Pokémon Go players are altering public map data to catch rare Pokémon | Hacker News Reader

Pokémon Go players are altering public map data to catch rare Pokémon

arstechnica.com

79 pointsLorenDB71 comments

I gotta give props to the players for their clever hacks.

But also this brings up a good point -- the game is inherently unfair to people who don't have the means to travel. Someone in the middle of the country can't legitimately travel to a beach area. And there are some Pokemon that are restricted to a particular continent.

Which means you either have to be rich or have a rich friend who can go to those places and then be willing to trade/give you pokemon. Or be extroverted enough to make online friends in those other places who will trade with you.

Should the game be inherently fair? Part of the fun is rewarding exploration over time as a life-long pokemon trainer trying to catch them all. You gotta go to all the regions to accomplish that. Maybe it'll take a long time!

> Should the game be inherently fair?

No, but the fairness should be based on skills and engagement, not the size of your wallet.

arguing that "you should be able to get the whole experience regardless of your location" is basically arguing against the entire category of location-based entertainment products. The experience is related to your location. That is literally the product.

Obvious straw man. No one is arguing that location based games shouldn't factor in location. The claim was that success in the game shouldn't be dependent on the size of your wallet. You can have location based games that don't require you to travel internationally or even across regions in one's own country, for example.

I've never played Pokemon Go, but I played a lot of the JRPG titles from nearly 30 years ago.

What determines success in Go? Is it battles, or is it literally just collecting Pokemon?

It doesn't really have a fixed objective. It's mostly played for fun.

The idea of Pokemon was started by Satoshi Tajiri who used to like discovering and catching insects and other small creatures locally. From that developed finding Pokemon and having them fight was added to make more of a game out of it. It's now the world's highest grossing media franchise with $88bn revenue according to Wikipedia, way ahead of that Marvel and Harry Potter nonsense. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media...)

It's a bit up to players if they want to casually collect, or fight or compete or whatever. In Pokemon Go at any rate.

I thought the whole point of geolocation games was that they are traveling games. Games for people who travel a lot. That doesn’t mean you should like them but that IS the mechanic, going around to see places. Wallet use is a part of traveling and that will continue to be true with or without pokemon go.

> I thought the whole point of geolocation games was that they are traveling games. Games for people who travel a lot.

Niantic talk about physical activity and community. Their business model is in app purchases and local advertising. Mechanics encourage controlling local territory.

> skills and engagement

Which, for a lot of cases (not universally, of course), is a function of your wallet's size anyway. Depending on your income and/or net worth, you can afford to spend a lot of your time on those, or not so much.

Why should it be that way?

Because success in life is mostly based on the size of your wallet, and games are supposed to be an escape from life. It sucks when that albatross follows you into your fantasy life.

There are plenty of other games, I don't see why there couldn't be one about traveling in the real world.

Would you frown upon Geocaching as well?

I suppose it is subjective, but it seems to be a pretty much near-universal sentiment among gamers I know that "pay to win" sucks.

A better question is why should it be pay to win?

Pokemon was never like this though. It was always unfair, because you always had to buy two different games (red+blue, gold+silver, etc) to win either of them.

It depends on how the game is setup. If it's "almost possible" to get them all, then it kind of feels like you have to get them all, even if that involves some serious work. This can be compounded if certain "best of breed" types can only be obtained in certain areas, or at certain times.

However, if it's setup so that it's basically impossible to get them all, but you can get many or any, then it doesn't feel as bad, especially if trading is an actual option that works. If the special and/or limited ones are more cosmetic, it becomes less of a chore and more of a "look what I have".

It feels like you have to get them all? why?

One of the key draws for many Pokémon players is right in the old slogan - "Gotta catch 'em all!"

Part of the desire is the collectability. To be able to get a rare, prized Pokémon. In the original games, part of this was centered around there being two editions of a game, with some of them only in the other, with the desire to make trading a social activity. That said, it certainly didn't stop people from buying two Gameboys, two copies of Pokemon, and collecting them all on their own.

Some folks just have a compulsion to have everything.

It's hard to explain, but if a game has some set of things, and you get 90% of the way there, it can feel quite like you should/need to get them all.

But if you know for a fact that there's some you can never get (had to be on the moon in 2005 to get it), then the pressure is off.

> Should the game be inherently fair? ... Maybe it'll take a long time!

I don't think "maybe it'll take a long time!" is an apt response to "the game is unfair". The parent isn't objecting that it's unfair because it might take a long time, they're objecting that it's unfair because many people can't afford to travel the world. Maybe a better response would be:

> Should the game be inherently fair? ... Maybe it should take tens of thousands of dollars!

