The smartphone game Pokémon GO was forced to be released prior to the company's intended date. The game was released in New Zealand and Australia first but this pushed forward a rampant amount of illegal downloading. Within 24 hours, the game was made available for legal download in the United States. During this time, social media had been flooded with both excitement and frustration as people began to try and understand this game on their own. There have been plenty of outcomes aside from game play which have made the experience better (and worse) at points.

The servers constantly being down

Prior to the initial release of the game, there were reports of major issues in regards to the app crashing or the servers being down. Since the release, there has been a decent amount of frustration displayed on social media which has resulted in websites which show server availability in real time.

Choosing a starter VS being given one at random

There have been reports of accounts being given the option to choose starters while others were not as lucky. The ability to catch starters once in the game itself has given another level of excitement to players as they were not usually able to do this in the previous games.

Choosing your team affiliation at level 5

The exciting part about picking teams is that you can coordinate with those around you or in your friend group. There are three different teams to choose from…

The midnight searches

The servers tend to be more stable during the later hours of the day which has resulted in many trainers going around to fight Gyms and catch Pokémon during the early hours of the morning. While this may be slightly dangerous in some areas, it has pushed many people to engage in exercise which they wouldn’t normally have done. Along with this, people are also physically going to places they wouldn’t normally find themselves to capture the Pokémon they need.

Making friends

Since trainers need to be physically in the vicinity of Poké-Stops or Gyms in order to interact with it, many will find themselves in the same location as other players. Personally, when I was going to a Gym on the first day of game play, I found myself interacting with two kids of the same team trying to conquer a Gym. There are so many interactions just like this and it will serve as a tool to bring trainers closer together and make the game more personable.

While this game is very new and has many bugs which have to be sorted out in future updates, the players seem to be excited to engage in even more game play.