing it in a park in San Francisco with my wife and kids. Some grungy guy on a Onewheel flew past, yelled at us about playing on our phones, and took off.
And bit it. He went down hard and his Frappuccino went flying.
Might be one of my favorite PoGo memories.
