Pokemon Go was undoubtedly one of the biggest smash hits of the summer, taking over town hot spots and streets all over the world. Now with the wait for the 2nd generation of Pokemon to enter the fray it’s always nice to take a step back and look at the positive impact Go had in communities around the world. From big cities to rural towns that were struggling to bring business into their shops the rampant chasing of Pikachus throughout streets caused a lot of positive changes.
First off, if you’re a local business owner you celebrated if your shop became one of the coveted Poke Stops that all the trainers gathered at. If you were a restaurant you could sell food and drinks all day long by just simply putting a lure up. For more retail based shops you could offer discounts for showing your app or the team you liked best. Online artists even made extra money just by making T-shirt designs for Valor, Instinct, and Mystic to sell to excited fans. Local Walmarts and chain stores even jumped on board with most of them having pop up poke-sections with plushies and portable phone chargers on display.
For players of the popular app, Poke hunting was a great way to find a new favorite restaurant or store. I can’t count the amount of people who have said they found a great coffee shop because they were running low on Pokeballs. Maybe you even went to exploring through the city for a Charmander that popped up on your radar and found a new comic shop to spend your time at? The benefits of just exploring your local area were huge since our society has become so much less inclined to go searching for hidden treasures throughout town. Not to mention on the flip side of being a trainer probably earned you quite a few discounts at these places!
If shopping isn’t your thing you can’t deny the benefit of all the exercise you got from just walking around to hatch eggs. The smallest egg you can hatch may just be 2KM, but that’s still just about a mile of exercise for you that you may not have gotten otherwise. Even chasing down Pokemon that you desperately wanted helped out with perseverance a lot. So, what if it was a few streets over, that Dragonite was had 1,500 CP and was more than worth it for your team. Pokemon Go turned into the ultimate secret workout routine for many and with the hot summer days and nights it had to be one of the best workouts you could get!
Lastly, how many new social interactions did you have when trying to find new Pokemon? All over the world people found themselves teaming up with all types of different trainers to try and hunt down Pokemon popping up on their radars. Some even teamed up in order to lessen the cost of keeping lures going at popular spots. Maybe if you were lucky you may have even found a significant other or the best friend you never knew you wanted?
All in all the interactions created by the original 151 Pokemon have already been amazing and hopefully, Generation 2 will do even better when it launches!