Pokémon Go is officially a phenomenon, the app that's been downloaded more times than Twitter and single-handedly made Nintendo, everyone's favourite gaming granddad, relevant again. Not bad for a Google Maps mod that plugs your phone's GPS into four-year-old augmented reality tech and largely lets you make your own fun out of it.
Yet amid all the howls of dead-body findings, financial scams and mugged teenagers, somehow no-one's ire has taken in what an unstable, buggy mess it is. Pokémon requires patience at the best of times, but when the app is seemingly harder to get a stable connection with than Underground wi-fi, something's up.
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Unlike many in the UK, I waited for the official version to hit the App Store yesterday rather than switching to US iTunes, in order to have the purest, least-dodgy experience possible. Yet it constantly fails to connect – be it GPS, rendering the 5km walks necessary to incubate a Poké-egg a frustrating game of chance, or mobile signal, sometimes failing to log in entirely.
It all started ok – my first find was on the DS chief sub's desk and I bagged it – a Rattata – in one flick. Then over lunch I found 21 of the little blighters around Soho, though a large number were replicants of Drowzee and Pidgey (which you transfer into feeding candy rather than swap like spare Panini stickers, I soon found).
So far, so fun. It may be old tech but there's such a purity to how it's being implemented, you can envisage tying it in with weekend walks to areas you've been too lazy to explore. In short, I got it. Unfortunately the whole thing turned sour, as the app unceremoniously froze during an impromptu catch on the way home.
Fixed to the camera screen, it stalled indefinitely, forcing a hard reset. Restarting, the loading bar stayed at a quarter full for a good five minutes till I gave it a breather and decided to try later. Next time, it loaded fine but this time a Pokéstop, the virtual bus-stop signs that spit out much-needed bonuses, froze and the necessary details failed to load. I walked on, hoping for more luck later. Soon all Pokéstops were spinning into oblivion again. Another hard reset, still spinning, reset again.
Next try, I managed to get it to a point to catch a Pokémon, but the screen froze awaiting the successful "Gotcha" and went completely white, the ball superimposed over the top. A few minutes went by and nothing, but once back in the app, the catch hadn't taken, and I was presented with the chance to catch the exact same thing again.
This time, the ball, rather than flashing with acceptance or breaking when the bugger escapes, turned micro-sized as if it was going to roll down a drain. It stuck to the centre of the camera, following as I moved around, stuck between virtual and real worlds. I tried to get out to no avail. Another hard reset.
By the time I got to my train station, I was completely over the whole exercise. As a huge Nintendo fan from the NES days and well into techy gizmos and collecting things I don't need, Pokémon Go should have been my New Thing. I'm still occasionally trying, hoping for improvement. Even overlooking the complete lack of skill involved in catching anything, there's clearly fun to be had here.
Yet it just can't keep to a basic set of play rules because the tech doesn't seem able to keep up. Despite the huge financial success, it makes you wonder if this is why Nintendo was hesitant shifting on to smartphones – its history of quality assurances and closed systems at loggerheads with relying on other people's tech and remote servers. Currently, it's just not consistent enough to really fall in love.
Yet fall in love people are. It's certainly become an obsession for some already, so I can only hope the app is faring better for others. Either that or we've all become incredibly used to, and extremely tolerant of, apps and software that are laden with bugs and glitches. Whatever the reasons, stability fix soon please, yeah? Gotta fix us all before we can catch 'em all.
Matt is a journalist, audience strategist, editorial director and workflow consultant with over 20 years' of experience in the industry.
A former director of audience development and content strategy at Hearst UK, Matt was previously Editor-in-Chief of Digital Spy. There, he contributed features and reviews on TV, movies, consumer technology, video games and Lego sets, won BSME Digital Editor of the Year, and led the team to numerous awards including Campaign Consumer Media Brand of the Year and PPA Digital Content Team of the Year twice.
As Digital Development Director of the Hearst UK portfolio, he oversaw the central digital editorial teams including SEO, video, e-commerce and design, contributing to digital acceleration across all Hearst UK brands from Cosmopolitan to Good Housekeeping.
Before joining Hearst in 2015, Matt edited Future’s consumer technology lifestyle brand T3 and the UK arm of Gawker’s tech culture website Gizmodo, and was deputy editor at ShortList, the then biggest men’s magazine in the UK, interviewing the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Lord Sugar and Sirs Ridley Scott and David Attenborough in the process. LinkedIn
