June 14, 2023
TRAINER'S EYE #42 - "Mapping Your Oddish Adventures" ft. WoodWoseWulf
From biomes to nests, WoodWoseWulf’s research as a Silph Road Scientist offers an inside look at the mysteries of Pokémon GO’s habitat system. His work with Niantic Wayfarer and Open Street Map has been instrumental in enhancing the game’s landscape through new PokéStops and Gyms. This episode delves into his dedication to improving the Pokémon GO community and creating a richer gameplay experience for trainers across Australia.
Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
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Your next Pokemon adventure begins here!
Chapters
00:43 - Introduction
01:49 - Interview with WoodWoseWulf
20:10 - Skit/Intermission
37:44 - Thank You For Listening! :)
Transcript
WEBVTT
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My name is David Hernandez and you're listening to As The Pokeball Turns! Welcome to As The Pokeball Turns.
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Where the stories are real and people still play this game.
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Over on the Silph Road, there existed a group of people known as the Silph Research Group, who devoted their time to studying unexplained mechanics, rumors and mysteries in Pokemon Go.
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With the recent announcement of the Silph Road closing its doors, the future of the group is currently unknown.
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However, the group's importance can't be understated because they were constantly looking at the percentages of different mechanics within Pokemon Go, such as Lucky trades, hatch rates, and even discovering that raid bosses were easier to catch later in the encounter.
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And these aren't ancedotes or feelings that you would commonly see on like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera.
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The Silph Research group used numerous experiments and collected data sometimes for even months before recording their findings and releasing'em to the public.
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My guest for this episode is a former member of the Silph Research group and is here to share his insight into his experience and interest in participating in this section of Pokemon Go.
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Here's his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go.
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This is WoodWoseWulf! Today I'm joined by WoodWoseWulf.
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Welcome to the show.
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Hi, David.
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It's great to be here.
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Without a doubt, man, and I think out of all the guests that I've had so far, I think you're probably one of the most technical people who know the behind the scenes of Pokemon Go, if that makes sense.
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Yeah, I think it depends what you're talking about, don't ask me about PVP, but depending on the topic, I can definitely fill you in on some stuff a lot of players might not know.
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One thing that I was impressed by is your dedication to Wayfarer, and we're gonna dive into more of this later, but you're so dedicated to Wayfarer, that you actually stopped in the middle of a vacation with your wife to submit a way spot, right?
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yes.
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Yeah.
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In the most southwestern point of Western Australia, which was pretty exciting.
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I actually got a few in there.
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It's nice to leave my mark on the game map down that part of Australia.
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Like how did that conversation happen with your wife?
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Like you were just like, honey, can we just stop?
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Cause I see something eligible right then and there and like go nominate it?
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Look, I call her Mrs.
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Wolf and she's great.
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She's very, very patient with me.
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Quite often she'll point things out to me and be like, is that in the game?
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And she's a Pokemon trainer as well, but, as you know, not everything shows up, so I'm constantly flicking out of the Wayfarer app and the ingress intel map just to make sure things are there or they need to be submitted.
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She's really, really patient with me of that sort of stuff.
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Does she understand like what you're doing and everything?
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I think she understands more than she would like to, mostly just because of lectures and discussions we've had about it over time.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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did y'all start playing Pokemon Go at the same time?
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We did! We were actually in the beta together in Australia.
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So we started the beta back in April 2016.
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We worked really, really hard in ingress before that to get up to level eight, which we sort of thought would be the threshold for that and we went through that whole process together.
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To be fair, I always feel like all of Australia is in the beta version with how Niantic treats y'all.
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Yeah, we never really left that field test period.
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So outta curiosity, was there any difference between the beta and what we'd eventually get at the launch of Pokemon Go?
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There definitely was.
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Early on, the game was even more basic than it was at launch, so even the teams didn't have names.
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I originally joined what was called Red Team.
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Things like spawns were completely different in that you could actually see where the spawn points were.
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If you go back and Google beta images of the game, you can see little glowing puddles on the ground and that's where Spawn points occurred, and it was almost a one-to-one match with what Ingress had for xm, which is where you gather energy to do your actions in the game.
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There was definitely a big discrepancy in Spawns.
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Niantic, to their credit, has actually done a lot to improve the spawn rates in rural areas.
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One of the first things I did when the game came out was go out into my local state forest, and it was so disappointing because there was just nothing there, there was no glowing puddles, no Pokemon at all.
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And over the years it's really improved a lot.
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Also the footstep tracker was there, but it actually displayed distance early on, so you could actually see the Pokemon around you and there would be a little indicator that you know, the Pidgeys 10 meters away, the Rattata is 20 meters away, which is really cool.
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And even differences, like the map, the buildings were displayed completely differently, so they actually looked a lot more like buildings.
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They stood almost as high as you play a character.
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So there were little differences and as the beta went on, there was changes as well that sort of brought the game further from what we saw in the original demos before the game was even available to anyone at all.
