So I got in to Pokemon Go.
At first, it was awesome. I would go out, meet peeps also playing the game, see the groups of friends getting excited over video games, basically everything that warmed my heart for humanity.
Then the server issues hit, and I maintained it was still worth it.
I have never played a Pokemon game before this one. Never touched it, never understood the appeal, and just generally stayed away. But then I heard all the excitement over this one, and since I took walks around the neighborhood each day after work, I went and got the game in order to play video games while I exercised.
There was a Pokemon stop and gym at the place I work, which made for a dangerous situation of trying to balance work and playing a video game at the same time. But then, the Update Happened.
People were stopping in front of where I work and the management of the building considered it trespassing. So they appealed to the creators of the game and down the stop and the gym went. Boo.
Then, I noticed that a lot of other places did the same thing. Suddenly the game just got iffy to play unless you payed over some coin for the pokeballs and other tools to help you win.
Then the creatures became REALLY difficult to capture. On a simple, CP level under 50 character, you could throw one ball and capture the sucker. Now, it takes about 10 balls, they escape about 4-5 times, and they bat away the ball about 4-5 times as well. The first couple of days I went from having a good storage of about 75-100 Pokeballs to now being on empty worse than the gas in my car.
When you log in, the programmers have inserted warnings about not trespassing and not to drive while playing, and you have to acknowledge it every time you open the app. With the latest update, anytime it detects that you are going at a fast speed, it stops the game and makes you click on a message stating that you are a passenger in a moving vehicle before it will let you continue to play the game, and it asks this every time you go from a slow speed to a higher one.
If I didn't walk as much as I did, then this game would have turned south very quickly for me. I also play Fallout Shelter on my phone, and that has been updated with add on content that is taking the fun out of the game. Before the latest update I could level up characters, build weapons, travel the wasteland, and generally be able to manage the up to 3 vaults that they allow you to with a quick check in each day. Now, thanks to updates that add more quests and throws a bunch of lower level characters at you at every turn, I spend about 2 hours on a Saturday going through the boring quests and maintaining my characters. And that is only when I have the time to check on two of the vaults, as the third had to be deleted and I can only maintain the first one maybe every other day through the week otherwise.
When the game isn't enjoyable anymore, you have to walk away from it at times. I'm beginning to think that the developers of Pokemon are going to take all of the goodwill and love for the game that has been going since the beginning and flush it down the drain with all the terrible decisions on the updates. This style of game is something that we've never seen before, and it seems that there is an intense over-reaction to this style of game that is going to make the format not thrive in the sense that it should. Think of how Grand Theft Auto really helped to put a name for itself and for the style of open world video game that didn't apologize for what it was, didn't update and take away from the edginess that it had, and led by not apologizing for what it was doing. Granted, that was console gaming and trying to update that game to make it more appealing to the masses and "safer" wasn't going to be possible in the way the the Pokemon developers can throw out an update and push it to the game in a matter of minutes, but when the sequel for GTA came around, it built on what it had before.
Video games as an art form is still in the infancy of what it can become. I want to push and see games expand what they could be and not be put in a "safe space" bubble because some members of the public cried foul. This is immersive art, let's see what the true potential for the form can be before we get uncomfortable with it.
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