Rehan Hooda

A lot has been written about the latest Viral app worldwide, Pokémon GO. Articles have dissected at length the reasons of Pokémon being the latest hit. The success of the game has been engineered right from the beginning of the franchise in 1989 as a mere idea, to the invention of Google Maps and Google Earth as products. Some have equated the similarities between Pokémon following and religious following and some have discussed how Charles Darwin would have been the greatest Pokémon Master of all time.

Pokémon as a journey started in 2003 for me when Cartoon Network was at its peak instead of the CN that kids see nowadays. Internet was mere 128 Kbps, and 2GB RAM was considered the dream computer with Pentium 4 ruling India. Cartoon Network had an incredibly stellar lineup with the likes of Transformers, Pokémon, Beyblade, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls and Jonny Bravo. It was class 5 for me when the Pokémon franchise was launched in India, and the world embraced it with open arms. For kids my age, it had a mellowing effect on the brutal loss against Australia in the ICC Cricket World Cup final against Australia. I still remember Glenn McGrath's Yorker to Sachin in the first over which got him caught out. Pokémon came as a welcome change in the form of escapism with an entire world to keep us busy with.

The journey started with "Gotta draw 'em all" for me instead of the usual "Gotta catch 'em all" as an art enthusiast. The franchise had a gripping effect on the world with everything plastered with inaccurate Pokémon figures, right from school merchandise, lunch boxes, water bottles, stationery items to trading cards, stickers with Alpenliebe, Perk to Tazos with Uncle Chips. This was the first time everything around pointed towards that imaginary journey by Ash Ketchum with Pikachu. The franchise and its effect died out gradually as I 'grew up'; with exams and homework more important and the "beta 10th aane wali hai, Board Exams theek se dedo phir life set hai."

After 13 years and every event in last eight years, right from 10th class to the job pegged incredibly important than the previous one. Each event with enough significance to "set my life". Before I knew it, I was a 'working professional' working while being away from family and friends in Mumbai. Now every day I find myself in front of this sad, hang happy Vostro CPU with Dell internals while staring into the Lenovo LCD. The gruelling work barely leaves any time to socialise or 'make friends'. Instead, all I want to do after a long day is watch some quality cinema home and sleep just to be on time the next day (which rarely is the case though).

In all the attempts at 'adulting', I remember July 6, 2016, as the Apkmirror channel notified me of 'Pokémon GO 0.29.0' was uploaded. Despite my best intentions at trying to ignore it, 5 minutes later I saw myself attempting to log-in on the game. It was like muscle memory for me, to try out 'Pokémon GO', something that I was not excited about because of the sheer haze of time. But I gave into whatever that was evident from the haze. I logged in and proceeded to set up my profile with a Charmander (I wish I knew the exploit to get a Pikachu right from the start). As I showed it to my colleagues around in the office, the kid who loved to 'draw 'em all' took over.

The experience of playing the game and being bombarded with 'throwbacks'about every Pokémon I drew about almost one and a half decade ago. As I continued to capture them and read the names, nights spent drawing and playing with Pokémon Trading cards came flying back. The nostalgia was mixed with a strange sense of disappointment at not recalling names for several Pokémon while feeling delightful at remembering the names correctly. As I continued to play, the feeling of being back to the safety of childhood wrapped itself around me instead of all the responsibilities involved with 'adulting'. The 25-minute long tiring walk back home turned into an hour and a half long enjoyable walk, exploring the area around the office in a zig-zag manner. I even got to know about a short cut that reduced my walk by a good 10 minutes every day. I tried hacking the app and even was temporarily successful but gave it up in a day as it drained the fun of the experience. During the hack, I was pleased to notice that Niantic was not overly harsh by banning the player. Instead, they make the game hard to play for an hour or so, by allowing the caught Pokémon to escape.

In the first five days, I explored the area trying to level up to level 5 to unlock more exciting aspects of them the game. But as the game gained traction and when viral, I have met about ten people in last five days who were exploring the area just like me. Even though the number of users may not be impressive regarding sheer volume to signify the popularity, but merely meeting with random strangers surprised me with that rush of happiness and similarity. Never has a game leveraged this human tendency to be happy when they encounter strangers with same interests and hobbies and Pokémon Go nailed it. Apart from reigniting the passion about the franchise to the real world aspect, the game has gone beyond the conventional 'engagement'. This is more human and surprising, banking on personal memories of kids during the 2000's. It's the sheer genius of the game is engaging memories while meeting strangers, a stranger you can talk to about a common goal. The engagement that people dreamt about while being on 'The Pokémon Journey' to win the 'Pokémon League,' while meeting a new bunch of people.