10 years of "Pokémon Go": The summer we all spent outside
Ten years ago, a smartphone game lured half the world out of their homes. A nostalgic look back at the "Pokémon" summer of 2016.
If you believe the memes, we were never closer to world peace than in the summer of 2016. The summer of "Pokémon Go". A quick consultation of the history books, aka Wikipedia's 2016-Recap page, contradicts this thesis: David Bowie dies (RIP, Starman), a gorilla befriends a toddler and is then shot (RIP, Harambe), and in America, it becomes apparent that a "very stable genius" could become president (RIP, my fragile faith in collective reason). A utopia looks different.
And yet: What remains with me above all is the unforgettable summer with "Pokémon Go". A summer full of chance encounters, a real sense of community, and the reminder that we are all just big kids.
It was magical. And a little embarrassing.
Once upon a time ...
Come, little children, gather 'round the campfire and listen to my story from an enchanted land called the USA. Here lives the tech wizard John Hanke, who wants to entertain the people with a new game.
It's called "Ingress", released in 2013 for smartphones, and at first glance, it sounds unimpressive: a convoluted plot about a new energy form from the Geneva CERN labs (Switzerland, represent!), warring factions, and some portals that need to be scanned. The hook is that they are scattered throughout the real world. This concept is called Augmented Reality, and if you want to play, you have to go out into the fresh air.
The portals are landmarks or monuments. Sometimes they are also shops, disused phone booths, mailboxes, and other more sensitive locations, which I will discuss later. These stations are the meeting points for players; this is where the action happens and where faction battles are fought.
"Ingress" becomes a veritable success for developer Niantic, Inc., and this is where the story would end, if it weren't for that April Fool's joke.
April, April
On April 1, 2014, the Google Maps team hid 150 Pokémon on the world map of their app and announced: "Catch 'em all". The company even promised a reward: whoever collected all the Pokémon would be invited to the final application round at the Googleplex; a selected person would then start as "Pokémon Master" in September 2014.
The job exists as much as Harambe's chance for a fair trial. The collecting game itself, however, was surprisingly elaborately designed for an April Fool's joke and attracted hundreds of thousands of Pokémon trainers to the map.
Niantic, then still part of Google, experienced the euphoria firsthand and asked the logical question: What if this wasn't a joke? What if you took "Ingress", kept the portals, and simply put a "Pokémon" skin over the already proven framework?
Behind the scenes, the gears began to turn. About a year later, Niantic spun off from Google, brought Nintendo and The Pokémon Company on board, and quietly began work on a piece of pop culture history.
The hype rolls in ...
It's not often that the world looks intently at New Zealand. Sure, it's a beautiful country, a pilgrimage site for Middle-earth nerds, and the island has the coolest national animal ever. But usually, little of interest happens in the Pacific nation. Sorry, Kiwis.
That changed in the spring of 2016. Along with Australia and Japan, New Zealand was one of the first countries where "Pokémon Go" was released for testing. Niantic deliberately opted for a soft launch to prevent server overloads.
The number of players was severely limited at the beginning. A friend of mine, who was in Australia at the time, managed to get access and talked about it as if he were one of the children allowed to visit Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Similarly happy trainers shared their experiences just as joyfully, and so "Pokémon Go" grew into a global hype, even before half the world was even allowed to play.
The FOMO also set in for me. Nothing is more exciting than something I want and can't have immediately.
... and reaches Switzerland
On July 16, "Pokémon Go" was officially released in Switzerland. Scenes I had previously witnessed incredulously from afar were repeated on our streets: crowds of people suddenly moving because someone shouted "Lapras" or near-death experiences with public transport because their eyes were glued to their phone screens.
The servers could only partially withstand the onslaught: the spinning Pokéball on the loading screen became a symbol of frustration for millions of eager players. And there were plenty of them: in the first 60 days, the app was downloaded over 250 million times. No wonder the technology gave out.
Nevertheless, the fun outweighed everything: "Pokémon Go" brought people together in a way that only international sporting events and alcohol usually manage. Especially for the otherwise rather reserved Swiss mentality, it was a game-changer (pun intended).
The swiping motion on the phone became a silent identifier for like-minded people. People greeted each other without knowing each other, pointed out nearby Pokéstops, or shared hacks to trick the pedometer. Ten kilometers to hatch an egg is no small feat, after all.
