Pokemon GO Club builds campus community

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The NC State Pokemon Go Club serves as a tight-knit community for fans of all Pokemon media, from the mobile game to the franchise’s card game and movies. Pokemon Go, a location-based mobile game that was famous for its grip on the world upon its release in 2016, still boasts a loving fanbase and thrives in communities seven years later.

Riley Malik, a fifth-year studying business and president of the club, said a group of eight students founded the club in fall 2018.

Today, the Pokemon Go Club has the largest server in the NC State Discord hub, boasting over 2,500 members.

“Literally everyone and their mother can relate to it somehow,” Malik said. “At our input tables, people stop by and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about going on, but I downloaded the app back in 2016.’ … Everyone can relate to that.”

Regular club meetings held every other Friday include games, raffles and tournaments. The club also hosts game strategy workshops, as well as organized tournaments that are registered under The Silph Road, a worldwide Pokemon network, and uses its competition rules.

The club also hosts its own tournament, the Tournament of Champions. In it, members can battle against every club officer and win an original Talley Student Union-inspired lapel pin, similar to that which players can win in Pokemon games after defeating gym

Pokemon Go tournaments are hosted in Talley Student Union and involve players trying to knock out all the Pokemon of their opponent using an assortment of six Pokemon. Players carefully select their six, making the most of the qualities and types of Pokemon they have. Tournaments between students follow a bracket-based progression.

Malik said the club welcomes participants from surrounding areas such as Durham and Chapel Hill and has even witnessed people traveling as far as Charlotte and South Carolina to participate in tournaments. Malik said some professors are even known to attend club meetings.

Nathaniel Wellborn, a third-year studying technology, engineering and design education, is the club’s webmaster. Wellborn said Pokemon Go is well suited for college students as it incentivizes activity and community engagement.

“I started playing freshman year when I got to college,” Wellborn said. “I figured I was gonna be walking around a lot, and it’d be a nice incentive to actually stay active and make sure I was getting out and about.”

As a member of a small degree program, Wellborn said the club has given him a space to meet people he would not meet otherwise.

NC State’s campus has 132 “Pokestops,” which are in-game locations that provide players with essential items. Additionally, North Campus has 16 gyms where players can battle each other for control and participate in raid battles which pit players against particularly powerful Pokemon.

The club constructed these locations along a route that allows players to visit most of them in the amount of time it takes new Pokemon to generate in new locations.

Malik said the balance of game content and community at NC State is largely responsible for the club’s success.

“Where I went to high school … the closest Pokestop or anything I could interact with in the game was like a mile away, and I had to drive to it,” Malik said. “I couldn’t see anything from my house, and there were no people around that were playing. … I feel like we’re really lucky because we have the campus. We have the resources in the game, and it’s been so amazing to help us build the community.”

While the game is what brought the club together, Wellborn said the community it created will be the most enduring aspect of the club.

“I think if Niantic or the Pokemon Company or Nintendo ended up at any point shutting down this game, I think we‘d just find another reason to hang out,” Wellborn said.