Gone are the silent nights. The usual quiet evenings at the New Mexico State University pond outside my window has become a thing of the past. Blame the Pokemon Go craze, tens and tens of poke goers now envelop the pond with their smart phones’ screens flickering like fireflies.
It started over a week ago. At first I thought there was some sort of a nightly student fieldwork or some group of students being toured around the university premises. At first, I did not care. I continued working in my office at night, located just right beside the pond. With big glass windows, I could see anything and everything outside right from my seat.
Three nights passed and the crowd became bigger. I finally had the inkling something was not right when, instead of seeing tour guides, I saw parents pushing their babies in strollers. At one time, there was this couple with three big dogs and two kids who kept banging the office wall. And then there was this group of five friends who just kept on circling the pond like they were desperate to find a good spot to catch that ‘something’. One thing in common: whether they were pushing, or walking, or circling, their eyes were glued to their phone screens!
That third night, I discovered that all of them were crazy about Pokemon Go! If you know nothing about Pokemon Go yet, google it. It was released in the U.S. on July 6, 2016. Developed by Niantic, the game allows you to capture these so-called Pokémon creatures. What makes it alluring is that Pokémon appears on your phone screens like it’s in the real world. The game taps your location via GPS and projects it on a map. When you move, your game avatar moves on the map as well. When you find a Pokémon on the map and you try to capture it, the game uses your camera to make it appear that Pokémon is right exactly where your camera is pointing. If your camera is pointing on a rock, Pokémon appears on the rock. Depending on where you are, different Pokémon characters may appear.
As of this writing, it has been 10 days since Pokemon Go was released. Still, the poke goers are crowding the pond. Let me guess, water-type Pokemon are appearing on the pond and the pond is now a favorite PokéStop. When five poke goers left the pond, 10 others arrived. At around 8PM, there were 45 of them poking, I counted. When I left around midnight, I estimated the crowd to have doubled, maybe even close to a hundred. Do these pokers ever sleep?
The morning after, the pond was back to its quiet state. While the turtles were enjoying the pond’s edges and the hummingbirds were circling the water, a sad sight was left from the night’s Pokemon Go merriment. Garbage was everywhere — plastic bags, empty bottles of water, and canned drinks — either left on the benches or thrown into the pond. These poke goers seemed not to care about the cleanliness of the area as long as they catch their Pokemon.
I am not seeing an end to this nightly gathering at the pond sooner. As long as there are rare Pokemon to catch, as long as water Pokemon lure these poke goers to the pond, I would continue to have company at night in the office.
Question: how exactly should I poke this creature appearing on my PC?
