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This was something that was discussed recently in one of the Pokemon Go FB Messenger groups I'm in. The group is mostly people in their 30's and 40's, and some

This was something that was discussed recently in one of the Pokemon Go FB Messenger groups I'm in. The group is mostly people in their 30's and 40's, and some of the people don't have any friends outside of the group. The game has basically brought them a network of friends that they didn't have before. And because "raids" (in-game battles of giant Pokemon) require multiple people and for you to physically go somewhere, you end up seeing your Pokemon friends a lot. You may even spend an afternoon driving around town, chasing raid battles. Sometimes it's just saying hello and battling, but other times you strike up a convo, laugh, etc. Lots of people feel the game is dead, or think I'm weird when they find out I still play it, but there's still an active player base, and it's methods of trying to get people (usually anti-social people) out and being social, have definitely hit upon something.

erikb 9y ago
do you have a resource (blog, youtube video, etc) where one can get a quick overview of Pokemon Go? When I played it there was not much you could do, so I dropped it completely. I may still have the app installed though.
- patorjk 9y ago
  I'll list some sites below. Though the new main focus of the game is "raids". When you open the game you'll encounter gyms at various locations. 2-3 times a day a gym will have a Raid Boss (you'll know a Raid Boss when you see it, because you have to use a raid pass to fight it - you get 1 pass a day, though you can get more by using coins, which you get by taking and staying in gyms, or by paying for them). The boss will be rated from 1 to 5 stars (1 being easy - a single player can take it down; 5 being the hardest, requiring several players, though defeating a level 5 Raid will earn you the possibility of catching a legendary Pokemon). The hardest part of the game is getting enough players to take down a high level boss, which is why people have taken to joining chats to coordinate raids. Though this may be different for highly populated areas, and it's still possible to just randomly show up at a raid and find people waiting for it to start. * https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/ https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/ * https://rankedboost.com/pokemon-go/ https://rankedboost.com/pokemon-go/ * https://thesilphroad.com/ https://thesilphroad.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtyNMe3xtv3CLg5QR78HzQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtyNMe3xtv3CLg5QR78HzQ/vid... - Best youtube channel I've encountered, though it's done in vlog style, so it's probably quicker to get information from the sites above.
zanny 9y ago
You forge friendship through common struggle. You need to offer one another something or you just introduce yourselves and let one another drift off in opposite directions without any bond forged. You form your first friendships really early on with an extremely strong commonality - the hugeness of the world and your lack of information about it. Literally everything is in common with your peers circa age 2-4 because nothing is established yet. If it weren't for how our society has a habit of breaking these kids up constantly throughout their childhoods I would think those relationships would form the most iron clad friendships you can get if they survive to adulthood. Too bad about 90% of the kids you meet in daycare you never see again after you start school. School is the next big one, where for most kids they will struggle alongside each other for 13 years straight. The mixing up of classes year to year again hurts the likelihood of strong friendships forming, but you can also just have kids your age in your neighborhood as a strong peer group. You have massive amounts of commonality at that point - you are taking the same classes, you live in the same area, you know the same people, you are subject to the "same" pop culture of your school. That is where those high school clicks emerge from. The most bonded peer groups of before specialize as they age. The same hold true into college, but I definitely don't see the same commonality and uniformity there. Going through puberty is really the cutting off point where divergent personalities specialize your interests enough that finding commonality becomes much harder, and you start having much less to offer your peers over their cumulative experiences and engagements. It only gets worse from there. The more years into life you are, the more interests and specialties you have as a person that makes finding compatibility all that harder. People force themselves into relationships and marriage out of societal pressure. Nobody forces you into friendship nearly as much, so over that hump the lack of compatible people drops to near zero. Its why I think most marriages fail - they are trying to force the highest degree of friendship, when the older you get the harder it is. Pokemon Go, and video games in general, are extremely effective ways to get people a commonality to force them together and interacting in ways that can build meaningful bonds. A common challenge is essential to bonding. The more passionate you can be about it the more likely it works. But even then the 30 year old comes with baggage. They already have their favorite movies and musicians. Likes and dislikes. Hobbies and things they want to avoid. Because they have experienced so much more a fraction than they would have as children they are that much more set in stone. The adage of how you can't change a person applies here - even children demonstrate dramatically declining malleability as they gain experience in life. As you gain magnitudes more life experience your flexibility personality wise declines by similar magnitudes. It is trying to fit together puzzle pieces - if the pieces are made of clay you can mold them to fit. If they are tried out and set in stone they are rigid and it is much harder to find a match, and those matches are much easier to fracture and break. The commonality and struggle are the prongs of a puzzle piece. The more impactful on your life, the happier it makes you, the more passion you can have for it the more pronounced those prongs can be. Early on you only need the simplest commonality as being the same age or living near one another to forge bonds - as you get old and your piece gets more defined and nuanced, it takes larger struggles and stronger forces to bind pieces together.
BLKNSLVR 9y ago
Was going to post something similar here. I've got plenty of friends from prior to playing PoGo, but I see my PoGo friends more frequently because PoGo provides a common reason to meet up with them / be in the same physical location. It's definitely a somewhat unique phenomenon, and I like both the effect (seeing friends more regularly) and being able to experience it from the inside. It does, however, give me the feeling that I should put more effort into getting together with my other friends. But life provides any number of excuses to delay it.
- rubber_duck 9y ago
  >It's definitely a somewhat unique phenomenon Sounds like sports or any hobby that involves other people. But I haven't played it so maybe I'm missing what's unique about it.
  - BLKNSLVR 9y ago
    The unique part, for me, is having to physically be in a specific place to engage in parts of the game, and the places are 'anywhere around the world'. Reading the sentence I just wrote it still just sounds like sport, where you have to go to an oval or arena or whatever. But with Pokemon Go it's sort of 'anywhere' and yet specific at the same time. It's a particular place at a particular time. The difference may just be that it's a virtual / digital game rather than a physical one.
emodendroket 9y ago
I met a lot of acquaintances playing Tekken, so I can absolutely believe in the idea that a game would bring people together, even though Pokemon Go is not my thing at all.
- astrodust 9y ago
  I'm absolutely convinced that there's a lot of babies that came about singularly because of Pokemon Go.
- kongojack 9y ago
  I've also similarly made many friends through playing Tekken offline. I believe the local aspect of fighting games (as opposed to most online games nowadays), and the depth of its mechanics is very conducive to making a wide variety of close friends (old and young). I recommend people check out fighting games or games that require person to person contact to make more friends.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I'm not surprised at all... because the same thing happened with Ingress - the previous game from people behind Pokémon Go! I was only part of the local community of players (green team in my city) briefly, but it was enough to learn that people in it talk to each other all the time (via Hangouts at that time), they see each other every evening, play together and then hang out together. That's one of the strongest friendship-making activities I've ever seen.
- Aissen 9y ago
  Unfortunately, once you stop playing, there's a big chance that all of this goes away. Side note: I'm surprised how in both Ingress & Pokemon GO, friendships cross team boundaries; you can be adversaries and friends, like in any respectable sport.
  - soylentcola 9y ago
    When I unexpectedly found myself single after a long-term relationship imploded last year, I did the Tinder/OKCupid thing for a bit. One of the more amusing experiences was when I had planned a date with a girl and was telling a friend about it. At one point after describing the girl's profile, my friend stopped me and asked about some detail before pausing and telling me "she's a smurf! I know her!" (For those unfamiliar, Ingress players have tongue-in-cheek epithets for the opposing team. Green team are "frogs" and blue team are "smurfs".) The date didn't lead to anything as I don't think she had any romantic interest in me, but it was definitely a funny point when during a lull in conversation I paused and gravely asked if it was OK for her to be on a date with a "filthy frog" and she busted out laughing.
    - rak00n 9y ago
      That's a really cute story. Glad you shared.