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So when you mentioned the, distance tracking, was it similar to what we saw, I don't know if you saw the commercials when the commercials, they'd have the Pokemon and they'd have the distance of how far it was.
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Was that kind of what you were talking about?
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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It was a lot closer to that.
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So you'd open up the nearby and anyone who played in 2016 probably remembers the footsteps distance, where you had the little three paws, the two paws, or the one paw.
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It was that, but it was even more in depth.
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So you actually got a meter distance based on where the Pokemon was.
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Now what's interesting is you said the puddles, so the puddles, what are they, like, almost like mini portals to where the Pokemon would just summon up when you get close.
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Was that kind of what it was?
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Yeah, so even today, Pokemon appearance set points on the map, so what people call spawn points.
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In the beta, that was all actually visible, and I'm not sure whether that was ever the intention or whether it was just some part of the debugging process that Niantic had.
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I actually found it really useful because you knew, especially in more rural locations, whether it was worth going out to somewhere to see whether the Pokemon occurred or not, because there were plenty of places where just Pokemon didn't appear at all, especially in the early days.
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So you start Pokemon Go on day one, what was it like playing at that point?
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It was really exciting, day one, especially, you know, getting out there and I was in Sydney at the time because I was at work and you saw the gym turnover going absolutely crazy.
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I started with Bulbasaur.
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A lot of the field testers in our region all decided to go team instinct and for the first couple of weeks we just absolutely dominated the game board because we knew what was going on while everyone else was still sort of working everything out.
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It was a lot of fun and just coming from the field test where it was very quiet and there was very limited number of people playing and just all of a sudden seeing everything just explode with activity.
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It was amazing.
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Did you and your wife choose the same team?
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We did.
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Yes.
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We've always been Instinct.
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I think being the underdogs, you sort of get that beaten into you, um, you know, instinct for life pretty much.
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Yeah, you gotta be very dedicated if you decide to be team instinct because I don't know, it's very difficult to hold onto gyms, especially back in those days when the gym system was more to where only select people could really be involved with it.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And especially because coins were based on how many gyms you're holding when you claim them.
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A lot of the team instinct people early on around where I play, made efforts to find gyms hidden in national parks or way out of the way or where people go.
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We all went out there and claim them to make sure that everyone got their coins and weren't kicked out by the end of each day.
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It was actually really interesting.
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I remember one particular time when there was a quarry that was abandoned and there was a gym I think it was a nature regeneration sign.
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And we all went out there at 11:00 AM to claim it.
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We were wondering around in the Australian bush with torches on our phones just to make sure everyone got their coins for the day.
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It sounds like y'all were very coordinated.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, like there weren't many of us, which I think made it easier, especially being team instinct.
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It was really, really fun and it was a great vibe for the first few weeks when everyone was still there and, you know, we had come through the field test together.
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A lot of those people have dropped off over time now, but it's still something I remember very, very fondly.
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What was it about Pokemon Go that appealed to you?
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To me it was almost like the fulfillment of a childhood dream.
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I started with Pokemon Red and I grew up in a small country town in Western Australia.
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My friends and I would often walk around in the bush, essentially what, a lot of people would call the outback and would look at piles of sand and be like,"oh, Sandshrew might live there", or would go collect tadpoles and be like, Poliwag probably around here if Pokemon was real." When Pokemon Go was announced, it just seemed like, wow, this is just the fulfillment of a childhood dream, if that makes sense.
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Right.
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It sounded like instead of living the game through, you know, the handheld series or the main series, that you actually got to experience it and be able to find Pokemon, where you go to on a daily day basis.
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Yeah, absolutely, and I think that was the most exciting thing about me for Pokemon Go.
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I read an early interview with John Hanky where he was talking about even having different soil types affect the type of Pokemon that could appear, and that was just so cool to me.
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So you said you started playing Pokemon Red.
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Did you stick with the Pokemon franchise throughout the entire time or did you tailor off?
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Off and on.
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I played red, and then I played silver, and I loved silver.
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I thought it was even as a youngster, I kind of recognized how ambitious it was for a Game Boy game.
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I left home very, very young and I sort of missed gen three, but then I came back and ever since then, Pokemon has been really, really important in my life.
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Oh, what's your favorite Pokemon?
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it might sound a little bit weird, but I love Oddish and I also love all the little round plant babies.
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I dunno what it is, whether it's their dumb faces or that they're a little bit different, but I really, really love those sorts of Pokemon,
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So any grass types that have like a round face like Sunkern?
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Yeah, sunkern, Hoppip, Cottonee, all those sorts of Pokemon.
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That is such a unique take.
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I like it.
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So what's your primary way to like play the game?
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It is probably quite unique, but my favorite way to play this game is to load up some incense, find a hiking trail that's just on the edge of mobile reception, cell phone reception, and just go for a hike and see what appears.
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I think that's really, really interesting when you can be out in the woods or walking along a beach, maybe walking along a cliffside or in some way that you've never been before, and just experiencing what Pokemon appear there.
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It's definitely a lot of fun because usually I take my dogs to, uh, we have state parks here in Texas.
