Pokemon Go

I'm not a gamer, and I never really played Pokemon when I was younger.

But I'm hooked on this Pokemon Go thing.

Only reason I'm posting this here is the PoGo Servers are down.

If that's the one where you use a smart phone and run around catching pokemon, my wife and kids are hooked too.

They were catching them like crazy at Costco.

In reply to The_Jed:

That's the one. I started playing yesterday and promptly left civilization for the weekend. There are none to be caught up here.

I have no idea what all that entails, but there's a girl in Britain that found a dead body playing it. Poor fellow had drowned, apparently. Or are Pokemon deadly?

My girlfriend wanted to play it.....but the servers are constantly down

There's a whole thread on Kotaku right now with people complaining about sore legs from walking around...

I'm waiting for someone to walk out into traffic then blame Nintendo.

In reply to The0retical: People evidently need to walk or run around more if playing this game makes their legs sore.

I don't play it, but I should buy one of the newer Pokemon 3DS games.

I think this game explains why there are roaming groups of teens (and college age kids!) wandering around downtown Grand Junction staring at their phones. They're moving in packs.

My daughter is playing it. I was told that Dunkin Donuts was a huge score.

I think it I great to get the kids out walking.

Wife just told me that there's apparently some rare one in our backyard because people keep knocking on the door... guarded by the 80lbs of hatred I call a dog. At least they have enough sense not to jump my fence around here.

I've heard it's actually getting kids to go outside again and....gasp....exercise.

Took my dog to the park yesterday, so many people playing it. I asked a mom and her teen son if they were playing, she laughed and said yes. Parent-son geek interaction is awesome. (And Fraze Pavillion Saturday for a chicken wing festival was packed with players.)

I am a bit too old for the original wave of Pokemon, but my wife is a couple years younger and I knew she played some of the games and watched some of the original cartoons, so I jumped on board with the hype. She actually seemed skeptical until she caught her first pokemon. Then we spent the next hour walking around the house catching them, and later on we grabbed some to-go food and I drove around the neighborhood while she played. We are having fun. Too bad it drains the battery so quickly.

I think there's a real opportunity for some entrepreneurs here. Camp out near a Lure and sell bottled water, lemonade, soda, and snacks.

Yeah, I was thinking if you could somehow drive traffic towards your store/food truck/etc somehow with it.

Relevant XKCD

Who would have thought that the first augmented reality application with mass appeal would be Pokemon?

I got conned into going to the next town over to walk around a college campus with 2 of my friends while they hunted for pokemon. The app apparently doesn't work on my S3 Mini, so I spent the entire time pointing out random bugs. I saw at least 20 people walking around staring that their phone making comments to people about stuff that sounded like Pokemon. This was between the hours of 9:30 and 11:00pm.

I was laughing at everyone out getting pelted in buckle sized hail trying to find out if electric types did indeed spawn during thunderstorms....lol

johndej wrote: Yeah, I was thinking if you could somehow drive traffic towards your store/food truck/etc somehow with it.

Nintendo is now looking in to sponsored hotspots. Right now it appears to be random, but that is a lot of potential money wasted. I'm sure they'll find a way to ruin it and turn people off.

Keith Tanner wrote: Who would have thought that the first augmented reality application with mass appeal would be Pokemon?

Exactly. All the useful products are ignored. Let s go catch magical cartoon animals.

That said, I have it on my phone. My 5 year old plays as we ride in the car and go grocery shopping. It helps with those trips, so I support it.

In reply to BradLTL:

I figured out how to get the coins for free....I took over the two gyms in town, put a decently strong Flareon in each(1046 & 1040), then trained the gyms up to lvl 10......3 days now I have been collecting coins because nobody can knock them out. LoL

Every 21 hours I get to collect 20 coins.

In reply to WOW Really Paul?:

In my area those Flareons aren't very strong. I'm really wanting a Snorlax to defend my gyms.

BradLTL wrote:

Keith Tanner wrote: Who would have thought that the first augmented reality application with mass appeal would be Pokemon?

Exactly. All the useful products are ignored. Let s go catch magical cartoon animals.

That is amazing. I would have thought pron would have been the first thing.

I am just glad they did not adapt the game Tron to a real world application like this.