When i wrote in one of my articles sometime ago, i made mention of Augmented and Virtual realities going to really take the world by storm. Fast forward to the present day and time, where a game is literally driving the world crazy, the number of times the game developers servers crashed as a result of too much request for downloads from the server that maybe was not so prepared for the amount of traffic its receiving from around the countries allowed to play it.
So whats Pokemon Go, it is an augmented reality location-based game, developed by Niantic Inc. Now before we go into details about it, it's worth knowing that Pokemon Go is not approved in all countries at least for now, yet it is hotly on the tail of twitter for the highest number of active users. U.S.A, Australia and New Zealand are the only countries it was officially launched in, but this has not prevented the game being sideloaded using the APK file online, this game i must confess is really full of adventures.
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| Pikachu parades around suburban Tokyo |
Explaining the game further, "In simple terms, Pokémon Go uses your phone’s
GPS and clock to detect where and when you are in the game and make
Pokémon "appear" around you (on your phone screen) so you can go and
catch them. As you move around, different and more types of Pokémon will
appear depending on where you are and what time it is.
The idea is to
encourage you to travel around the real world to catch Pokémon in the
game. (This combination of a game and the real world interacting is
known as augmented reality. So why are people seeking out virtual creatures while at work and as they go to the bathroom? Part of the reason Pokémon Go is popular is that it’s free, so it’s easy to download and play.
But more importantly, Pokémon Go fulfills a fantasy Pokémon
fans have had since the games first came out: What if Pokémon were real
and inhabited our world? But to understand why people are so
enthusiastic about the idea, we first need to go back to the late 1990s —
to the original Pokémon games.
The Pokémon games take place in a world
populated by exotic, powerful monsters — they can look like rats,
snakes, dragons, dinosaurs, birds, eggs, trees, and even swords.
In this world, people called "trainers" travel around the globe to tame
these creatures and, in an ethically questionable manner, use them to
fight against each other. Based on the premise of bug catching — a popular hobby in Japan, where the games originated — the big goal in the Pokémon games, from the original Pokémon Red and Blue to the upcoming Pokémon Sun and Moon, is to collect all of these virtual creatures.
But since the games came out for Nintendo’s handheld
consoles, fans all around the world have shared a dream: What if Pokémon
weren’t limited to the games’ world? What if they were real and
inhabited our world? What if we could all be Ash Ketchum,
the TV show’s star trainer, who wanders the world in his quest to catch
them all and earn his honors by defeating all the gym leaders? I want a
Pikachu in real life, dammit!
Unfortunately, Pokémon aren’t real — at least not yet. But technology
has evolved to be able to simulate a world in which Pokémon are real.
That’s essentially what Pokémon Go attempts to do: By using
your phone’s ability to track the time and your location, the game
imitates what it would be like if Pokémon really were roaming around you
at all times, ready to be caught and collected.
And given that many
original Pokémon fans are now adults, this idea has the extra benefit of hitting a sweet spot of nostalgia, helping boost its popularity." So after Pokemon Go, what next in the world of Augmented and virtual Realities, this technology is going to drive the world into some of the century's most enterprising innovations.
source: vox
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