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Pokemon GO wtf?


big jim

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what the hell is all that about?

 

people wandering round town staring into their mobiles capturing imaginary pocket monsters, us spotters get a bad name but this, holy crap batman!!

 

i was wandering round town earlier and the ammount of people just oblivious to their surroundings and walking into things etc is unreal, like a day of the dead zombie attack

 

of course as i had my 12 year old with me he ran me through what was going on, anyway there is a corner in crewe that is a "pokemon gym" where you can go and have a battle and train your pokemon, when i passed there were a good 20 people just stood there "in the gym" as it were

 

not the best pic but every side of this roundabout had kids/youths hanging round 

2AAEB26D-75C8-4E1E-84C2-492F3637FE5F.jpg

 

look closely at this picture and you can see 3 lads on the left walking out in front of the silver merc which had to slam on as they were too engrossed in the game

42DAAD82-2D09-483B-82B2-15BC8F451417.jpg

 

its beyond me this lot, ive got the game on my Iphone as the kids play it but its proper weird and more importantly as it uses GPS and the camera drains the battery in super quick time so i dont think it will be on there for long!

 

 

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Isn't this the game that was so sensitive to moral sensibilities that they included the holocaust museum in the places you could go looking for the things? Moronic doesn't even get close to describing that particular bit of crass insensitivity.

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Four lads playing it had to be rescued from Box caves in Wiltshire

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-36805615

 

and two 12 year old girls were found this week after wandering onto dangerous sands in the Bristol Channel.

 

Log in and turn your brains off.

 

 

Baffles me but then again my train set probably baffles others :)

 

 

.

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I'm reminded of an episode of Star Trek, TNG where the crew became so absorbed in a game that aliens took over the ship. There are many similarities, except for the aliens, so far....

 

Cheers,

 

David

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Isn't this the game that was so sensitive to moral sensibilities that they included the holocaust museum in the places you could go looking for the things? Moronic doesn't even get close to describing that particular bit of crass insensitivity.

Apparently it was a poison gas monster called a Koffing the minute it was notified the company deleted it, but who ever even thought of it?

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Isn't this the game that was so sensitive to moral sensibilities that they included the holocaust museum in the places you could go looking for the things? Moronic doesn't even get close to describing that particular bit of crass insensitivity.

The locations in game are based on local places of interest submitted by players of the companies previous game of simmilar concept. The fact there is a stop at the holocaust museum is of no fault of players or even the company making the game.

 

And besides, whether or not its a museum, its getting people outside, exploring the local areas, and getting to know the world around us all.

The game is targetted at adults and young adults in all advertising, and when loading the game up, it specifically states to keep aware of your surroundings and to not keep your head in your phone.

 

The fact people have such an issue with people going outside and being active is outrageous as they were the same people complaining that people never went outside before this released.

 

Consequences of people playing the game without care for the world around them is no fault of the game, and all responsibility lies with the person themselves.

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I always thought a Pokemon was a Rastafarian proctologist.  ;)

 

That aside this game gets people off the sofa and outside but does so at the cost of placing screen-gazing zombies on our streets instead of having them confined in the relative safety of padded cells called "home".  I've witnessed more than one aimlessly wander into the path of a moving tram here and quite a few gathering in the middle of intersections pacing one or two steps in each direction.  There are reports of people entering caves and mines, wandering along dangerous shorelines and cliff edges as it seems some of the most sought-after of these little critters live in the least-accessible places.  Not all are found in public places either.  One of my colleagues reports being handed a mobile phone at the ticket-office window with the instruction to "catch that ....... behind you".  Apparently the phone was returned to a disgruntled owner with the advice that the window was for ticket sales only.

 

Makes train-spotting look tame, eh?  Failing that we used to get together with a ball (an actual spherical object, not a blip on a screen), use two coats or bags for "goal posts" and have a good kick around.  

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I'm happy that this game got kids off their backsides and doing physical work...Children have been bunking college lectures, breaking into private property etc etc. thanks to this game.

 

But I'm sad that the kids of today have no common sense to spare whilst playing it! I'm also deeply saddened by the fact that I've lost a friend due to this game, just like in the second picture posted by Jim, I've actually had a friend get run over by car/truck and lost his life.

