I Flew 1,750 Miles to Catch a Pokemon

Pokemon Go is still alive, but completionism is pretty much all that’s left as we wait for new content.

By Andrew Goldfarb

This week, I traveled 1,750 miles to catch a Pokemon in Pokemon Go.

With a near-complete Pokedex, on Monday I flew to Austin, Texas to catch one of few I still needed: Corsola, a region-exclusive Pokemon who spawns in the tropics, including areas in Latin America, Africa, Australia, Asia, and, thankfully, the southernmost parts of the United States.

It sounds extreme, but as someone who has poured thousands of combined hours into open world games on consoles, there’s something thrilling about being a completionist in a game where the map is the real world. More importantly, completing the Pokedex is one of few tasks left right now in a game with a huge player base that’s growing restless waiting for new content.

Gotta Catch 'Em All

In the 15 months since Pokemon Go launched, Niantic and The Pokemon Company have released 246 Pokemon. For me, Corsola was my 244th unique catch, leaving Mewtwo (currently only available via exclusive invitations) and Suicune (who will rotate to North America on October 31) as my final bounties.

While I’m not the highest-level player (I’m still 6 levels below the level cap) or even close to the most active (some YouTubers have more than twice the experience I do), Pokemon Go has been a huge part of my life over the past year.

Walking to hatch eggs and find new Pokemon has had the most positive impact on my anxiety of any activity in my adult life, and I’ve walked a total of 2,200 kilometers (roughly 1,367 miles) according to the app’s tracking, which isn’t a bad source of exercise either.

There’s something thrilling about being a completionist in a game where the map is the real world.

I’m lucky enough to travel frequently for work, and various trips have come with the added bonus of catching region-exclusive Pokemon in Europe and Japan, so it felt only right to plan a trip much closer to home as I attempt to close out my Pokedex.

In Austin, I searched for more than four hours to find Corsola (driven by my new hero and longtime Austin resident Blaine Gibson) through downtown, Lady Bird Lake, The Domain, and various other water-adjacent areas.

After three hours of consistent searching and no solid leads from Twitter, I’d given up hope and finally agreed to take a break and get some food. It was dark, I was tired, and more than anything I was disappointed. After hours of work, it looked like I was going to walk away (well, fly away) with nothing to show for it.

But on the way, we decided to make one last stop outside of the Texas Capitol Building, the first place we'd checked earlier that day. Just for the hell of it, we decided to do one last lap. And after a full day of driving, after all the effort we'd put in, Corsola finally appeared before we'd even made it halfway around the building.

Just when I assumed my trip was a failure, I finally caught Corsola at about 10:00PM, and the moment of joy that followed reminded me of everything that’s great about this game.

Spending hours exploring a city and bonding with a friend and fellow community members in the real world is something that no other game is capable of offering, and it’s exactly why Pokemon Go has been such a big hit.

You Teach Me and I'll Teach You

It’s easy to point to Pokemon Go as a declining fad compared to its overwhelming early success. It became a global phenomenon last year and remains one of the most-viewed games in IGN history, even outpacing our E3 traffic. While it isn't quite on that level anymore, the game’s hardcore community is still thriving. The introduction of raid battles earlier this year led to gigantic groups traveling together to take on strong Pokemon, and interest skyrocketed with the release of the Legendary birds in July.

I witnessed the enthusiasm of the community firsthand at Pokemon Go Fest, where despite the event’s overall troubles, players still banded together to travel in enormous raid groups. More recently, I attended Viva Calle SJ in San Jose, where thousands of people stormed the city for increased rare Pokemon spawns. On YouTube, local communities organize full day raids across their cities, even without any official support from Niantic.

The invitation system for Mewtwo has been divisive, with many players feeling left out and others threatening to quit entirely.

But for a game with millions of players that still regularly appears on the App Store’s top charts, there isn’t a ton left to do in Pokemon Go. Local clusters can still organize raiding groups outside of the app, but once they’ve caught each Legendary, they can’t do much other than try to power up their Pokemon or grind for experience, or hoard extras in case the perpetually rumored trading ever materializes.

Even when new content does arrive, the most recent changes to the game have been met with mixed reactions. The invitation system for Mewtwo has been divisive, with many players feeling left out and others threatening to quit entirely. Raid battles were an exciting change at first, but they’ve led to physical and financial fatigue as players travel to gyms to find Legendary Pokemon, often unable to catch them and leaving empty-handed despite pouring money into premium raid passes.

Pokemon Go’s community is still booming, but it isn’t hard to see that many players are becoming weary.

The Power That's Inside

Thankfully, it looks like changes are on the horizon. Recent evidence suggests Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire’s third generation of Pokemon could be coming to the game soon, and as my Austin adventure proves, the prospect of several more Pokemon to catch is enough to keep players like me engaged for a while.

But while new Pokemon are sure to drum up interest, Pokemon Go needs some fundamental changes if it wants to last for the long haul. Niantic is clearly interested in the future of Augmented Reality, and tools like Apple’s ARKit could lead to some impressive new leaps, but it will take meaningful gameplay changes to keep players coming back.

Trading and PvP battles have been hinted at countless times by Niantic with no payoff, and problems we described in our Pokemon Go review over a year ago still persist, including frequent crashes and a battle system that consists of simply tapping the screen with no particular strategy.

It will take meaningful gameplay changes to keep players coming back.

With such a strong community, it’s time for Niantic to pay more attention to feedback from players. YouTuber Trainer Tips brilliantly describes a new battle system that could profoundly change Pokemon Go, with suggestions like status effects and the main games’ Ability system to mix up battles. On Reddit, user experiencedesign mocked up sweeping UI changes that would help to put information in one place and make the app itself less cumbersome to use. Other suggestions include in-game chat, beacons to let players know a raid still needs more people, and even improvements to sound effects and music.

To its credit, Niantic is working through a list of known issues, many of which have been resolved recently to great response from players. But bug fixes are just a fraction of what needs to change, and in its current state, Pokemon Go isn’t even close to being as robust as the main games.

Pokemon Go is still new compared to the series as a whole, and the introduction of generation three could mark a major shift in the game itself, hopefully bringing in sweeping changes that will help restore some momentum. But for now, Niantic still has a long way to go before Pokemon Go can be the very best.

Andrew is IGN’s executive editor of news and really hopes he gets a Mewtwo invite soon. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter.

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