Pokémon GO players take to the streets of Mount Pleasant, create community atmosphere
With a backpack full of seven portable phone chargers, a power strip and three water bottles, Mount Pleasant native Will Hall is ready for battle.
Hall, 23, spent hours wandering Mount Pleasant with friends on July 10 as Pokémon Trainers for "Pokémon GO."
According to Forbes, the Pokemon Go phone application had an estimated 7.5 million downloads in the United States on iOS and Android within the first week of its release, with $1.6M in daily revenue in Apple’s iOS store.
Players with iOS and Android smart phones must physically move around in order to capture Pokemon. Once getting close to the geocached location of the Pokemon, the phone camera can activate, showing a virtual-reality image of a Pokemon character in the real world.
The game combines animated creatures from the popular late-90s television show and collectible card game, Pokemon.
Trainers, separated into three teams, Valor, Instinct and Mystic, capture Pokemon and battle them for control over geocached gym locations throughout Mount Pleasant.
“I wasn’t an active person before this. I’m not out of shape, but I never liked to exercise. This got me outside and moving,” said Hall, of Mount Pleasant, said. “I’d probably be sitting at home watching cartoons if it wasn’t for this game.”
Players aren’t difficult to spot, Hall said. They walk around with their phones raised, fingers carefully swiping up the screen to throw Pokeballs before turning to their friends in either happiness for their catch or disappointment due to the Pokemon running away.
“It’s just the way they hold their phone and the look in their eye — their desire for the next great catch,” Hall said. "Each team has local Facebook groups to meet up or share their newest catch."
On one Facebook page, members announce where their hunt is starting and how many geocached gyms their team has left to win. A geocached gym is where users battle their Pokemon against other teams until one team claims the gym or location.
A little after midnight, music blared from the pond in the Fabiano Botanical Garden on Central Michigan University's campus as more than 20 Pokemon GO players huddled together. They had set "lures" down — a sign that appears on players' maps when a higher level player wants to congregate at local landmarks to join teams and battle. The lure also helps attached more wild Pokemon.
"I played Pokemon in grade school, so as I relearn the Pokemon, it reminds me of playing cards on the school bus and at lunch," Gaylord senior Maddie Hummel said. "Other players ask about your experiences and try to get to know you. They're all really nice."
Pokemon was released in America in 1998, two years after gaining popularity in Japan. Red and Blue Versions of the Nintendo Game Boy game were released. Pokemon's Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire has sold more than 7.7 million copies.
Pokemon trading card game entered the American scene in 1999. Popularity of the cards went further than elementary school playgrounds, branching into worldwide tournaments to offer players a "competitive atmosphere" to demonstrate their gaming skills, according to the official Pokemon website.
Mount Pleasant resident Bryan Salisbury was 12 years old when the Pokemon games were first released. He remembers the rush of opening a new pack of cards, hoping to find the dragon-like creature, Charizard.
About 17 years later, Salisbury is chasing virtual Pokemon across Mount Pleasant on Team Valor.
“It was a nostalgia factor for me. It was invigorating to have that dream of being able to go out and catch Pokemon to come true,” he said.
Salisbury said the game promotes healthy interactions between its players, despite the competitive edge found among the three teams.
“It helped bring people together by having that mutual thing to talk about. It takes away the awkwardness when you’re doing the same thing and teaching other people how to play Pokemon,” he said.
Clare resident James Small said he noticed an increase in young adults walking outside in the last few days.
“It’s crazy how many more people are outside now,” Small said. “You wouldn’t think it’d make you addicted to walking. I really didn’t expect that, but now I am.”
Mount Pleasant resident Nicholas Shawboose walked almost 10 miles within the first four days of playing. He said each blister is worth the friendships he formed with the other players.
Halfway through his Monday gaming walk in Island Park — an ideal location to catch water-oriented Pokemon characters — two strangers approached Shawboose's group. They asked if he was playing Pokemon Go, and began discussing the characters they've caught.
“I’ve made at least a dozen friends in the last few days through this game,” Shawboose said. “We text each other to ask where we are and if we want to meet up to catch Pokemon together.”
He said he was familiar with Mount Pleasant prior to the game, but not to the extent that it forces players to be.
Shawboose had known of places like the baseball field tucked behind Island Park and the memorials surrounding it, but he hadn’t actually visited them before.
“I knew where they were, but I hadn’t actually been there in a long time, so I forgot about them,” he said. “The game has made me walk around the city more than I have in a long time.”