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Some places are just not places to treat as some sort of light hearted game fodder, the holocaust museum is one of them. A memorial to one of the greatest crimes of history (many would argue it is the greatest crime in history) in which many millions of people perished deserves to be accorded a bit more respect than to have people wandering around fixated on their smart phones looking for pokemon characters. Somebody decided it was OK to use the location and it would appear that some gamers saw no issue with it. Whether that was the games developers is in some ways moot as it is like many other things, you can outsource work but you can’t outsource responsibility.

The argument that it must be good because it is getting kids outside is predicated on an argument that there are no alternatives to kids either being couch potatoes or smart phone zombies which is a false proposition. There are an almost infinite number of possibilities for how individuals can spend their free time and to argue that having them risk life and limb by losing all spatial awareness on public highways is to be welcomed as it is better than watching TV does not seem an especially good argument. Putting a disclaimer on the game does not wash either, the last resort of poor safety management everywhere is to put up a sign or send an e-mail telling people not to do stuff and then pretend that those responsible for safety have done their job. We don’t accept exposed electricity conductors which have “do not touch” written on them or just leaving gasoline in open buckets in service stations with “do not smoke near this” painted on the bucket. The incidents happening as a result of poor situational awareness are entirely predictable, for the developers to say its not their fault because they tell people not to get too immersed in a game when they’ve purposely set out to get people immersed is at best disingenuous.

If people like games, including this one, then fair play and it’s a free world. However regardless of free choice there are certain places where such a game is inappropriate and I’d expect both game developers, whoever uploads the locations and gamers to recognise that.

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I used to collect trolleybus numbers when I was a lad.......... :nono:

 

Isn't that Merc (in Jim's first post) on the wrong side of the road though?

 

 

i thought that when i posted it, its cut the mini roundabout a bit doing a right turn

 

It is on the left hand side of the white line so definitely on the correct side, and if he is attempting to avoid the pedestrians then swerving to the wrong side might be preferable to running them over..

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From what my kids have told me the selection of places is an automated one, based on Google maps. Our local "Pokemon Stop" is a derelict church. Other places are musuems, churches, monuments, parks, places of interest, etc. They are just added by the type of place they are, no real human intervention.

Of course, in future this means that owners of retail establishments, Starbucks, McDonalds etc can pay to become places and are easy to add as they are already marked on Google maps.

 

Brian

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thats the way i understand it, that "gym" in crewe is nothing more than a roundabout, thankfully its just far enough away from the war memorial at the other end of the street

 

as for the pokemon themselves they can just randomly appear which is where i think the warnings about using the apps in "sacred places" are coming from people just whipping out phones to see what "wild pokemon" are about

 

i was thinking the same about big business cashing in, its an inevitability really, it was in the paper last week that asda have put up warnings about chasing pokemon in the shops but will also give a "shout out" on the tannoy if someone catches a pikachu pokemon in store (a rare one apparently)

 

i think that pub on the corner in my 2nd picture is missing a trick though, the gym is right outside their front door, im sure they could think of a way to lure the legal aged pokemonists in for a bit of a pub lunch!

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It is on the left hand side of the white line so definitely on the correct side, and if he is attempting to avoid the pedestrians then swerving to the wrong side might be preferable to running them over..

 

From the angle of the car it is pretty obvious it did not go around the mini roundabout and has cut the corner. I would think anyone crossing the road where the kids are doing so could be taken unawares.

Actually in this situation the kids have right of way, Highway Code Rule 170

 

"Watch out for pedestrians crossing a road into which you are turning. If they have started to cross they have priority, so give way"

 

Brian

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thats the way i understand it, that "gym" in crewe is nothing more than a roundabout, thankfully its just far enough away from the war memorial at the other end of the street

 

as for the pokemon themselves they can just randomly appear which is where i think the warnings about using the apps in "sacred places" are coming from people just whipping out phones to see what "wild pokemon" are about

 

i was thinking the same about big business cashing in, its an inevitability really, it was in the paper last week that asda have put up warnings about chasing pokemon in the shops but will also give a "shout out" on the tannoy if someone catches a pikachu pokemon in store (a rare one apparently)

 

i think that pub on the corner in my 2nd picture is missing a trick though, the gym is right outside their front door, im sure they could think of a way to lure the legal aged pokemonists in for a bit of a pub lunch!

 

There are already muggers attracting people to dark alleys by leaving their pokomons there!

The saddest thing I've heard about. Syrien refugee children are using this game to be 'found' and hoping to be rescued. If this is not the greatest indictment of what is wrong with out society, I'm not sure what is. Even though I fear others will have equally horrible storries to tell.

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