Ask HN: Are the Pokemon Go articles real, or is their PR firm amazing?

Pokémon is one of the biggest franchises in the world. It's like the McDonald's of gaming, and the people that grew up consuming it are now in their 20s-30s and extremely active on Social Media.

Before major news outlets pick it up, micro-blogs, niche blogs for gaming, and other entertainment media outlets are going to publish stories about it, and the content writers of those sites are all the demographic that grew up with Pokémon, so it's no surprise really.

In Stockholm, I've observed two different people taking photographs of stuff for their Pokémon Go collection or whatever it is. It's spreading quickly like the Harlem Shake, Ice Bucket Challenge and the Gagnam Style video of the past.

No, I think it's just actually that popular of a franchise. A ton of my friends (early 20's) are talking about it on Facebook to the point where its a large portion of my entire newsfeed.

Dude.

Well, Niantic already had their first successful product years ago, so I wouldn't call them a startup anymore.

Also they riding on a 20 year old hype train that had nothing to do with them.

So it's in the news because of The Pokemon Company, Nintendo and Google/Alphabet.

I haven't played it, but pretty much every time I look out the window of my apartment here in NYC there are random people wandering aimlessly around my block with their phone pointed in weird directions. I have friends and family in my hometown telling me all sorts of stories about swarming amusement parks, masses of kids out in the street etc...

Genuinely viral, not a PR blitz. The network effect of human activity in close proximity, physically gathering in already crowded public spaces, and then spreading to areas of non-players is probably the key viral component on this one. Someone sees other people on the street playing it, they check it out, explore other areas, the network grows and so on.

Likely more effective virally than social networks because it's a well developed game mechanic - skill, mastery, rewards etc - and apparently it encourages strangers to interact, not just existing social circles. So the activity leaps over the "tribal" firewall.

It just turns out that viral social media manifested in the real world starts resembling an actual virus.

Pokemon is a 50 billion dollar franchise. It has made billions of dollars for its owners. The franchise has made more profits than twitter, Facebook and maybe a few other unicorns combined.

Its not that surprising it is doing well.

The buzz for this game is very real. I've been in SF and LA over the last week and you see people walking around everywhere with this game on. The only question is that because of the barrier of having to be in physical locations and having to walk/drive is this game sustainable. I think with additional game mechanics niantic can definitely make this a long term hit.

Actually I've been wondering if a PR agency has been running a huge campaign against Pokemon Go. There were a bunch of articles last week:

- People sent to churches and graveyards

- One person found a dead body while playing

- Someone supposedly had an accident while playing in the car

- One black person pointing he couldn't play the game safely as it would be dangerous to wander around aimlessly as a black guy in the city

- A bunch of inappropriate places like strip clubs were included

This seems to me like the next candidate for overblown, unjustified outrage. Like D&D in the 80s, or Google Glass recently. I'm just waiting for Moms Against Pokemon Go.

Read about PoGo players wandering into courthouses taking pictures and getting into trouble in Sydney.

See all these people in the below photos? They're playing it. At night. In a public park. I walked through there at midnight on Saturday night and it was just as busy. During the day it's even more so. Walking through just about any inner-suburban public park currently involves watching groups of 20somethings scurry around trying to locate pokemon.

It has been explosively successful in the traditionally non-gamer markets. News outlets are picking it up because it's so ubiquous.

https://media.apnarm.net.au/img/media/images/2016/07/11/b882...

https://media.apnarm.net.au/img/media/images/2016/07/11/b882...

My girlfriend who never plays video games had me walking around the neighboorhood with her, catching pokemon. This is the real deal, not PR.

I was wondering this as well because...pokemon came along...when? After my time, anyway, like late 90s.

And then kind of died down, I think, or at least wasn't a monstrous craze at least.

And now in 2016, does it mean that everyone who was super into them 15 years ago is all for it?

If I think about what I was super into at 10, the nostalgia doesn't go that far today.

I mean I see I'm late to the party here and everyone's already said it's real, but I was just surprised.

Around 2007, for some months there, the world was saturated with articles about Second Life. Eventually I saw an article about how it had come about as a result of hiring a new PR firm.

(Or has nostalgia changed? At least if I imagine giving 1940s kids something connected to that in 1965, it seems like they'd be like "Um, I'm a grown wo/man." But today hollyworld is all superhero movies.)

Bonus question: How long before we grow really sick of hearing about it?

My cousins played Pokémon in elementary school. They were obsessed. They invited me to play a couple games when I visited them (I had no idea which Pokémons were good). Now, they are graduating college. It is an entire generation that was raised on Pokémon, now starting their millenial lives.

It's probably the most interesting thing that has happened in games since Minecraft. Mobile games were stuck on Bejeweled clones or even more upmarket stuff like Clash of Clans. This almost guarantees a shift in development dollars towards AR.

Seeing Pokémon Go players in person is a little disconcerting though. They are more 'out of it' than usual, where 'out of it' baseline is the person texting while walking down the street.

Definitely genuinely viral (although of course that does not preclude the pokemon PR people from pushing articles!)

I'm not surprised. I have multiple friends who bought Nintendo 3DS's to play Pokemon over the past couple years... mind you, these are not nerdy kids. They are mainstream friends who are not gamers. They've been openly playing pokemon and there has been zero stigma attached to it.

I think what's most amazing about this latest craze is that it managed to attract these mainstream, non-gamers. My Facebook feed (early 20s college educated) is seriously 20-30% Pokemon posts. And it's not the nerdy kids posting screenshots, it's people you would never expect, evenly distributed across genders.

Can you imagine people sharing screenshots of their world of warcraft quests on facebook?!

Pied Piper moment of technology (the original story not the HBO show!)