When Niantic released Pokémon Go in the summer of 2016, I’m sure that even they didn’t know what they were making. This latest event has evolved the game from something to do while I walked around a park, to a full on community-driven experience brought to life by passionate players that all pulled together to get the job done these past three weeks.

For those of you who don’t know, some special legendary Pokémon were released on a staggered release schedule over the past few weeks, forcing players to meet in person and team up against these powerful beasts in hopes of adding them to their collection. Before experiencing this event for myself, I thought that completing this challenge was going to be impossible and that these legendary Pokémon would only be for people that were able to get 7–20 friends together. Boy was I wrong.

On the first day of the event, a friend and I went to Bayfront Park in Hamilton, Ontario, to do a normal walk around. Soon thereafter we noticed that a gathering of players in one of the fields. We ran over and saw that they were trying to take on the legendary Articuno in a raid, and that they needed help. We joined in the fight and took the challenge head on, overcoming this great battle. We talked with them a bit and learned that there was another one of these raids happening on the other side of the park and we immediately volunteered to help them. After yet another successful raid, we were hooked.

We gathered as many friends as we could, coordinated free time slots and travel arrangements and headed out for three weeks of what I consider the best multiplayer experience I’ve had in a very long time. I met a ton of new people, found a lot of local restaurants and interesting spots, but most importantly caught those legendaries!

This sort of experience was better than I could have imagined, coming from traditional gaming communities online. When was the last time you were able to coordinate with virtually an entire city of people to pull together under such short notice?

The coolest part of this entire event was how the community members treated each other. I saw people offering rides to one another*, experienced players giving tips and tricks, and even players offering to go halfway across the city to help groups out just because they needed a helping hand. This sort of generosity and cooperation is frankly unheard of, I’ve never seen things run this smoothly in a multiplayer experience. Even though this is “just” Pokémon Go, it’s really inspiring to see what we can accomplish if we work together towards a common goal. As individuals and small groups help each other out the entire community improves as a whole.

The exploration of Hamilton was also a real eye-opener. Living in a nearby town, I thought that I had frequented the city enough to understand all it’s ins-and-outs, but was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a lot to explore. We found new restaurants, new parks, and even learned how to navigate the city better. I don’t know if Niantic had city exploration in mind when they made Pokémon Go, but it is a great tool to almost “force” you to look around. Typically I look for the most efficient way to get to my destination, ignoring all areas that don’t get me there the fastest. However, add Pokémon Go to the equation and I want to check out what’s down that random street. Maybe there’s a rare spawn down there? Maybe there’s some PokéStops to spin?

Pokémon Go for most people is just a fun app to toy around in, but these past few weeks has blown my opinion of it out of the water. The game is so much more engaging all thanks to the amazing community and cooperative in-game events. If you play Pokémon Go in/around Hamilton, check out the subreddit where you can find the regular reddit-like posts and learn about the Discord server which we use to chat about raids and group making. These communities were invaluable for past few weeks and I plan to continue using them for the foreseeable future.

*Please use caution when accepting rides from people, especially if you don’t know them very well. Be safe out there!