While I don't find that compelling, it at least seems more logical IMHO.

It’s a personal decision. There are so many Pokémon that hacking is a long and tedious process. You might as well download saves but them you’re not playing the game. I think it’s fun catching real Pokémon fairly but don’t mind if people hack.

I know a guy who plays Ingress, the Pokemon Go precursor where different teams claim locatios. There's one valuable location on an island fort (Pampus) that's closed in winter, so every autumn there was always a flurry of players trying to be the last to claim it before the winter.

But this guy has a pilot license, so he just flies a sports plane over the island to claim it just after it closed.

There's travel privilege, and then there's renting an actual plane for a game.

Knowing pilots, it may just be an excuse to fly.

Can confirm. I'm a pilot, and used to play Ingress pretty heavily, and while it's not the most reliable thing on the planet, a few of us had worked out "Planegress" pretty well. You have to be careful to not trip the "travel rate" limiters, so basically "pop online over the target area, and don't interact except over the target portal." Pilot plays around with slow flight (depending on winds aloft, in the range of 30-40mph ground speed), passengers do what needs to be done. I never messed with it, but some people used HAM radio equipment for remote connectivity for Ingress as well, or satellite based stuff.

But it's absolutely "an excuse to go do some precision ground reference slow flight in areas you wouldn't normally be."

Hasn't that always been the way with Pokemon though? With the original Pokemon Red and Blue in North American release on Gameboy, you couldn't get all the Pokemon independently. You needed someone the opposite color cartridge to trade with. Same problem except then you needed to be face to face friends with someone and at least one of you needed to own the link cable.

Is it "unfair" or is this just the nature of a geofenced game? I think it's part of the fun.

Is it unfair that if you live in Arizona you're not getting to enjoy polar bears in the wild or even in the zoo?

And before globalism part of the romance of travel was things being exotic/rare and therefore harder to obtain.

If the game had other means to trade or obtain Pokémon outside of wild catches then it still offers players a chance.

I don't think it's unfair in any way, as the regional Pokémon are mostly irrelevant for anything but the Pokédex (your collection tracker). They're just as easy to ignore as any unreleased Pokémon.

And if you really want to "catch them all", regional Pokémon have been repeatedly featured in various global events since the game launch back in 2016.

Players use fake GPS apps to pretend they are in a location to catch rare pokemon.

I saw my brother's phone "travel" from London to Seoul in South Korea in front of my eyes and catch some rare pokemon there.

Pokemon Go bans them when detected, but not all get caught.

They don't even bother simulating a proper travel. They just teleport which I find hilarious.

The point of a game, which maps the real world to a fictional world, is exactly that. A game like that can't be fair and it shouldn't be, part of the fun is that it isn't.

After all it is just a game, it's not an injustice for a game to not be fair.

This is one of the underappreciated downsides to living in the middle of the country, imo, but ironically if you're doing that, a person is maybe more likely to be shooting for a bungalow at some point than someone in any reasonably populated area, whereas people in those areas have seen a home go so far out of reach that travel is relatively inexpensive if you just give up on other traditional outlays for cash

A 2 week solo trip to EU can be like ~$2k, and if that's among the most expensive aspirations you have, that could be feasible and you'll get a hell of a lot more out of it than Pokemon.

That doesn't seem unfair on the face of it?

Not every game is for every person and that's ok.

If you are so introverted that you're not willing to join a discord to get the Pokemon you really want then maybe that's something you need to work on. There are discords that are pretty transactional for this that don't involve a whole lot of socialization.

I know people who meet up on discord groups and mail their phones to each other to catch rares and the like.

That's wild. Also, I don't think this solves the "I can win cause I'm rich" problem. I don't think many people can reasonably be expected to want to willingly mail their phone to another person.

Especially, considering that likely means you need to have two phone plans plus two phones. It's pretty hard to say to your friends, family, or boss, "sorry, I can't take calls right now, my phone is in Vermont so my buddy can catch me a Gengar."

I think a lot of people have an old phone lying around somewhere. And it's a game/ leizure activity it's still pretty accessible, it you want to do absolutely everything yeah you gonna had to spend some time or money. I don't think there's a problem with that, it's still enjoyable without going that hard.

You can't just give your username/password to someone else? The pokemen are tied to your actual device?

> Someone in the middle of the country can't legitimately travel to a beach area.

Lakes and sometimes rivers have beaches.

In the original games you had to go out to catch Pokémon.

The world is big…

There’s a whole life outside.

Cant this be easily circumvented with a GPS spoofer app?

Maybe someone can add some beaches to polling places, so they can Pokémon Go to the Polls.

Pokémon GO uses an old snapshot of the OSM data to prevent this type of abuse.

