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it was actually really great to watch my kid play this today. he collected pokemon cards and knew all about them and how the game of pokemon is played. he could sign in to the game with his pokemon trainer id. i suspect all the people young enough to have played the card game will love this even more. When did pokemon come out? 20 years ago?! 15?
i also enjoy the complexity of ingress more than this though.
Pokémon was created in 1995! So 21 years.
I tried to play Ingress a few times. I never quite got into it. I think it was because the goals were too abstract and a bit *too* social for hermity old me. I really didn’t want to be a part of this big conspiracy.
Pokemon Go, on the other hand, has so far been about taking some long pleasant walks. A few with the missus, a few late at night by myself. Occasionally I scare up some IRL bunnies. But, sometimes I scare up a weird critter that I bonk on the head with a pokeball and add to my collection.
Sometimes I go for a much longer walk than I intended, because the critter radar is leading me all over the place. There’s a gym at the end of my block, but the power of the critters there are so far beyond me that participating in that whole scene is as abstract as the serious business in Ingress.
Overall, I really just have to eye-roll at the sour grapes I see from some Ingress hipsters who were in it before it was cool. Yeah, it’s the same company and the same points-of-interest data. But, the game play in Pokemon Go is just different enough to be entertaining to me.
I like collecting critters on my own and giving the occasional grin & thumbs up to fellow travelers. It feels way better, so far, than the Risk / Qix game – where I felt like I wasn’t doing anything worth anything until I managed to grind up in levels and items and whatnot.
Now, if they managed to add some more elements of Neko Atsume into it… I’d be hopeless.
I would like Ingress a lot, I know, but I can’t integrate another time-consuming interest into my life, on top of jujitsu and music.