erikb 9y ago

do you have a resource (blog, youtube video, etc) where one can get a quick overview of Pokemon Go? When I played it there was not much you could do, so I dropped it completely. I may still have the app installed though.

patorjk 9y ago
I'll list some sites below. Though the new main focus of the game is "raids". When you open the game you'll encounter gyms at various locations. 2-3 times a day a gym will have a Raid Boss (you'll know a Raid Boss when you see it, because you have to use a raid pass to fight it - you get 1 pass a day, though you can get more by using coins, which you get by taking and staying in gyms, or by paying for them). The boss will be rated from 1 to 5 stars (1 being easy - a single player can take it down; 5 being the hardest, requiring several players, though defeating a level 5 Raid will earn you the possibility of catching a legendary Pokemon). The hardest part of the game is getting enough players to take down a high level boss, which is why people have taken to joining chats to coordinate raids. Though this may be different for highly populated areas, and it's still possible to just randomly show up at a raid and find people waiting for it to start. * https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/ https://pokemongo.gamepress.gg/ * https://rankedboost.com/pokemon-go/ https://rankedboost.com/pokemon-go/ * https://thesilphroad.com/ https://thesilphroad.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtyNMe3xtv3CLg5QR78HzQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrtyNMe3xtv3CLg5QR78HzQ/vid... - Best youtube channel I've encountered, though it's done in vlog style, so it's probably quicker to get information from the sites above.