I don't know exactly how old the current map is, but it used to be like 3+ year old back in 2022. They have been minors update since, but those abuses won't most likely ever be featured in-game unless they go unnoticed for years.

There are devices that you can buy that you can connect to your phone and will auto catch pokemon for you. Between auto catchers and changing map data, what is the point of "playing" the game?

Entertainment? What's the point of playing any game, assuming you are not a pro making money from it?

If a device is doing the playing for you, where is the entertainment coming from?

The kind of people who have those devices also play manually for hours.

It's very nakedly a skinner box game. The participants are not gamers, they are addicts and victims.

Throwaway for obvious reasons, but I've worked for Niantic on Pokemon Go, and this is a rather accurate portrayal of the company's relationship with a large part of the userbase.

Pokemon Go is basically a world-scale slot machine, and Niantic's entire business model revolves around preying on users' addictions to steer them into in-game purchases.

They are absolutely aware that a huge number of theirs users are addicted to the game, and they employ as many dark patterns as possible to extract every last dollar from these people.

What are they addicted to, controlling a gym near their home?

Probably some are, but the addictive aspect is more in the collecting of rare tokens with specific aspect.

It requires a staggering amount of grinding to get these prized tokens, which forces players to spend an inordinate amount of time and constantly face prompts where they can pay to increase the chances of getting something.

The chance aspect is critical, as the addicts aren't paying for a specific result but at the chance of a result. This human impulse is something that predatory companies have found very lucrative to exploit -- from gambling and collecting and now done with precision by "gaming" companies.

> Probably some are, but the addictive aspect is more in the collecting of rare tokens with specific aspect.

Once you have collected a rare token with specific aspect, then what? Can you show it off to your peers, sell it, trade it, win battles easier?

Yes, specifically those things. edit: Maybe not the selling, it's probably not a big factor for most people.

If you ever had to deal with people playing games where you had to "defend" something in real time (clash of clans, Rust, EVE online, etc.) you would have experienced concerning behavior on their part

I'd guess min-maxing their pokemon stats and completing the collection.

> The participants are not gamers, they are addicts and victims.

That's judgemental. If you wanted to, you could just as well say that about any user who enjoys to use any product.

> The participants are not gamers, they are addicts and victims.

Where does that line get drawn?

When a grindfest game starts to offer you to spend some money (or something that can be monetized) on in-game items or perks that allow you to skip some of the grind?

Basically, when a "pay to win" option comes up.

> others become "very careful, trustworthy" OSM users who "make many worthy additions to the map" by accurately mapping out places where OSM's data is patchy or outdated.

The xz debacle manifested in a different way

I thought you were just going to point out that maybe the net result was positive, lol. I'd take OSM being useful in 90% more places in exchange for some fake beaches.

Really, though, the quote you took was from the last paragraph of the article and was referring to players who didn't abuse their power, not people who built up a reputation just to plant something later. So it's not really an xz incident equivalent.

on the one hand this is pretty funny. On the other hand: if you want to experience the entirety of a game without traveling, why play a location-based game at all?

Yeah this is funny to me that someone complain that about this, like just play other games lol

there enough pokemon game that dnt require location based gameplay and this pokemon go cant have that ??? lol

Previous discussion 5 days ago (on the OSM forum thread that indirectly spawned this Ars article): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40219472

Is there a trading mechanic in this game yet? I played when it first released, but it was pretty limited at the time.

I wonder if the game could instead add some image recognition. A player should be able to point their camera at a little pond in their back yard and get water Pokémon to spawn there. Who cares, right? The game was mostly single player when I played it at least (maybe it is more interactive with other players nowadays though?)

Trading has been added to the game in Summer 2018.

They also added PvP in December 2018.

I would say the game is mostly multiplayer, if you're lucky enough to live in a big city with an active community.

Ah, ok. I’m way out of date!

Funny seeing these headlines come back around. Here's something from seven years ago with the same kind of problem:

[OSM-talk] Beware Pokemon users https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2016-December...

For anyone who wants to search their area for beaches you can go to

https://overpass-turbo.eu/?template=key-value&key=natural&va...

zoom in to the area then click run. For London it seems there is a beach by Embankment tube.

I noticed this last year when a little street library popped up as a pokestop in the middle of my block but it wasn’t there irl. Players have been hacking and glitching Pokémon for decades. It’s harmless fun.

It's no longer "harmless fun" once it escapes containment, such as by editing map from an external service.

Why not simply use GPS spoofing for your phone? There's even a whole subreddit on that subject /r/PokemonGoSpoofing with all the necessary guides.

better do gps spoofing

Reply on news.ycombinator.com