Pokémon GO™ from a Local Mom's Perspective

So let me start out by saying that if you’re looking for game hacks for the new  Pokémon GO™ game that has taken the nation by storm, this article isn’t for you. This is an article for parents who are on the fence about whether or not to allow their kids to get involved in Pokemon Go - or to get involved themselves in the game - and in short, my answer would be a resounding yes. But let me back up a bit and start at the beginning.

I’m a nerd. I’m old enough that I remember watching the original Star Trek series on a UHF channel on a TV that didn’t have a remote control, unless you counted us kids, that was hooked by a wire to the antenna on our roof. I’m old enough I remember when Star Wars first hit the theater - the one that had ONE screen - and yes, I saw it at least five or six times. So I’ve been a nerd or a geek or whatever you want to call it since I was young. I’m also old enough that I “missed” the Pokemon craze that a lot of parents of school age kids, especially tweens, went through. So some of this Pokemon Go stuff has a pretty steep learning curve for me.

That doesn’t make it any less fun. It was a little rough getting started. The servers have been swamped, so creating an account for myself and my two middle school age kids wasn’t the smoothest process, and now that they’ve added Europe to the Pokemon Go game, there have definitely been some glitches in the game - it occasionally locks up and you have to exit out completely and restart it. That’s frustrating, but doesn’t really prevent us from playing, just slows us down a little.

There have been a lot of “Pokemon Go bashers” on social media, and a bunch of articles - mostly fake - about people getting killed or causing huge car accidents while playing. Although there are definitely people who are less aware of their surroundings than they should be while playing, it isn’t a game that you can easily play from a car - unless you have an awesome PokeParent who is willing to drive you around to a bunch of remote PokeStops to collect PokeBalls and other items … oh, wait a minute, have I lost you?

The main thing you need to know about Pokemon Go is that it is kind of like a giant scavenger hunt. The overall goal is to collect as many Pokemon as possible so you can earn “medals” and “experience” and level up, and you can “evolve” and “power up” your Pokemon (the actual critters themselves) to become more powerful, so they can compete in virtual battles at PokeGyms. There are probably dozens of PokeStops - places where you can collect Pokeballs and other useful items - along your daily commute, and if you don’t have the app, you wouldn’t even know it. Except that outside almost every church, and almost all historical plaques, other public locations (downtown Blacksburg has several right around the farmer’s market, which makes it a popular local hangout for players) there are PokeStops. You can only use a single PokeStop once every 5 minutes or so - which is where the “Go” comes from in the name - in order to maximize the number of balls you collect (which you throw at PokeMon to collect them) you have to GO to a bunch of different PokeStops and spin the little circle that has a picture of what makes that stop special. Blacksburg is a really fun place to play PokeMon Go because not only do we have all the “regular” PokeStops - but also nearly every Hokie Bird statue is a PokeStop, which makes for a lot of jokes about HokieStops and Hokie-Poke everything. (It’s also a fun game to play with tweens if you like to hear jokes about balls, but that might be a subject for parents of older kids. Suffice it to say that middle school humor definitely rears its head when you’re throwing balls at things like JigglyPuffs.)

There are over a hundred kinds of PokeMon, most (all? Again, I’m no expert) have multiple “evolutions”. So you can spend your PokeCandy (which you collect when you collect a PokeMon - although nearly every “line” of PokeMon has a different kind of candy, and you generally have to trade in your lower value PokeMon of a particular type to collect extra candy - this will all make sense once you start playing, I promise) to “evolve” your lower level PokeMon into things that are more powerful. And once you reach a certain level, you almost have to start going to a PokeGym to start testing your PokeMon out in battles - or at least training, if the gym happens to be held by the same “team” you are on. Oh yeah - you pick a team - either yellow, red, or blue, which all have their own clever names. I would recommend family members picking the same color - my son wanted us to all have different colors, but it would be a lot more fun if all three of us could go attack a gym together.

But the teams aren’t all that important. In the short time that my two kids and I have been playing, we’ve  met and chatted with dozens of people who are also playing. A lot are the typical 18-25 year old college-aged person that you would expect - but we’ve also seen dozens of parents out with their kids, some older people by themselves, and to a one, everyone we’ve chatted with has been friendly and helpful, often offering advice before we even get a chance to ask for it. What a lovely way for a community of diverse individuals to come together. My daughter met a girl who is also starting middle school in a couple weeks - and it turns out they have tons of mutual friends - and all sorts of people are playing it - including tonight a man who identified himself only as a “mental health professional” - he chuckled when I mentioned how “addictive” the game is - but kept right on collecting PokeMon. Oh - and you’ll see a lot of people walking while they have the game open, because the game keeps track of how far you walk (driving doesn’t count!) because it allows you to hatch PokeEggs that have super-awesome PokeMon in them.

It’s also been a fun way to get the kids out and show them different places around town. The PokeStops are all labelled as to what makes them a PokeStop - sometimes artwork on a wall, or a statue in front of a park - and my kids showed me some things around town that I hadn’t seen before, like a rainwater collecting tank behind the Blacksburg Motor Company that looks like a “giant green pear”. And yes, I spend a lot of timing reminding them to “not walk while you’re looking at your phone” - but given the tendency of so many drivers to text and drive, I’m hoping that I can instill better habits in them now by being that voice in their ear that they remember when they’re behind the wheel.