In a phenomenon not seen since video games first turned children into pasty-faced shut-ins, the insanely popular smartphone app “Pokemon Go” is sending roaming bands of gamers — including half the Oakland A’s baseball team — into the great outdoors for a virtual treasure hunt.
What’s being hailed as the first, large-scale launch of an “augmented reality” game is sweeping the nation, and in less than a week since its Wednesday release, Pokemon Go is already close to surpassing Twitter in daily active users. Along the way, parks, shopping malls, churches and even cemeteries are being overwhelmed by the search for Pikachu and PokeSpots.
Don’t be surprised if you bump into a Pokemon Go player soon — or if one bumps into you. They’re easy to spot swiping up on smartphone screens and often calling out netherworldly exclamations like, “Look, there’s a Growlithe behind you!” and “Wow, you got an Oddish?” They’re pursuing animated images of the cartoon creatures that appear on their phones as if they are popping out from the real-life landmarks where the phone’s camera is aimed.
Courtney Von Raesfeld, 19, has met up with Pokemon seekers at all times of the day and night, from the Target store to her bank and, on Monday, San Jose’s Municipal Rose Garden.
“You say, ‘Hey, are you playing Pokemon Go?'” said Von Raesfeld, who works at Starbucks. “I’ve never had someone say no.
“A lot of people say, ‘Get a life.’ But this is giving people a life, going outside and talking to people, instead of staying inside by themselves.”
A’s outfielder Coco Crisp said the game has taken over the clubhouse. And on Saturday night, while staying with the team at a Houston hotel, he said, “There must have been 70 kids” in a park nearby using their phones to hunt down the characters.
Across social media, Pokemon Go is being heralded as everything from the cure for obesity (players can walk miles to hunt down certain characters) to the answer to world peace (strange encounters in parks in the middle of the night are leading to more friendships than suspicions.)
Yet, as with any shiny new thing comes the inevitable macabre shockers: One teen stumbled upon a dead body in Wyoming and others were ambushed by robbers in Missouri while hunting for Pokemon.
Police throughout the Bay Area are catching on, issuing the obvious safety tips, and some are getting in on the fun. —We don’t just catch bad guys, we catch pokemon too,” tweeted Mountain View Police.
When Fremont Police realized their headquarters were a hot spot for Pokemon, they sent this cautionary tweet: “Hey #PokemonGo trainers… You have to be at level 5 to battle at the FPD gym — no need to enter the lobby #goodluck.”
At downtown San Jose’s Cesar Chavez Plaza, Lexi Hall, 25, says she’s made “15 new friends so far just walking around” since last Thursday and has lost five pounds.
“I suffer from some depression and anxiety. This gets me out of the house,” Hall said. “For a lot of us who are a bit pudgy, this gives us a reason to exercise.”
Rayne Greenwood, 24, said she was a big Pokemon fan as a kid. Back then, though, the game was restricted to playing cards and the handheld Nintendo Game Boy device.
With GPS mapping technology, a camera phone and the latest in animated graphics, “we’re living out our childhood dreams,” she said. “What if Pokemon were real? We’re halfway there at this point.”
In less than a week, Pokemon Go has turned into a boon for Nintendo, which owns one-third of Pokemon Company. Nintendo and Pokemon each own a piece of Niantic Labs, the San Francisco-based developer of Pokemon Go, which itself was spun off from Google last year.
Already, more than 5 percent of Android smartphone owners have downloaded Pokemon Go, and the game is the most-downloaded free app on Apple’s App Store. Nintendo stock has surged 36 percent and added $7.5 billion to Nintendo’s market value since Pokemon Go was released.
Traffic has been so overwhelming, however, that the company spent the weekend scrambling to keep their servers up as users reported the game crashing. New players were temporarily blocked from registering Monday morning.
Some players are already seeing the marketing potential. Allison King, 25, sees businesses clamoring to become hotspots for Pokemon characters. A Pokemon Pub Crawl is already planned in San Francisco later this month, where King hopes a bartender might give free “Pokeshots.”
On Monday, no place seemed off limits as Pokemon hiding places.
At a gym in Castro Valley, Curt di Cristina, 28, suffered an awkward moment when he took out his phone to play between exercises.
“It looked like I was trying to get a photo of the guy next to me,” he said. When the other gym-goer noticed that di Cristina was actually trying to catch a Pokemon, he pulled out his phone to try to capture the same one.
Hal Schoolcraft is hooked too, and he’s far from a millennial.
“I’ve never seen as many people wandering the park aimlessly as I did last night,” said Schoolcraft, 64, who was catching Pokemon in downtown San Jose.
Schoolcraft is among the many who are nursing Pokemon Go-related injuries: He nearly twisted his ankle while playing at night. “I was walking off the sidewalk and bumping into plants.”
Some observers are less enamored with Pokemon Go than others. Isaac Smith, 29, humored his girlfriend Monday by spending his lunch hour with her as she tracked down Smirtle in downtown San Jose in front of the Quetzalcoatl statue.
While some are boasting about the game’s ability to create community, Smith says it appears short-lived. Players give head-nods to each other, he said, “then the people waddle off.”
“People are weaving through the world,” Smith said, “but not paying attention to the world itself.”
Staff Writers John Hickey, Rex Crum, Angela Ruggiero, Judy Prieve and Erin Baldassari contributed to this report. Contact Julia Prodis Sulek at 408-278-3409. Follow her at twitter.com/juliasulek