The social dimensions worked across generations: teenagers were just as hooked as people in their mid-thirties and older who had played the black-and-white Game Boy debut back then. The community was helpful, benevolent, and warm. People were happy for others who had just caught a rare Pokémon and discussed who would place the next lure module.
Envy was at most directed at those who were far-sighted enough to get a power bank. Because the game drains a smartphone battery faster than an electric attack drains a water-type Pokémon.
In short: everyone was having fun. Everyone except me.
A very one-sided beef with Apple had led me to buy a Windows phone the year before. I liked the tile layout, and the camera took crisp, sharp pictures. Beyond that, the brick was a disaster, because there were hardly any apps for it. Microsoft's software architecture prevented applications from being ported without significant effort.
I can't remember how long it took until Niantic finally had a Windows version ready, but I do remember exactly how the weeks after the release felt. Namely, like this.
Pokémon NO!
August 2016. I'm sitting in a rickshaw, pulled by a guy whose thighs could crack coconuts. For 20 francs, he chauffeurs me for about 30 minutes through the city center to various Pokéstops: from Bürkliplatz to Enge train station to a small neighborhood bakery. I'm trying to catch up to my friends' huge level advantage and miss how absurd the situation actually is. Even 20 Minuten reported on the service back then.
"Pokémon Go" not only leads to bizarre new business areas but also to real problems. Traffic accidents near Pokéstops disproportionately increase. A study by Purdue University from 2017 found over 250 deaths in the USA alone. More are likely to have occurred since then.
Criminals, in turn, deliberately use remote locations to rob players, and at least three cold cases are opened because several people find bodies instead of Pikachus.
Various disrespectfully placed Pokéstops also cause further trouble. For example, in cemeteries and memorial sites. It becomes really uncomfortable for Niantic when pictures of Pokémon in Auschwitz circulate.
Is that it? Nope. Here are some more crazy events in quick succession:
- Iran declares "Pokémon Go" Haram.
- A 24-year-old New Zealander disappoints his parents and quits his job to become a full-time Pokémon trainer.
- A Taiwanese pensioner equips his bicycle with dozens of phones, suggesting that the pocket monsters are more important to him than the health of other road users.
- A rare Vaporeon is spotted in Central Park, whereupon thousands storm the green area and paralyze traffic in the vicinity.
- Hillary Clinton makes the worst joke of all time about the game, and I still cringe about it today.
- Nintendo releases a press release stating that they did not develop "Pokémon Go" and thereby burns almost 7 billion in market value.
- Basel Tourism goes viral with an advertising spot for the game.
All of this, however, does not diminish the game's success. By the end of the year, the developer generated around one billion US dollars in revenue.
What remains of the hype
Along with the temperatures, the number of active players also dropped in autumn 2016. By the end of the calendar year, "Pokémon Go" lost about 70 percent of its users.
In 2026, the game is still more alive than many believe. 40 to 60 million players (reliable sources are hard to find) regularly go on Pokémon safaris. Community events are plentiful and more popular than ever. This year, the "Pokémon Go" Fanfest in Chicago even set a visitor record – over 100,000 fans flocked to the park for the event.
I can never go back
For this article, I reinstalled the game. But I quickly realized that the spark was no longer there.
Why? Because I'm ten years older and my body has forgotten how to produce serotonin? Maybe. But maybe also because "Pokémon Go" was never particularly good. The accessible game principle is brilliant in its simplicity, but the actual gameplay doesn't win any awards.
"Pokémon Go" didn't become a phenomenon because it was a good game. Four other reasons were responsible for that:
- Everyone had the device needed to play (except me, lol)
- The Pokémon IP was already 20 years old at the time and resonated across generations
- The novelty of augmented reality, combined with the social aspect, created a completely new experience.
For the fourth and most important reason, I'll go back to the intro: the magic.
"Pokémon Go" hit a summer where millions of people independently wanted the same thing: to go out together and be young again for a short time. "It's a vibe," as they say in modern German. And that cannot be reproduced. You can bring back a game, but not a summer.
We were the miracle.
In the early 90s, my older brother gave me his NES with The Legend of Zelda on it. It was the start of an obsession that continues to this day.
Interesting facts about products, behind-the-scenes looks at manufacturers and deep-dives on interesting people.
Show all