zanny 9y ago

You forge friendship through common struggle. You need to offer one another something or you just introduce yourselves and let one another drift off in opposite directions without any bond forged. You form your first friendships really early on with an extremely strong commonality - the hugeness of the world and your lack of information about it. Literally everything is in common with your peers circa age 2-4 because nothing is established yet. If it weren't for how our society has a habit of breaking these kids up constantly throughout their childhoods I would think those relationships would form the most iron clad friendships you can get if they survive to adulthood. Too bad about 90% of the kids you meet in daycare you never see again after you start school. School is the next big one, where for most kids they will struggle alongside each other for 13 years straight. The mixing up of classes year to year again hurts the likelihood of strong friendships forming, but you can also just have kids your age in your neighborhood as a strong peer group. You have massive amounts of commonality at that point - you are taking the same classes, you live in the same area, you know the same people, you are subject to the "same" pop culture of your school. That is where those high school clicks emerge from. The most bonded peer groups of before specialize as they age. The same hold true into college, but I definitely don't see the same commonality and uniformity there. Going through puberty is really the cutting off point where divergent personalities specialize your interests enough that finding commonality becomes much harder, and you start having much less to offer your peers over their cumulative experiences and engagements. It only gets worse from there. The more years into life you are, the more interests and specialties you have as a person that makes finding compatibility all that harder. People force themselves into relationships and marriage out of societal pressure. Nobody forces you into friendship nearly as much, so over that hump the lack of compatible people drops to near zero. Its why I think most marriages fail - they are trying to force the highest degree of friendship, when the older you get the harder it is. Pokemon Go, and video games in general, are extremely effective ways to get people a commonality to force them together and interacting in ways that can build meaningful bonds. A common challenge is essential to bonding. The more passionate you can be about it the more likely it works. But even then the 30 year old comes with baggage. They already have their favorite movies and musicians. Likes and dislikes. Hobbies and things they want to avoid. Because they have experienced so much more a fraction than they would have as children they are that much more set in stone. The adage of how you can't change a person applies here - even children demonstrate dramatically declining malleability as they gain experience in life. As you gain magnitudes more life experience your flexibility personality wise declines by similar magnitudes. It is trying to fit together puzzle pieces - if the pieces are made of clay you can mold them to fit. If they are tried out and set in stone they are rigid and it is much harder to find a match, and those matches are much easier to fracture and break. The commonality and struggle are the prongs of a puzzle piece. The more impactful on your life, the happier it makes you, the more passion you can have for it the more pronounced those prongs can be. Early on you only need the simplest commonality as being the same age or living near one another to forge bonds - as you get old and your piece gets more defined and nuanced, it takes larger struggles and stronger forces to bind pieces together.

BLKNSLVR 9y ago

Was going to post something similar here. I've got plenty of friends from prior to playing PoGo, but I see my PoGo friends more frequently because PoGo provides a common reason to meet up with them / be in the same physical location. It's definitely a somewhat unique phenomenon, and I like both the effect (seeing friends more regularly) and being able to experience it from the inside. It does, however, give me the feeling that I should put more effort into getting together with my other friends. But life provides any number of excuses to delay it.

rubber_duck 9y ago
>It's definitely a somewhat unique phenomenon Sounds like sports or any hobby that involves other people. But I haven't played it so maybe I'm missing what's unique about it.
- BLKNSLVR 9y ago
  The unique part, for me, is having to physically be in a specific place to engage in parts of the game, and the places are 'anywhere around the world'. Reading the sentence I just wrote it still just sounds like sport, where you have to go to an oval or arena or whatever. But with Pokemon Go it's sort of 'anywhere' and yet specific at the same time. It's a particular place at a particular time. The difference may just be that it's a virtual / digital game rather than a physical one.

emodendroket 9y ago

I met a lot of acquaintances playing Tekken, so I can absolutely believe in the idea that a game would bring people together, even though Pokemon Go is not my thing at all.

astrodust 9y ago
I'm absolutely convinced that there's a lot of babies that came about singularly because of Pokemon Go.
kongojack 9y ago
I've also similarly made many friends through playing Tekken offline. I believe the local aspect of fighting games (as opposed to most online games nowadays), and the depth of its mechanics is very conducive to making a wide variety of close friends (old and young). I recommend people check out fighting games or games that require person to person contact to make more friends.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I'm not surprised at all... because the same thing happened with Ingress - the previous game from people behind Pokémon Go! I was only part of the local community of players (green team in my city) briefly, but it was enough to learn that people in it talk to each other all the time (via Hangouts at that time), they see each other every evening, play together and then hang out together. That's one of the strongest friendship-making activities I've ever seen.

Aissen 9y ago
Unfortunately, once you stop playing, there's a big chance that all of this goes away. Side note: I'm surprised how in both Ingress & Pokemon GO, friendships cross team boundaries; you can be adversaries and friends, like in any respectable sport.
- soylentcola 9y ago
  When I unexpectedly found myself single after a long-term relationship imploded last year, I did the Tinder/OKCupid thing for a bit. One of the more amusing experiences was when I had planned a date with a girl and was telling a friend about it. At one point after describing the girl's profile, my friend stopped me and asked about some detail before pausing and telling me "she's a smurf! I know her!" (For those unfamiliar, Ingress players have tongue-in-cheek epithets for the opposing team. Green team are "frogs" and blue team are "smurfs".) The date didn't lead to anything as I don't think she had any romantic interest in me, but it was definitely a funny point when during a lull in conversation I paused and gravely asked if it was OK for her to be on a date with a "filthy frog" and she busted out laughing.
  - rak00n 9y ago
    That's a really cute story. Glad you shared.