In the summer of 2016, people all over the world were mesmerized. Goody-two-shoes puritans were getting done for trespassing while Chads with no interest in video games were walking around with four battery packs attached to their belt. There’s a very likely chance your elderly relatives asked you, “Why the shit is my Pikachu gold instead of yellow?” You’re kidding me – you’re after snagging a shiny and you don’t even know what it is. Incredible.
Pokemon Go defined the summer of 2016 in a way that no other game – nay, no other text or entertainment phenomenon in history – ever did before or has done since. Well, the Victorians were weirdly into public executions, but… Yeah. Look, Pokemon Go isn’t hurting anyone, okay, so it wins by default. Anyway, a couple of months later, when winter hit the Northern Hemisphere and beach days beckoned to trainers located in its Southern counterpart, people started to gradually put their phones away. The usual “dead game” crowd eventually did their thing.
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“Dead game,” they say, basing that claim on nothing other than the fact that they and two of their mates don’t play Pokemon Go as much anymore. “I still play,” say 100 million people. “Nah, mate,” dead game man says. “Dead game.”
Pokemon Go turned five yesterday and I can assure you that it is not a dead game in any way, shape, or form. According to a blog post recently published by Pokemon Go senior executive producer Steve Wang, more than 450 million friendships have been registered via Pokemon Go. Want to hear something even wilder? Over the last five years, PoGoers have clocked up a whopping 49 billion kilometers in collective walking distance. Oh, and Pokemon Go has earned over $5 billion since 2016. “Dead game,” someone whispers with the stubborn rasp of “I know I’m wrong but I look too stupid now to ever admit that.” You got five bil in your back pocket, bud? Didn’t think so – maybe you’re the dead game, eh?
It’s not as if any of this progress was ever inconspicuous either. Sure, people aren’t sat at the pub with their heads stuck in their phones anymore. Sure, there aren’t people hopping into private property every ten seconds, or lads bumping into you in the shop and saying, “Oh, sorry, yeah… sor- yeah, bye.” It’s generally pretty safe to trust traffic lights these days and I haven’t had anyone sit next to me on a train in an attempt to quickly nab a few Ultra Balls from a fleeting, nearby PokeStop in ages. But Pokemon Go didn’t make $5 billion because people weren’t playing it. And for those who were, Niantic has been hard at work implementing major features on an impressively regular basis for five years on the trot.
Let’s contextualize that a bit. In 2017, Niantic added Raid Battles to Pokemon Go, which went on to define a key mechanic in Game Freak’s Pokemon Sword & Shield two years later. This year also saw the first ever Pokemon Go Fest, which has now become massively ubiquitous all over the world – arguably, it’s the single biggest recurring Pokemon event in the series’ 25-year history.
In 2018, friends and trading were introduced – and as stated above, over 450 million friendships have materialized in Go since. That’s not to mention how the magic of Pokemon Go was used as a design brief for Let’s Go – the best Pokemon game in over a decade.
2019 saw the addition of Buddy Adventure and AR Snapshot, which are smaller features, sure, but it’s not as if they’re irrelevant. The Go Battle League launched in 2020 and, after a year of this pandemic we’re all so sick to death of, Pokemon Go Fest is being revamped as a hybrid event in cities all over the globe this year. When you look at it like this and consider the microtransaction footprint of Pokemon Go, it’s easy to see that it’s undoubtedly one of the biggest live-service games on the planet. And yet people call it a dead game and go on as if it’s some kind of anti-Pokemon product designed to pull the wool over gamers’ eyes. Mate, this could be the biggest Pokemon game of all time – and it’s not as if it’s going anywhere either.
Admittedly, I don’t play Pokemon Go as often as I used to, but it’s so much bigger and more successful than a lot of people are willing to give it credit for. After watching Niantic celebrate its five-year anniversary yesterday, I’m here to say this: here’s to another five years, and five more fives after that. From serving as an archive for forgotten mechanics to potentially being the bona fide game of the century, Pokemon Go is one of the most remarkable games we’ve seen in years. And judging by its margins… well, I reckon it’s likely to keep that title for quite some time. The dead game crowd probably don’t want to admit it, but Pokemon Go is bigger than ever. I mean, Shigeru Miyamoto literally called it a "dream come true" – Pokemon Go is the Beedrill's kneedrills, man.