Go Gets Social

Pokémon Go recently just had one of its greatest feature additions ever, and with it, the game could be described to have "gotten social". That's because the game added the feature of friends, allowing Trainers to build relations with other Trainers and do nifty things as well. For the first time ever, Trainers in the game can interact with one another in ways that benefit them, and there are plenty of those ways.

But first, Trainers must forge the connection with one another. Every Trainer has a 12-digit Trainer Code, which is remarkably similar to the Friend Codes used by the 3DS. Using these codes, Trainers can request to be friends with other Trainers, as the codes are known and/or distributed. Once a Trainer accepts the request from another, the two Trainers are now friends. Like some other social media, there is a limit to how many friends a Trainer can have, and the current limit is 200; this limit may perhaps change in the future.

At this point, a Trainer can then start to build up relationships. By engaging in activities that involve other friends, an easy example being raids, two Trainers can become closer to one another on different levels. Those levels are Good Friend, Great Friend, Ultra Friend, and Best Friend, which are achieved after 1, 7, 30, and 90 days of engagements respectively. The rewards for the upper level aren't too shabby either, which include attack bonuses and extra Premier Balls in raids, which are very helpful. Since the feature was rolled out just about a week ago, no one is an Ultra or Best Friend yet, but by now there should be many Great Friends and plenty of Good Friends.

As with some feature rollouts in Go, not all is perfect from the get-go. There have been reports of two Trainers engaging with one another, but the engagements are not synchronized for both - one could be seen to be 2 days left to go to a Great Friend with another, but this shows up as 6 days left for one. As well, this feature was also rolled out gradually; initially it was for level 35 and above, but this was quickly expanded for level 25, 15, and others. In any case, the feature now seems to work well for most everyone.

This is an amazing step forward for the game. Pokémon games have always provided a path for socializing one way or another, in and out of the games. The addition of the friends feature in Go only serves to affirm this fact. Go has always been a game that afforded social opportunities from its start, and this only takes things to the next level, even literally. Now great Trainers can show they're a great social player too, within the game.

One year ago: LINE Pokémon Themes