14,July 2016-We’re standing at a defining moment in the history of technology. I’m standing in my pyjamas at 10:30pm in front of a townhouse with painted giraffes on its facade.
I’m not alone, either. Four others came out for the same reason: to capture the two-headed, ostrich-like monster bouncing around on the sidewalk.
To understand how I ended up in a situation that once could’ve only been explained by psychedelic drugs, you need to know the events of the past week how my life has become dominated by a classic video game designed for 10-year-olds.
Niantic Labs, partnering with Nintendo and Pokémon Co., released “Pokémon Go,” a free game for iPhones and Android phones.
When you launch it, you see the game franchise’s world famous “pocket monsters” as if they existed in your backyard or bathtub.
The point? To “catch ’em all,” as the kids say. The technology isn’t new. Smartphones have had AR games for years, and even Nintendo previously released similar features for its 3DS handheld device.
This isn’t even especially good execution of AR. Which is why perhaps not even Nintendo predicted what happened next.
Suddenly, millions of people put phone to face and began roaming their neighbourhoods, hunting monsters.
The frenzy led to injuries, the discovery of a dead body, even true love. Maybe they were driven by a Game Boy-era love of Pokémon, maybe just intense peer pressure.