The long awaited, free-to-play augmented reality game, Pokémon GO, became the cultural phenomenon that broke the summer. It quickly made more money that the rest of the mobile game economy and brought hordes of people out of their air-conditioned homes to wander around, aimlessly, on 95 degree days. It sounds surreal, but people developed cheats in record time, some ran into the ocean to catch rare Pokémon, and a Chinese firm made their own knockoff since the original is banned in that country. I showed my mom and strangers on the street how to play so they could have something to do while walking their dog. They sold out to Starbucks and created their own frappuccino. What kind of game has their own Starbucks drink?
The world was drunk in love on Pokémon— it was a 90’s fever dream come true that young and old could enjoy.
I set my phone on fire and ate up my month data playing this game, and I was happy to do so. I hung out with friends more than I would have otherwise on those sweltering days, and I had something to look forward to when I finally walked out of organic chemistry lab at 9 PM, since a ton of Pokémon spawn on college campuses. That even made me eager to come back to school in the fall; someone started a rumor that Dratinis spawned by the Calaveras River.
But it’s been a few months since I’ve paid the little blue app any real attention, and that’s because the game lost its nostalgic magic that worked so well and enchanted so many in the summer. Their Valentine’s Day event just went live, and even though the double-candy and increased spawn rates during the Halloween event brought the game back to the top of charts in the App Store, that magic is wearing off, too. There’s been too many nebulous promises and eager speculation about new features and improved performance, but little wish fulfillment. How perfect would it have been to introduce a breeding system for Valentine’s? Or even deliver on the whispers about a complete Generation 2 launch at the new year? Increased spawn of cute, pink Pokémon is nice, I guess, but it feels like a distraction. A disappointment.
Lack of new, literally game-changing features is a small disappointment, but those have a way of piling up. There’s a running joke in Pokémon GO’s update release notes, ever since the game launched and waves of people overwhelmed their servers. In one of the first updates Niantic rolled out, instead of addressing the server problem or fixing doomed features like the “nearby” system, they made “minor text fixes.” It’s a humble, tongue-in-cheek note to make about a world-wide phenomenon, but every update since then has really felt like a minor one. Only a handful of new Pokémon have been introduced, no legendary events have been pushed, and trading and breeding are still only hopeful rumors.
Sure, a bunch of changes for the better have been implemented: The nearby and gym system isn’t entirely awful, most bugs have been squashed, and servers are a little more reliable now. But these improvements had to be made over the course of months as Niantic hunted down third party systems that tried to fix the game instead of doing it themselves, and that took long enough for them to lose the leeway and forgiveness that a shiny new honeymoon period grants them.
It started as a little app that changed the world despite being written off as just “Ingress but with a Pokémon skin.” It wasn’t ready for the amount of love and support it would inspire, but we forgave those shortcomings because of lofty promises and sheer fondness for the franchise and novelty. It’s still a charming game, and I can’t bear to uninstall it just yet, but the magic is gone.
