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If you still haven’t heard of Pokémon Go, you are probably living under a rock…
Pokémon Go is unarguably the hottest game of the summer thus far. Developed by Niantic, a software development company based in San Francisco, California, the app was released on July 6, 2016 in the
U.S. and Australia. Pokémon Go was an instant hit the second it hit the App Store and Google Play; the game skyrocketed the day it was released, quickly obtaining approximately 7.5 million downloads in the U.S. alone (as of July 11). The app has even bumped its publisher’s (Nintendo) stock almost 64 percent.
For those of you who still do not know what I am talking about, Pokémon Go is a location based, augmented reality video game that can be downloaded on iOS or Android smartphones. Now I understand that “location based, augmented reality” might sound confusing, so, let me simplify. Basically, through Google Maps (the location based part of the game), the app is able to track your location in the real world and your character in the game follows. The augmented reality part of the game lets one see Pokémon through his or her camera. The game generates Pokémon and puts them somewhere within one’s real world, which only they can only see through their camera. This game is an enormous breakthrough and stepping stone for augmented reality type games.
The game is awesome for the millennial generation because it actually makes the player get up and walk around. In order to find and catch Pokémon, one must walk around their neighborhood or city to find these creatures. The game even institutes PokéStops and gyms to get the player moving. These PokéStops give players free items such as Poké Balls about every five minutes (as long as the player is in the radius of the stop). PokéStops can also be used to one’s advantage for finding Pokémon. When a Lure Module is placed at a PokéStop, it attracts Pokémon for all players in the area. The gyms on the other hand, is where people battle.