How does this "Pokémon Go" work?

It uses both your phone’s camera and the GPS to make Pokemons appear in locations known as Pokemon Spots. My 18 yr old daughter up loaded it on Wednesday, the day it was released, and has been loving it. We were at AT&T Park for a Giants game Wednesday, and she was laughing at grabbing Pokemons off the infield.

And yes, if three people are at a Pokemon spot, they can each interact with the Pokemon. That came up in a story I was relating to her about an old man grabbing them in front of jr high kids, and she said, “that must be a false story, because it doesn’t work like that.”

disclaimer: I have not played it, I am only relaying what my kids have told me and what I have read on line.

The game is fucking awesome. I played all weekend.

How does one show up on your phone in a specific spot?
There is a fancy algorithm running on Nintendo’s servers to distribute pokemon around the map. It takes in a lot of data about the map (probably provided through Google, since Google Maps has already catalogued all this stuff), such as whether there’s water nearby (since water-type pokemon appear more frequently near water), and then applies some random number generation to keep it a little chaotic, and then it decides some set of lat/longs to place pokemon. Then your phone GPS communicates with Nintendo’s servers to tell them where you are, and it determines whether there are any pokemon at your lat/long, and if so a pokemon appears.

And will that same one show up on everyone’s phone in that same spot if they’re playing the game?
Yes!

How do they do that?
Because the location of pokemon is determined server side (on Nintendo’s computers) and then communicated to each person’s phone. So everybody is getting the same data about where pokemon are.

Coolness!

A friend of mine, who works for the County Parks department, told me that two people this morning were traipsing through the forest with their phones out playing Pokemon Go….crazy…

I wonder what the potential legal ramifications could be?

Obviously, trespassing can get you into trouble, and playing while driving is dangerous, so you should have a companion for Drive-By PokeStops.

People had many of the same worries when Ingress came out. The world did not end.

In the next few weeks the novelty will wear off and the casuals will lose interest, and the universe will return to normal.

@Seek – this phenomenon my explain some truly erratic driving that I saw yesterday – normal city street, the guy would alternatively slow and almost stop, and then speed up, and do it again. Twice two wheels went off the pavement. His phone (the driver) was in his right hand. I wonder if he was so into the game that he was paying more attention to it than the road.

Or maybe he was just drunk.

…I read an article that the app has already cause a major highway accident….but I don’t know if it was a hoax article.

The app didn’t cause the accident – assholes playing games while driving caused an accident.

I fervently wish phone-use-while-driving laws were more strictly enforced, but they’re not. Heck, playing games on your phone while driving doesn’t even count for the no-texting-while-driving law.

While we’re in the car, only a passenger uses the phone. Ian’s my backseat Pokemon Trainer.

Bravo, @Seek. I never answer my phone while I’m driving. If I do make a call, it’s when I’m on a 4 lane and there is no one else within a mile of me, either behind me or in front of me.

BTW, if you do start playing, be aware that it is a huge battery hog, your phone will quickly drain, because it uses both the camera and the GPS in continual communication with the servers.

Does it cost to download the app?

Nope! Free to download.

I don’t know if it’s in the Play store yet. I side-loaded it the day it soft-released in Australia.

My son and his wife have put hundreds of miles on the car we loaned them playing. They hear about a spot with a desireable pokeman through facebook and drive there immediately, even if it is clear on the other side of town. They keep their phones hooked up to the car plug.

They told me they heard of a person walking off a cliff chasing a pokeman, but it might be a new urban legend. They also said there are portable batteries that people can buy to extend the life of their phone.

I just got back from a Pokemon hunt with my kid. He was willing to do extra homework for a trip to the mall to hunt.

The mall we went to had several PokeStops, and a few people had placed PokeLures on the stops – turning a fountain into a veritable Pokemon Party! The Lures attract Pokemon to that spot for 30 minutes at a time, and anyone can join in the fun.

Nearly everyone we saw under the age of 50 was playing Pokemon. It was a fantastically nerdy bonding experience with a bunch of random people at the mall.

CNN is reporting that “the infamous Westboro Baptist Church is currently ruled by a pink Pokémon known as a Clefairy” and has been overtaken by gay-friendly pokémon.

Awesome

@Seek I’ve had more conversations with utter strangers in the past week than I’d had in the last five years prior.

Everything I know about it.

I just made an actual, human, real-life friend I would never have spoken to otherwise, at the laundromat. She was wearing a Legend of Zelda t-shirt and my son struck up a conversation with her about Pokemon Go. Then she and I got to chatting while the kids ran around the place looking for Pokemon.

We’re planning to get our kids together and hang out in the next few days.

Cool.

Thanks @SmartAZ. I’ll probably tap into it next time I’m at the lake…...

Here is some more that I just found. Who needs this mess?

Because it’s FUN, you grumpy old man!

SURLY TO BED AND SURLY TO RISE!

Texting is fun too, until you fall into a fountain at the mall.

LOL! Well…at that point it’s fun for others. It would be for me, anyway…. ;)

@SmartAZ – Google has made a statement that the requested permissions were a clerical error, and that Niantic does not receive that access – only your name and email address.

So, I was at my daughter’s house. My 29 year old son was there, laying tile for her new kitchen floor. I was sitting cross legged on the floor, watching him. I had downloaded Pokeymon Go (I’m at level 4 now) and we were talking about it.
My son said, “Man, back in my day if we wanted to walk around and see things that weren’t there we had to drop acid, like normal people, and walk around.”
I just rolled…(This is the same kid, who, when he moved out at 17, set all my dead, decorative, battery operated clocks to 4:20. I didn’t notice until about 4 months later.)
So I’m just leaning forward, my forehead on the floor, laughing and shaking my head, “No no no no no!”
His sister, who is 37 said, “I thought we agreed not to tell her about that.”
At that point I simply fell over on the floor, and my son almost dropped trowel!

Of course, I had to check with them later….“Did you really drop acid together???” This sent them into paroxysms of laughter of their own, and through their laughter they assured me that they had not dropped acid together. I didn’t press any further. Some things I just don’t want to know. But if they think I should know, they always tell me on Mother’s Day. Wicked children.