What You Need to Understand About Pokemon Go

It’s been about two days since the North America launch of Pokemon Go. Every hour on my various feeds, more friends are emerging from their dusty gaming closets and presenting screenshots of their starter Pokemon to the world. I chose bulbasaur, but that was an accident and a way less dramatic story in reality than in my mind.

If you are unfamiliar with Pokemon Go, it is the long-anticipated answer to the millennial call for an accessible and social-oriented version of Pokemon. The corollary here (and why your ears should perk up) is that it utilizes augmented reality to form a purely location-based game that is entirely contingent on your physical location. Sound interesting? It gets better. Using Google Street View and the camera on your phone, the app maps public hot spots in your surroundings and turns them into key action areas in the game. It’s pretty awesome.

To be clear, my primary purpose of writing this post is not to reminisce about what growing up playing Pokemon meant to me or why I am so excited for this new mobile iteration of the world I genuinely love. (Although, that will surely come up.) I am writing this post because I think that The Pokemon Company has just unleashed a goldmine of social learnings onto the media world. If you work in any capacity that relates to mobile development or social networks and you are not watching the trajectory of Pokemon Go extremely closely, then you are making a massive mistake.

From a social lens, Pokemon Go is potentially industry-changing. Only time will tell its true success, but I believe the following three questions are vital for monitoring any of its game-changing factors:

How are people reacting to the physical, location-based element of the game?

I could not use the app on my commute this morning. The GPS signal that the game requires was lost almost immediately as my subway moved underground and my normal passive app time had to be directed elsewhere despite my excitement for its launch.

I also could not explore the game at night before going to bed — another key time when I check up on various apps.

However…I did go for a stroll today just so that I could try and catch some Pokemon. And so did both of my sisters. The game’s ability to pique enough curiosity to get people moving is perhaps the most counter-intuitive and behavior-changing element of all of the game’s features. To use the app, you need to be doing so purposefully and not passively. As my sister put it, “Pokemon discovered the algorithm to make nerds exercise. I’ve never wanted to go for a walk so badly.”

Does the community stick around?

I have already reconnected with old friends over the Pokemon Go launch and the app has come up in conversation dozens of times — all with the same enthusiasm of any other fanboy-oriented product. Now the question becomes, how long will we actually stay interested?

This highly anticipated launch reminded me of the hype surrounding J.K. Rowling’s announcement of Pottermore. The most loyal of the fans counted down and excitedly got involved with the digital publishing site, but as the content slowed, so did the active users.

I am absolutely loving the overly eager and familiar community that is being resurrected by Pokemon Go, but whether or not it will still exist next week or month remains to be seen.

How far-reaching is the game’s inherent virality?

Within 24 hours, dozens and dozens of Pokemon Go memes have cropped up. The amazing thing about these memes is that they are essentially user generated content and the word-of-mouth is totally organic. The game is not instructing users to share across platforms. In fact, there is currently no social integrations in the app at all…but the fact that the church across the street from my house is a PokeStop is funny enough that I’ve taken a screenshot and sent it to multiple friends. And, in return, my friends have all sent back screenshots of Pokemon sitting in their neighbors’ yards or some other aspect of the game that is inherently shareable.

In a sense, Pokemon cracked the code of creating something that users share on their own. Rather than forcing content on us, Pokemon has unleashed something that causes an inclination for making our own content and sharing it on our own terms.

SO, why is every millennial on the (literal) block freaking out about Pokemon Go?

I think it boils down to this: Millennials are nostalgia fiends. We are junkies addicted to any moment that brings us slightly back to the good ol’ 90’s and early 2000’s.

But, why?

Many people have their own theories and supposed answers…personally, about a year ago, I was thinking about this a lot. It confused me that the majority of my peers viewed each of their pasts with this glossy 20/20 hindsight when we are so clearly addicted to and in love with modern day technology.

It occurred to me that nostalgia is ultimately about youth. And youth is the ability to see things objectively without the bias of experience.

The Pokemon Company’s release of a social version of their eponymous game perfectly coincides with both the millennial desire for youth through nostalgia and the throng of social networks that have exploded over the last half decade.

For many of us, Pokemon was our first foray into independent problem-solving and strategy. But, perhaps more importantly, Pokemon was our introduction to the concept of goals —teaching us to always strive to be the very best, like no one ever was.