To Catch a Caterpie

So it’s here and it has successfully taken over social media.

Everywhere you look the internet is currently awash of Pokemon GO. Your either playing it, hating on it, laughing at people enjoying it or trying to scare folks anywhere from it…every which was it certainly is making an impression on households up and down and the country.

Even people I’ve never spoken to about games are talking about it.

So is it a good thing, or a bad thing? Lets look at some pros and cons quickly:

Pros

More People are stepping outside and taking little walks
Communities are being formed, tactics shared. I’ve lost count how many random people have stopped and asked me about the game, telling me what they’ve caught and where, asking what I’ve been catching, all in a fun spirited fashion.
Nintendo’s shares are skyrocketing!

Cons

Negative Headlines. “Child walks in front of traffic catching a Charizard”, “Pokemon GO hacks all of your personal data” and so on. While some people may purposely or not do silly things which may or may not have been be atribulated with Pokemon GO it’s already had its fair share of negative headlines.
It will drain your phone battery.
Phone thieves/criminals will use GO to fulfil what they want. Players of the game are going to have there phones out in public more often than not. Gyms/Poke Stops could be used by criminals to target vulnerable people.

Love it or hate it, everyone’s heard about it.

I’ve been really enjoying it. It’s not a mobile game without its faults (such as walking around with the app open to be sure it’s tracking your steps thus helping you hatch eggs). The battling system (tap to hit, swipe to try and ‘dodge’ incoming attacks) could do with work, while the stops seem fair, as do the locations of the gyms (at least in my town they are).

I’ll talk more about Pokemon another time…as time itself for this entry is running short.

In my next post I want to talk a little more political, as the current situation regarding the party I’m most interested in (Labour) faces a ‘civil war’. This could in turn cause a split. More on this though in my next entry.