What Pokémon Go did to our society deserves to be studied in history classes around the world. Do you remember the peak months of Pokémon Go? At the app’s height of popularity, Pokémon Go had a stupendous 250 million players per month.
Today, Pokémon Go remains a daily used app that is still played by the millions of Pokémon fans. Looking back at when Pokémon Go was the talk of the world, the experience that many people had with the game is like nothing that has ever been seen before in human history.
(Pexels / Anton)
Picture this: it is warm summer day in 2016 and you open the Pokémon Go app as you step out into the world. You go to your favourite park and see groups upon groups of people trying to catch virtual Pokémon on their phones. Time seemed to almost pass by at a slower rate, and everyone had a collective sense of companionship for their fellow Pokémon Go players.
If you’ve never experienced Pokémon Go before (especially in 2016 and 2017) then you flat out missed out! The game was an early yet polished instance where augmented reality was combined with a location-based game to create pure brilliance. You just had to be there to see what the world looked like while people were enjoying this phenomenally smart idea of a game.
(Pexels / Vincent M.A. Janssen)
In 2023, Pokémon Go is still more popular than you might imagine. The active players per month sits around 80 million, which is not close to the 250 million in summer 2016 but is still a very high number of active players for any kind of app.
If you’re wondering what my experience with Pokémon Go was like, I would say that it was a perfect activity that helped me stay active in the “year-off” I took to work between high school and university. I still play the game today, but instead of the 2-3 hours I was spending when everyone played, I usually just check-in on the app for 5-10 minutes every day or two to complete daily challenges.
(Pexels / Carolina Castilla Arias)
People should use Pokémon Go’s time at the summit of summer 2016 as a reminder of what can happen when humanity comes together for a good (and fun) cause. There are apps today that are using the newest technology and are trying to replicate the formula that made Pokémon Go ever so popular, but none have come even close to what Niantic, the creators of Pokémon Go achieved.
The app has earned its place in the “game hall of fame” and it will be intriguing to follow what the game does next. Pokémon Go will forever be etched in human history as a moment that unified us all.