Rena Charles and Angela Pustorino work at the Aerena Galleries in Healdsburg, but they also have something else in common: the thrill of the hunt.
They and others roam the Healdsburg Plaza with their phones at the ready, searching for a buzz to tell them that their quarry is nearby.
When they find it, they tap and flick their phone to throw a little red-and-white ball to capture it. Then it’s on to the next one.
A new mobile phone app has taken Sonoma County by storm since its release July 6. Pokémon Go blends childhood nostalgia with augmented reality (AR) technology in an instant hit that has already surpassed Twitter in its number of daily users. Reuters reports that Nintendo’s market cap has doubled to $42 billion as a direct result of the game’s popularity.
The newest game in the series is available for iPhone and Android phones, and uses the Google Maps API to construct a virtual map over real GPS maps for almost every location in the world. The game was developed by San Francisco-based Niantic, Inc., which is also responsible for the 2013 AR game Ingress.
When Pokémon Go players move in real life, their character moves with them, and can encounter various virtual Pokémon for the player to try and capture by flicking their finger and lobbing a Pokéball on the screen. If you’ve been wondering why so many people are walking together late at night in parks with their faces in their phones, this is probably why.
After the player captures enough Pokémon and visits Pokestops at real-world landmarks to collect helpful items to assist in battle, they “level up,” allowing them to catch higher-level Pokémon. At level 5, they are given a choice between joining one of three teams: Instinct, Mystic and Valor, whose colors are yellow, blue and red, respectively.
The team mechanic allows players to have friendly rivalries over various Pokémon Gyms in each town and fight virtual battles to maintain control of the area.
Charles, aka Renaaachu, plays on Team Valor, and Angela Pustorino, aka savvycakes, plays on Team Instinct.
Their opposing factions are red and yellow, respectively, and they engage in friendly competition to take over virtual “Gyms” in town, where they throw their Pokémon into the fray in the hopes of a takeover. Their gallery space counts as both a Pokémon stop and a Gym.
“I had an original Nintendo when it first came out, so I kind of feel like how that was a cultural phenomenon, this is the same sort of (phenomenon),” Charles said. “Everyone’s falling in love with it, you can go outdoors, you can play with friends. It’s something to bring us together in these times.”
Charles and her boyfriend played one day starting at noon, and got home around 3 in the morning after visiting Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa. “Even at 3 a.m., there were still people out,” she said.
Pustorino enjoys a sense of unity from the game. “I love seeing everybody out and knowing that almost everyone around me is playing and that I can hear the music go by and I hear people talking about teams, and where to find a Pokémon,” Pustorino said. “It’s great, I feel like suddenly we’re all really connected, we’re like a big global community.”
For the uninitiated, Pokémon is a series of video games and movies, an animated show and card game phenomenon that first launched in Japan with Pocket Monsters Red and Green on the Game Boy in 1996 and hasn’t really lost momentum since.
The huge fandom has spawned countless amounts of merchandise, from clothing to Happy Meals. Pokémon is a Japanese portmanteau of “pocket” and “monsters,” due to the portable nature of digital creatures that are captured in a “Poké Ball” and stored in a pocket.
In the series, Pokémon trainers travel the globe to collect, train and battle different types of Pokémon, incorporating elements of strategy akin to rock, paper, scissors by analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of each opponent’s pocket monsters in battle.
Exercise is a crucial element of the new game, to the point that you have to travel outside of your town and visit different types of terrain to catch every Pokémon available.
Not only do players have to move to encounter Pokémon, they also have to walk to hatch special eggs that they find along the way, which have the possibility of hatching into rare types that are hard to find out in the wild.
The Muncie Animal Shelter in Indiana took advantage of this fact by asking local players to walk a shelter dog while they go out Poké-hunting, and a photo spread on Bored Panda shows there were lines out the door just an hour after it was announced.
In other happy news, many players report a decrease in depression and anxiety due to newfound interest in the game, possibly a result of spending time in nature; some players have launched initiatives to set “Lure” modules outside of hospitals, meaning that for a short time, Pokémon are brought to an area where people are often not able to move around to play the game; and many news outlets report a large amount of diversity across players of the game congregating and sharing tips with each other.
That’s not to say that the game isn’t without its issues. Reports have surfaced of players being mugged after criminals set Lures in obscure places at night, a teenage girl got hit by a car in Pennsylvania after crossing a highway to catch a Pokémon, and two men fell off a cliff in Encinitas while trying to catch one. There have been no Go-related fatalities reported thus far.
Pokémon Go is being released in stages worldwide; it started with New Zealand, Australia and the United States. On Saturday, July 16, the game was released in 26 new countries across Europe, causing massive server lag, which meant issues with logging in to the game as well as slow loading times. In addition, according to PC Magazine, on the same day it was reportedly attacked by hacker group PoodleCorp, and then on Sunday by group OurMine, rendering it almost completely unplayable over the weekend.
Healdsburg police chief Kevin Burke reports no problems with the game except for two suspicious circumstance reports where it turns out they were just people playing the game late at night.
“There are a lot of people around at night, our graveyard shift officers have observed five to 10 people between 11 p.m. and 3:30 in the morning capturing creatures,” he said. “If you’re out walking around, be safe, pay attention to your surroundings, maybe reconsider whether you should be walking around at 3 a.m. Healdsburg is one of the safest communities in Sonoma County, so as far as a place to do it, I don’t think there’s a huge risk. Use common sense.”
According to Sonoma County Regional Parks communications manager Meda Freeman, there has been an uptick in the number of visitors coming to play Pokémon Go in parks, going so far as asking if a parking fee can be waived for a quick trip to a Pokestop.
“We are seeing a lot of visitors playing Pokémon Go, especially at larger parks like Spring Lake, which has about 40 (Pokestops) featured in the app,” she said.
“Rangers say the game has people walking trails and constantly checking their phones. We haven’t had any problems, though two grown women become so engrossed in the game they ran into a maintenance worker on a trail … We’re glad to see game fans getting outside and being active, but we just want to remind them to remain aware of their surroundings, especially if they’re on a busy trail.”
Safety tips: Don’t play alone at night, be cautious of Lures set in obscure or dangerous locations, be aware of your surroundings and don’t play while driving. Now go out there and catch ‘em all!
