The Peak of Pokémon Go

In the summer of 2016, a new mobile game called Pokémon Go was released to the public. This game allowed players to travel their real world to find and capture fictional creatures and engage them in battle. The game was a viral success and if you ventured to any park or mall that summer, you would no doubt see hordes of people of all ages, staring at their phones and cheering about their catches. A lot of people express a sort of nostalgia for that summer, how the world seemed to come together that July to experience the mutual joy of collecting virtual monsters. The number of players might have dropped off sharply after the first few months after release, I'm not sure, but that doesn't really matter to me. The peak of my Pokémon Go enjoyment wasn't in the first few months following its release. It wasn't even in the first couple of years.

When Pokémon Go came out, it was only available on Android and iOS, and you may be thinking, well... what else is there? At the time, I had neither an iPhone nor some Galaxy (or Motorola or whatever). I had a stupid Windows phone. I liked the Windows phone well en0ugh, but when Pokémon Go came out, I came to hate it. It was bad enough that there was no official YouTube app developed for the device, but now... I couldn't participate in the biggest mobile gaming phenomenon... ever! I used my husband's iPad to catch the Pokémon immediately surrounding our apartment via our wifi connection, but I couldn't explore, spin Poké Stops, battle in gyms. It was hell.

When my Windows phone finally kicked the bucket, the first order of business for me was to ditch the operating system and move back to Samsung. And I immediately downloaded Pokémon Go. I played a little here and there, but my husband still had a Windows phone so I was playing alone. My devotion didn't stick.

Time passed. I was having a conversation with my brother, who had been getting into the game. He needed to make friends and complete trades in order to complete some research tasks, so I re-downloaded the app and... This 3rd installation is when the game really took hold of my life. It was 2018 at this point, a full two years after the game's release. Over the next several months and into 2019, I played voraciously. I was working downtown in a fairly major city, so there were gyms and Poké stops all around me. I lived in a unique area where malls were still popular weekend hang out spots. And finally, my husband had an iPhone. So every weekend, he and I would go out and do battle, catch Pokémon, strategize with the other strangers who were frequenting the same Pokémon-heavy locales that we were.

I found that Pokémon Go was still incredibly popular and fun, even 3 years in. The casual players had been weeded out and at that point all players were dedicated. Battling in Raids was awesome and fulfilling; Community Days were like local festivals. We enjoyed the free game, spending hours playing and being out and about in the community. It felt like being a part of something. It was great, reliable, weekend entertainment.

Sadly, we moved away from that rich Pokémonning community and to a small, rural town in Texas. I mean, I love the small town, but the Pokémon Go here is kind of weak. There are still Pokéstops and gyms, but there just isn't the same huge and devoted player base. If I leave a Pokémon in a gym, it almost always stays there for at least a day. One of my Lapras has been in a gym for over two weeks at this point with no end to their suffering in sight. I have never seen another person out and about playing. It's not the same.

But I still treasure those pre-pandemic 2018-2019 days playing Pokémon Go with my husband and an intense community. To me, those years will always be the peak of Pokémon Go, but maybe I'll experience another zenith some day.