Restarting Go Fever Among Players

Today, I met a friend for a regular play session of a game we often play, though it's not Pokémon. In his defense, though, he's also a Pokémon fan just like me, and has played many of the games, including Go when it became a big hit about this time last year. In fact, he was quite fervent about it to the point that he bought a new phone just to play the game, and he became quite a local resource for the game, while I remained less able to play. This brings me to discuss what it would take to restart or bring back the Go fever locally or even to a greater extent, especially since I've started playing yet again.

From my observations, it seems that the Gyms in my area keep changing from one team to another and among different Pokémon. This tells me that there may still be a group of active players that still play Pokémon Go in my area, and they still at the least occasionally play the game. The issue now is to how to gather them and in what form the gathering should be. When Go was big locally, it spawned a collective for each team, although once Go died down, these collectives were no longer heard of. It may be useful to gather up all these collectives as one group for the local area and just have sub-divisions for each team, but it is uncertain how the players would respond. The fact remains that players may still exist and that some communication may be necessary even among players of different teams.

Even then, there may be technical challenges. While my friend still has a phone capable of playing Go, his is also somewhat damaged. Some time ago, he badly shattered the glass screen of his phone by letting it drop while he was using it in a restroom. We found today as he reinstalled Go on his phone that the phone could still run Go, but for delicate movements such as tossing the ball with style, it was rather finicky. Meanwhile, I've talked to and observed a few fellows who could not play Go even when many phones nowadays can, and they said their phones have somewhat become less capable of running Go, perhaps due to size or memory usage. The challenge may be in driving them to move past these challenges so that they can play again.

It seems a great effort may be necessary to bring back the fever in a game that has flatlined ever since its peak of popularity. To that effect, it may be necessary to get some coordination and motivation back among players. If it can be done locally, then it may be possible on a wider scale as well. I'm sure that my friend is motivated by and feels a little bad about the fact that I'm only starting to replay the game now without any pals; coordination is the next problem that we have to solve if we want greater success in the game.