[URBAN NOTE] "We held a Pokémon Go meetup — who showed up?"

[rfmcdonald]

Oliver Sachgau's Toronto Star article appeared last month, before Pokémon Go's official release and while I was preparing for my Island trip. It's an interesting story, based around interviews with Pokémon players and the meaning they get from the game and its culture.

I was really worried no one was going to show up to my party.

Just before 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, I had set up a sort of invite in Pokémon Go, telling people to meet me at 1 Yonge St. With luck, people would arrive to chat about Pokémon with me. They would arrive, right?

If you’re unfamiliar with Pokémon Go, it’s a mobile game that lets players catch virtual monsters by walking around in the real world and searching for them with their phones. People walk around in search for Pokémon — cartoon creatures that can look like anything from an electric mouse to a gigantic worm made of rock. (The game depicts the beasts against the backdrop of the player’s real-world environment, superimposing their image on pictures from the phone’s camera.)

Players battle them, catch them, train them, and collect items to help with the training from Pokestops — spots placed around the Pokémon Go map that correspond to real-world locations. the Toronto Star building, for example, has three Pokestops.

Technically, the game isn’t even available in Canada, but that hasn’t stopped people from finding ways to play it here, either by creating app store accounts in other countries or downloading unofficial versions of the app, all inspired by a game from 20 years ago.

“I was a Pokémon fan since I was a little kid . . . when I heard a new one was coming out I had to try it,” player Courtney Provan said.