At 1.08 am on a Tuesday, I’m in the passenger seat of my car, while my friend drives past the departure entrance of Piarco international airport as I attempt to gather items from various pokestops for the Pokemon Go game we are both playing.
I hold both phones and he, already familiar with the locations, drives to other stops in and around Arima so we can stock up on pokeballs and play the game.
We’ve stopped at a statue of Lord Kitchener near the Arima Velodrome. I’ve been to Arima many times before and never knew it existed.
We stop at a water fountain that I had previously ignored and we drive past a Penguin monument near Queen Street.
I smile, impressed with myself. For the first time in a long time I’m seeing things, noticing things, and it feels good.
On Wednesday I get into a car accident. It isn’t Pokemon Go related. Don’t panic.
I feel stressed, though. I had gone for a run but I only like running when I can easily hit a stop button and get off a treadmill.
I remember I have some eggs to hatch in the game and pull on my trainers and a pair of tights. I add a tee shirt.
I get in my busted vehicle and drive for five minutes to Lange Park’s community field. I turn on my Pokemon Go app.
Someone has set up a lure at the bandstand. Was that bandstand always there? I head over.
There is a man sitting nearby with his eight-year-old son. The man’s name is Daniel.
We start a conversation about the game. He is not impressed that I’m a level eight.
He is impressed that I captured an Electrobuzz in Mayaro with a combat power of 383.
We chat for a while. I speak with other people too—some runners, a young couple, a grandmother and her granddaughter.
We are all doing the same thing. For the first time in a long time, I’m interacting with strangers and it isn’t scary.
If I lost you with my references to Electrobuzz, pokestops and combat power, you probably aren’t playing Pokemon Go. That’s okay.
You’ve probably heard of the game though.
It’s everywhere. Whether it’s receiving text messages from mobile providers promoting Pokemon Go plans, watching the popularity of Woodford Square increase dramatically, or watching people play the game while walking in the street, the game is wildly popular.
On Tuesday I joined a Pokemon Trinidad Whatsapp group, where 256 people shared photos, locations of pokemon types and other useful information.
What is Pokemon Go?
The game’s creators at Niantic say Pokemon Go is a location-based augmented reality game developed for iOS and Android devices. Players use a mobile device’s GPS capability to locate, capture, battle, and train virtual creatures called Pokemon, who appear on the screen as if they were in the same real-world location as the player.
The game has been downloaded by more than 130 million people globally.
But what is Pokemon Go really? It’s a flashback for ’90s kids who first saw Ash Ketchum try to be the very best at his passion, catching Pokémon and becoming the best Pokemon trainer in the world. The anime was addictive, resulting in a cult following and stories of demonic possession by Pokemon and other strange occurrences.
Today, the game is no less controversial. On one hand, it’s credited with positively affecting the growth of local businesses. It also encourages physical activity and an awareness of the environment.
Pokemon Go has a darker reputation though, credited in the United States as a facilitator of robberies, deaths and physical injury.
In T&T, that aspect of the game hasn’t yet reared its head, despite warnings from local police and newspaper columnists.
Locally, the game has been used to drive business, with Facebook groups hosting events to draw people out of their homes and engage with other like-minded gamers.
Christian Salloum, social media manager for Carigamers, an association for gamers in T&T and the Caribbean, calls the game a phenomenon that more and more people are becoming a part of.
Salloum, known in the local Pokemon Go community as Professor Poui, a localised version of the anime’s Professor Oak, created a guide for players which he shared with the T&T Sunday Guardian.
“The number one thing is that at pokestops you get items for free and every five minutes the pokestops refresh. The ideal situation is a location where you have three pokestops overlapping.
“The only place like this is Movietowne Port-of-Spain and maybe Gulf City Mall in San Fernando,” Salloum said.
“There is an item called a Pokemon lure and what we do is put the lure on the pokestops and this causes rare Pokemon to spawn at these locations.”
Carigamers hosts events based on placing lures at pokestops.
“Our event centres around this. We put lures at the venues and people come and lime. That’s essentially what works. Other than the events, people drive all over the country to find Pokemon.”
It might be easy to understand people downloading the game due to nostalgia, but many people playing the game are completely new to Pokemon.
New Pokemon trainer, Kwai Ward, started playing the game two weeks ago with her husband.
“My husband is really the person who follows Pokemon. We follow anime as a whole and he was interested in the game. I am not actually a gamer traditionally,” said Ward while hunting for a Snorlax near Club Zen in Port-of-Spain.
“It was interesting to me, the idea of having to walk around, and we saw a lot of enthusiasm about the game abroad. I like the idea of coming together as a group with my friends, that makes it interesting.”
Ward and a large group of gamers spend many of their evenings outdoors, something that prior to the game’s launch in T&T didn’t happen.
“It brings people together. People are becoming so sociable about it. We get to a pokestop and people gather around and become more friendly. We tend to be busy everyday. We see people we don’t see very often. With the game, we met new people, Pokemon trainers. It’s a friendly atmosphere.”
Ward is already on level 21 and has 250 Pokémon in total,
“Where we go to hunt now, that particular spot, I didn’t know about that park Siegert Square. We didn’t know about it really and that is where we go and hunt Pokemon.
“After I leave work I tend to want to go home immediately. Because of this game we go places we don’t usually go and see things we don’t usually see,” Ward said.