Experience

To get a complete sense of the experience of playing the game, I made an account and started from the beginning. I also talked to trainers about what their experience had been like when they first started playing. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anyone who had only recently started the game.

When starting Pokémon Go, it is surprising how little information is provided by the app itself on how to play. There are only two things that a new user is told:

• How to catch a Pokémon
• How to interact with a Gym

The lack of information provided by the app makes it difficult for trainers who never played the Nintendo games to participate fully. One trainer, explained "If I didn't play with my daughter, I wouldn't know what's going on. It's so complicated."
Another trainer informed me that she didn't discover features of the game that had been added over a year ago until she started going to raids and talking to other trainers. In the neighborhood she normally plays in, there aren't a lot of other people playing the game.

Although aspects of the game such as raids require coordination with other trainers, there is no way of doing this in the app itself. Therefore, most trainers use an app called 'Discord' to discuss and plan for the game. Discord is an app very similar to slack but generally used by gamers as it is set up to ensure anonymity. Trainers can join different servers based on the area, for example where they work vs. where they live
There are also Discord servers that have set up bots that scan for Pokémon and will give a notification of where the rare ones are. This allows trainers to know if there is a Pokémon worth catching nearby, as Pokémon Go does not have any form of notification.

While doing this project, I was surprised by the number of people who actively participated in Pokémon Go. This image is at Boston Public Garden on a regular day. There is no in game event and yet there were so many people there ready for a raid.
I find the community that built around the game to be the most interesting part of it from a designer's point of view. The creators of the game have stated that they wanted this game to bring people together, and for trainers to meet new people. However, it is one thing to have that as a goal and another to succeed.

It is especially impressive that such a community exists when the app itself is very solitary. Within the game, there is no sign that other players exist other than at gyms.