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Comment by ro_sharp | Hacker News Reader

I'm in Australia, and I've never seen an irl viral phenomenon on the streets like this. In the inner city of Brisbane, every second person I see is staring at their phone, swiping up to catch Pokemon. Mobs of 100+ people chasing 'lures' are being moved on from parks in the middle of the night. And there was a pub crawl: https://www.facebook.com/events/267390546965461/

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I live in Docklands in Melbourne. For those unfamiliar, it's basically an ex-port that was transformed into an extension of the city 10 or so years ago. It's known for being basically dead after-hours and on weekends, as there's not much to do and not a lot of culture (and the weather tends to be rubbish, since it's exposed).

This weekend was... different. Even though the weather was miserable, the area was buzzing. I've never seen so many people with a common purpose in the area, or being so friendly and connected. The connection? Magikarp spawn near the water.

I think the real tell will be how many people are still playing in a month. The game can get very expensive, especially if you're in a rural area.

I do hope they rebalance it a bit. The only way to get coins without paying money is to own a gym, which is difficult to do. And less you're willing to go farm a bunch of little Pokéstops then you probably have to buy potions. If there was something equivalent to the Pokécenter then things would be better. It be nice to be able to battle friends to train your Pokémon as well.

Niantic are either too busy or really don't care about social media. There's lots of people pointing out real problems with the game. I hope it's not like Ingress all over again, where the only way to get something fixed was to know someone at Google.

Since it has the Pokémon company's brand (and therefore Nintendo's) I really hope to be a great app. One of the things I love about Nintendo with how well they polish all their software.

Instead it's very clear to me that it's a Google app with Pokémon branding. Release fast, bugs are OK, we can fix them later. Don't worry about the fact that the iOS version feels like an Android app and is somewhat obnoxious to use.

I can't help but think that if this game had another two months of polish it would be amazing. Instead, it's in its current slightly crappy state with a serious server issue going on.

Pokemon Go isn't made by Google, it's made by Niantic. Niantic were originally linked to Google, but have been independent since October 2015.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc.

It was an internal Google startup that spun out, so I'm assuming they're used to 'the Google way' of operating.

I don't feel great saying this stuff, but I don't know how else to communicate just how startlingly bad the app can be, and how much it feels like a terribly lazy port of an Android app.

I don't know. Maybe if I use the Android app for a few days I'd find out that more or less every single issue is just as bad.

I was wondering about that. There is a 10 minute boosted board ride from home that nets me about 10 pokestops, but most of them seemed like things that wouldn't be anywhere but an urban core: public parks, government buildings, murals, etc. I would imagine even in the suburbs it is far less dense. Did they not adjust for this somehow? I still think it is a revolutionary success even if it goes tamagotchi real fast. I've met so many cool neighbors.

Nope, they haven't adjusted for it at all. I don't think they're using all the Ingress portals so the problem is quite bad in rural areas. Check /r/pokemongo for a few of the posts from users who can't really play because of their location.

I really think that this comes from Google-style thinking - there aren't any workplaces that'd have problems if we turned on cameras / sound automatically [1], there's no other timezones than California, everywhere is high density.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10577601

Same thing in America. I remember the first night it was released I was walking to the grocery store and it was almost like a low-key street festival going on. People of all ages, genders and races on the streets running around with their phones.

I've never seen anything like it.

we had close to 250 people in a small park near my house close to all day. There were 5 points all within 200 meters of each other, and one gym. It was refreshing to see a lot of people outside that look like they don't get out much.

I just came back from a walk to a large nearby park, and there were dozens of people playing. It struck me as interesting they were mostly groups of friends, and not people playing by themselves.

I caught one of the local, younger, farmers stopping his tractor to catch a Pokemon.

Which is a really great way to do it since playing this game in a rural area basically requires walking significantly further than in a city.

I live in the Valley, and ended up hanging out with some of the people from the pub crawl. It's amazing to watch :)

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