Why PokemonGO and Brigge are kinda the same thing

If you’ve used both, you’d agree that they are pretty much the same — it’s just that one uses Augmented Reality and the other hinges on plain old reality. And well, Brigge sort of makes you look away from your phone every once in a while. But that apart, here’s how we are pretty much alike-

1. Both want you to leave your couch and your living room. Well, we don’t insist, tbh. We’re pretty excited about sitting in and playing Giant Jenga or Ludo, just as much as jogging 10 kms at 5:00 am in the morning. (Yup, our “activists” span the entire spectrum). But like PokemonGO, we want you to do something that involves actually doing something.
2. Both encourage you to explore new places and neighbourhoods. Whether it’s through food walks or heritage tours, checking out new pubs or cleaning up a footpath — we are all about exploring our cities through people and activities. PokemonGO takes you places too, although it may be hard to take in your surroundings too well when there’s a charizard to catch.
3. Both are great ways to occupy your leisuretime. Nothing to do this weekend? Catch a Bulbasaur or Start an activity on Brigge. Or best — find other players on Brigge, team up and catch ’em all. We have quite a few serious players on our community.

PEEEEEEEKAAAAACHUUUUUU!!!!

4. Both foster meeting people. Well, kinda. I mean you would certainly meet people while playing PokemonGO if you managed to look up from your screen. And there was that incident where scores of players bumped into each other at New York’s central park while trying to catch a rare pokemon. At Brigge we sort of compel you to put the phone aside — I mean you do use it to find people, but then when you’re doing your activities, you put the phone away. Unless of course you’re meeting up to play PokemonGO.

5. Both are all about getting more active in the physical world. In this case, we sorta complement each. Register on PokemonGO and the first thing you see: ‘Get outside’. (And do what…..?)Register on Brigge and we’ve got basketball groups, tiki tika fans, a killer baddy group that keeps hosting tournaments, joggers that are hell bent on waking up at 5 am no matter what, trekkers, marathon runners, cyclists — we even have a juggling group. PokemonGO gets you outside. Brigge keeps you there.

Perhaps the only difference between Brigge and PokemonGO is that we don’t have colourful and cute pocket monsters. But that would beat the whole point of getting people to hang out with each other while doing cool activities — so we won’t be designing any monsters soon. And while we totally heart Pikachu, we don’t really see the point of going outside if you’re still stuck to your phone. Minor creative differences, you see.

That said, we’re all about apps that go beyond the internet and online social media. We totally dig AR. And Pikachu. We just like to take it a step further, keep it a bit more real, and straightforward. So the way we see it — get on the app, but then get off it, and go out in the real world, and catch up with some real people.