Pokémon Go – Dani’s Gameplay Blog Eng 486

I decided instead of splitting up my time between multiple days/multiple posts for this last blog I would rather play Pokémon Go as I’m sure it was meant to be played: I spent two hours total walking around with my phone doing my best to participate in as many game activities as I possibly could. I mostly spent the time walking around campus and the areas near my apartment (by Safeway).

This experience wasn’t really so different from playing while walking to/between classes on campus – my main way of playing most of the time. I walked around, caught some pokémon, swiped some pokéstops hatched a couple of eggs, and attempted (once again) to use the gyms.

As with previous attempts, I found the gyms rather useless. None of my pokémon are strong enough to fight a gym belonging to a different team, and “training” at my own team’s gyms got boring, to be frank. It would be nice to have a different mechanic for training your pokémon; one that you can do without needing to be in the vicinity of a gym. I think this would increase the overall playability of the game by giving players something to do when they’re not near any locations of interest.

This goes into my next point about playing the game in general and especially in this longer session – off campus or away from more crowded areas of interest, Pokémon Go gets significantly more boring. Pokémon show up constantly on campus and around grocery stores, coffee shops, etc.; on the other hand, in neighborhoods they are notably scarcer. I encounter many more pokémon (usually the same ones over and over) on campus between the library and Lillis than I do on my entire walk home – this seems a little silly, in my opinion, and overall makes the game significantly less playable. I wouldn’t call Eugene “rural” – but what do players who leave in areas with smaller populations and less “stuff” overall do?

I can literally see gyms and pokéstops in 3/4 of the directions from my house, but there isn’t anything near enough to have a significant accumulation of pokémon in the vicinity of my home. I understand wanting to be careful about putting pokéstops and gyms around people’s homes to avoid players lingering where they aren’t wanted, but they could at least try to put more pokémon in these large empty spaces, especially if they want to encourage players to walk through them rather than driving to larger hubs of activity.

For me it isn’t that difficult: I can walk to the Safeway/Starbucks right behind my apartment if I want, or I can hang out on campus for a while. But there is such a lack of variety of pokémon in these areas that it’s already gotten rather boring. I walked around for maybe 30 minutes before losing interest, although I plodded through to get in my last couple of hours of gameplay.

Overall, I feel like there just isn’t enough in Pokémon Go to keep players enthralled for more than a few hours. Perhaps this is different with children, as they have less access to some of these busier areas. I just don’t see the point in looking down at my phone as I walk to class or around my neighborhood; I enjoy walking, and I don’t need a game to entertain me as I do it.

I see the benefits that early players mentioned when faced with backlash; some people have a hard time getting themselves to walk places or do things without extra encouragement. But I think of when the game first came out and we played at Disneyland or Santa Monica Pier; we were playing together, but most of us were more interested in our screens than just having a good time and enjoying the hustle and bustle around us. I actually had to force everyone in my group to just put their phones away and be real people for a while. This wasn’t the case at all a few weeks later, and I think we’re better off for it. Perhaps I don’t actually want Pokémon Go to get better, if I’m being honest. I think we have enough distractions on our phones without having more reasons to constantly check them.