Catching Shiny Ghosts on Campus ENGLISH
Catching Shiny Ghosts on Campus
TEXT NICO ALBRECHT PHOTO ANNA SÖDERBERG
Do you see them? No? Maybe you have to take a moment and look around. Among us are those who can see them without a doubt: the players of a certain mobile video game called Pokémon Go. Can you see them now? Even though most of us retired our short-lived Pokémon careers after the summer of 2016, we recently found a small community here on KTH Campus. Still going strong. Do you remember that game from the good old times? The principle: with your trained Pokémon you go and raid for wild, randomly spawning Pokémon that you will battle and hopefully catch at certain locations called Pokéstops. Wanting to know which aspect of the game was keeping the community alive, we meet some active Pokémon Go players to get some answers… Anna, Nils, Martin, let’s play a round of Pokémon Go! While trying to understand the principle of the game, Nils explains that the objective is to build up your Pokémon team, which you use to fight in gyms, raids, or PvPs (Person vs Person). Most parts of the city have local chats where players communicate. Martin, one of his co-players, adds that the focus of the Pokémon community at KTH is to do raids, a game mode in which players cooperate to challenge the boss Pokémons. For raid updates, the campus community has a large Messenger chat, so whenever there is a raid, they alert members to join. Upon further questions about raids, the two emphasize that although it is beneficial to be as many as possible, one should also consider the features of the boss Pokémon, finding its weaknesses. Raid bonuses seem to be more generous if fewer people succeed, but playing with more people might be faster and more fun!
Osqledaren’s photographer Anna chimes in that the players might seem invisible, but their tracks are omnipresent wherever you go. As she often sees the same players guarding the gyms around Campus, very likely to be other KTH students. Nils, who is the administrator for the largest PvP community in Sweden, remembers the largest campus raid with over 17 people. On average, there are roughly 30 active people in that mentioned KTH chat, performing an average of four raids per week. A raid is quite fast and takes seven minutes at most! Investigating more about the presence of KTH raiders and catchers, we find out that people play the game differently. While Nils acknowledges the game as a fixed element in his day, for Martin it has to fit into his schedule. Others might look for Pika-
Nils actually waited until the Swedish release and has "pretty much" played every day since then
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chu, Rayquaza, or Vaporeon rather seldom. Where and how often do raid bosses appear at those Pokéstops? Still, so much is left unrevealed. Nils explains that there are a few around the library and several others just by the V building. Normally, the spawn rates for raids are so high that you don't have to go very far. Now convinced that the game is a cool activity that you can fit in during a small break or go for a longer deep dive, we are eager to know what a round of Pokémon Go means for our three adventurers. Martin explains that in the winter, he is deterred by the cold and won’t stay outside for long. On the other hand, when the weather is nice, he enjoys walking around and playing for hours. For Anna, the game is not a distraction, but rather an escape from being at home studying. Nils reveals that he always plays a lot, in particular PvP, in the community that he manages. Considering how fast the hype after the initial release abated, Pokédreams settling somewhere in the back of players’ minds, we wanted to find out how they motivate themselves to play, still. Having set his phone location to Australia in order to download the game, Martin joined before the hype, even before it was released in Sweden. He remembers the hype being “super cool”. Due to a lack of content, however, it didn’t last too long and felt like it was over faster than a raid. He emphasized that now, on the other hand, as more and more content has been implemented, there is more to do and more incentive to play. He directly addresses the deserters of the hype, saying: “come back and take a look at how much new content there is to explore!”
