The community and the meta-game quickly became the engrossing part of the game. If you like coordinating with other players and getting together to wander around and mash buttons on your phone, then it's great. You can still play by taking walks by yourself, but that's not as much fun.

I think this is pretty common evolution for games. Games from bridge to Magic:The Gathering to softball are as much about the social elements as they are about the actual gameplay.