ALBERTO GONZALEZ
Staff Lampoonist
Niantic’s huge summer success “Pokémon Go” looked like it was on the verge of being left behind in the summer of 2016. The developers have had other ideas, however, trying to keep their monstrous cash cow alive as long as possible. In an attempt to do just that, Niantic has just recently released a big update in an effort to entice trainers back to the game.
This update included the arrival of Generation II Pokémon, new berries and items used for evolving. Another new feature that is starting to garnish attention from the Pokémon community was the inclusion of a new feature that, when turned on, periodically asks if you’re sure using the app is how you want to be spending your time.
It uses your location in combination with your Google account to get a scarily accurate idea of your age and occupation. In doing this, the game is able to put forth hyper specific questions to the gamer in question.
I, for example, was asked if I was sure I wanted to keep playing “Pokémon Go” last night in the form of, “Don’t you have an article due to your editor in 14 hours? In the time you have spent catching Pokémon you could have been halfway done by now.” Other users have been reporting the same type of extremely specific questions being asked during gameplay. Perhaps even more perplexing than the implementation of such a feature in the first place is the universal praise that it is getting all around the world from all ages.
The company has been under fire, however, because of the almost transparent use of data mining. This seems to not matter to anyone; in fact, Niantic has gone on record as saying, “Yeah, who cares if we are data mining? It’s funny, right? Besides, almost all governments are doing it to some extent, and no one seems to care about that, right? At least with us you get to play ‘Pokémon Go’ in return.”
This was not the only narrowly avoided controversy for Niantic. It was discovered by some senior citizens in Portland, Oregon, who were partaking in a course titled “How to Do Fun Things Before in This Century Before You Die,” that anyone over the age of 55 gets reminders at two times the rate of anyone else younger. These reminders seem to only be focused on the player’s own mortality.
This has been speculated to be due to the tiny-to-nonexistent digital footprint that senior citizens have. Examples of such notifications include, “Wow you walked a whole 600 feet! You probably just added about 15 minutes onto your lifespan. Good for you!” This seems encouraging, but if they continue walking and reach a half a mile within a two-hour window players are met with a notification reading “Slow down geezer! At this rate you will not be near anything familiar when you forget what it was you were doing,” or “If you keep this up, pretty soon you will only have 15 minutes left, so how about you take a nap?”
These seemingly abhorrent remarks have been embraced by senior citizens everywhere and has caused Niantic’s daily player base to jump a remarkable 15 percent. A spokesperson from AARP gave a statement regarding the popularity amongst its members.
“This is a great example of how, after a certain age, you simply stop fearing death and don’t worry if it’s right around the corner,” spokesperson Gunther Schmunther said. “The majority of old people do not take their mortality seriously at all anymore, and it is rather refreshing to be able to have it be poked fun at instead of having it be an elephant in the room when it comes up in conversation.”
College-aged students have also taken a liking to this new feature as there is an ongoing challenge on Twitter using #pokemongoanywherebuttoclass. Students from across the world are sharing screenshots of their reminders telling them exactly how much time or tuition has been wasted in not going to class. This ultimately means that “Pokémon Go” seems to not be going anywhere for the time being, and just as when it first was released, it is redefining which features make an app successful in today’s age.