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Two walked together, the rest alone, and one rode a bicycle. They were in town separately, but they all were working toward a common goal.
Pokemon. Specifically, catching them. Catching them all.
The whimsical animated creatures born out of Nintendo Game Boy games in the mid-’90s are back in a smartphone app, “Pokemon Go,” which uses GPS technology to scatter Pokemon throughout the real world to be “caught” by players who seek them out.
With names like Avalugg, Slakoth, Purugly and, of course, the inimitable Pikachu, thousands of Pokemon in 250 varieties have stirred up a crazed national frenzy akin to a nerdy, modern Beatles invasion, and the Upper Valley is no exception.
“It gets people outside. It brings all the nerds outside,” said player Graham Robinson, age 32, Level 13, who has the good fortune of living in an apartment above one of White River Junction’s several “Pokestops” — designated locations where players can re-up the Pokeballs needed to play the game — in the Center for Cartoon Studies’ former Colodny’s Surprise building.
Walking down South Main Street, he said he was on his way to hunt Zubats in the Tip Top Building because they’re known to be found in its halls.
On his way, he passed by Rishi Sanyal, age 17, Level 14, of Hanover, who was turning circles in the grass across the street from Tuckerbox. Sanyal, who had just dropped off his sister at Northern Stage’s drama camp, said he usually would just get in his car and drive home, but before he left, he decided to check “Pokemon Go.”
“I opened my app and noticed there was a lot of stuff around,” he said, including Clefairy, Abras and Weedles strewn across a virtual map of downtown White River.
Like others playing downtown on Thursday, Sanyal said the allure of the game boils down to nostalgia. The app allows players a very personal way of interacting with a franchise that they grew up with as kids, especially the video games, cards and anime TV shows and movies.
“It really brought back a lot of childhood memories,” he said. And whether or not other people understand that matters little to him.
“It’s like a ‘different strokes’ type of thing.”
As with all Pokemon, once Sanyal decided to try to catch one, the app used his smartphone’s camera to superimpose the creature onto the scene at hand. The Pokemon danced about the screen, trying to evade capture, as Sanyal virtually tossed virtual Pokeballs toward it by using the upward swipe.
That motion also usually serves as the final giveaway that the person in question — all of the obvious players in White River Junction that morning, save for a reporter and a photographer, were male — is not merely your average pedestrian consumed by his phone, but rather, as players are called in the game, a Pokemon trainer.
“It’s a different kind of staring at your phone,” said Tuckerbox barista Steve Thueson, age 26, Level 5, who can sometimes see other players from his vantage point overlooking the glass windows at the downtown cafe. “It’s a more active staring at your phone.”
Released little more than a week ago, “Pokemon Go” has already been declared the biggest mobile game in U.S. history by SurveyMonkey, which tracks website metrics, because of its estimated 21 million daily active users. It’s more popular than Twitter and Netflix, according to Fortune.com, with its “sights set” on Snapchat and WhatsApp, two other app goliaths.
But unlike most apps and games, “Pokemon Go” hinges on players leaving the house, mapping a fictional world on top of the one that everyone else lives in, a type of technology called augmented reality. And when something so popular sends so many people out into the world, clashes — good and bad — are bound to happen. They’ve resulted in countless news stories:
Officials at the Holocaust Museum found that it had been designated as a Pokestop, prompting them to call on visitors to stop hunting Pokemon there.
Players treading into remote, unusual territory have discovered dead bodies, including in Nashua and Wyoming.
Other players have been targeted by robbers in remote locations or discovered and rescued abandoned pets.
One realized a Pokemon was on his wife’s hospital bed while she was giving birth.
Serious privacy concerns have also been broached. U.S. Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., wrote a letter earlier this week asking the game’s creators, Niantic, to explain an issue where the game requested full access to players’ Google accounts when it was activated on an iPhone operating system, which Niantic has signaled was a mistake. Franken raised concerns about the data collected by the app, including location data, and asked questions about what the game is gathering “for other purposes.”
In the Upper Valley, so far at least, the immediate impact has not been too dramatic. In Hanover, for example, the Howe Library realized it was designated as a Pokestop and tried to capitalize with an enticing tweet.
“After you grab your items (& some Pokemon?) ask about our online resources,” it said.
But local police departments are also warning of potential dangers, said Lebanon Deputy Police Chief Phil Roberts, as police throughout the country have reported “accidents, injuries and robberies.” So far in the city, he said, the only Pokemon-related incident was a report of a suspicious vehicle in old West Lebanon Wednesday around 1:30 in the morning. When cops pulled the driver over for failing to use a turn signal, Roberts said, the driver “stated he was playing Pokemon.”
Other Upper Valley areas are being left out all together. “Gyms” are another type of designated area in the game where trainers battle their Pokemon against each other, with the best player taking over as the gym owner. But earlier this week, a gym in Bethel had no owner — probably because nobody could get enough cell service there to win it.
On the other end of the spectrum, Sanyal said that Hanover has proven to be a hotbed of Pokemon activity, with “packs” of Dartmouth College students wandering downtown and throughout campus, obviously playing the game.
White River Junction has also held its own, according to 29-year-old Kyle O’Connell, Level 23, a visitor from Chicago and the man on the bike.
“One of the best areas — if you’re asking about catching — is here,” he said as he gestured down South Main Street on Thursday morning.
Many of the designated areas, such as Pokestops for getting Pokeballs and gyms for winning battles, are churches and historic sites, which O’Connell said makes White River Junction a more prime location than, say, West Lebanon, which has plenty of Pokemon but fewer areas to gather Pokeballs to catch them with. Pokestops in White River include the Schulz Library, the Post Office boxes, the train station, Briggs Opera House, St. Anthony’s Parish and the Methodist Church.
As an out-of-towner, O’Connell said he’s noticed different Pokemon hang around the Upper Valley compared to Chicago, where there are plenty of Pidgeys, Drowsees and Ratatas (“which is funny,” he said, “because rats”).
“Here there’s a lot more Eevees and Nidoran,” he said, before hopping back on his bike to continue his hunting.
Maggie Cassidy, Level 4, can be reached at mcassidy@vnews.com or 603-727-3220.