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I'll take my dogs to like a random trail right outside of the city area and it's so quiet, hardly anybody's around, and I always enjoy seeing.
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You don't see as many unfortunately, but it's always fun to just walk the trail.
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It's quiet and you encounter a Pokemon, it can be anything.
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That was my hope for what the game could be that you could kind of go into like more nature areas and to be able to experience the game the same way you know, we grew up with, in regards to both the games and even with Ash Ketchum in the main series.
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He got to go to random places and you just find Pokemon no matter where you were.
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Yeah, that's the fantasy, right?
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Like I think every kid at some point in their life kind of imagined doing that.
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Just going out adventuring in the wilderness, going to different places and telling their own story In the Pokemon world.
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Some of the Pokemon I have that I hold most fondly, don't have the highest IVs or aren't shiny, they're just Pokemon that I found at certain places doing certain things, and I associate them with those events and those places, and I don't think anyone could really take that away from me.
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You were actually a scientist at the Silph research group, is that correct?
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That's correct.
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Yeah.
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First off, what is the Silph research group?
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The Silph research group is essentially a citizen science group.
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So, volunteers come in from all over the world, they don't have to have qualification, we take everyone, as long as they're honest with their contributions and they collect data about Pokemon Go.
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It's probably the largest citizen science group dedicated to a video game in the world, I would be fairly confident to say that, yeah, there's thousands and thousands of members and everyone contributes data about shiny rates, about encounters, about item drops.
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And what we do is we collate that information and it's published on the Silver Road website to help the community, so that's either through the automated pages that contribute to what species are nesting, shiny rates, rocket encounters, or articles.
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When we do articles, we do real big, deep dives and look at how mechanics work and on a really, really microscopic level.
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Do you know how long these type of researches would take?
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it sounds like you'll go into very big detail, but like, How long is a typical research and what does it entail normally?
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Typically you'd be looking at months and months.
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One of the problems with the Silph research group was originally structured was that we would spend a lot of time gathering data and the game would change over time.
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Because Pokemon Go is, you know, you've gotta be on the precipice, you've gotta be publishing what's important to people at that particular time, we've really had to refine how things are done, and that's why we moved to pages that are actually refreshed out of the data that research group is gathering at that particular time.
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With an article you could be looking at anywhere from a month to three months, but the number of people hours that go into it is hundreds, if not thousands.
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Oh, geez.
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Dang.
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Yeah.
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So y'all very extensive when it comes to trying to find out about this game?
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Yeah, absolutely, it's something that the Silph research group is very, very passionate about and without that passion, I don't think it would actually be possible.
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I mean, if you're doing hundreds and hundred hours of research on a mobile game, then I would be strong to disagree on that,
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So what was your role in regards to, like, how were you involved with the self research group?
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I started with the Silph research group in May, 2017.
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The research group had existed since before Pokemon Go launched and as with a lot of communities that started in 2016, a lot of people who started in them turned over, leaders left, the community changed, and one of the early things that I was really focused on, as I moved into a leadership position there, refreshing the people who are at the top with absolute respect for what those people did early on, but they weren't there anymore or they didn't necessarily have the time.
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So bringing in a new diverse leadership, working out how to publish faster, and also coming up with ways to get the information to the community in meaningful ways, if that makes sense.
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Right, so you're basically trying to build on past re well not build on past research, you're trying to respect it, but you're also having to develop new findings
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New findings and also new structures, because the Silph research group isn't just about the publications, it's about having a structure, that actually can make those publications as well.
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It's about making rules, making boundaries, ensuring that your community's diverse and covers a wide range of experiences, and also has the skills to actually fulfill the requirements of what the research group is aiming to do it as well.
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It almost sounds like you had a part-time job.
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Are they paying you or is this all volunteer
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Oh, David, there, there were times when like I, in my real work life, I manage a business and there were times when I was working eight to six and then I was coming home doing minor stuff with the research group, setting an alarm, and then getting up at 3:00 AM to talk to Drnopes who was one of the founders of the Silph Road, making sure that he was across what we were doing, getting his opinions on things and Drnopes has always been great.
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Very, very supportive of the Silph Road and Pokemon Go in general.
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And yeah, it was a very, very big commitment, I look back now and I dunno how I did it.
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I dunno where I found the energy.
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That's what I'm saying, dude, like you are a manager, you know, managers work obviously more than the typical eight hours, but you're working like, what, 10 to 12 hours, then you're dedicating another one fourth of your time with the Silph Road.
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No, I mean, nothing wrong with that, but dude, your schedule was wonky for sure.
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for a couple of years it was, some of the other scientists who were still active just basically say You were everywhere, I don't know how you did it.
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Honestly, I don't know either at that point, but I just, feel like Pokemon Go at that stage in my life was just so important and really, really motivated me and excited me.
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I think that sort of acted as a bit of a dynamo and just kept me going.
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One of the things they implemented to sort of help soothe the transition from the old guard, so to speak, to the newer scientists and the scientists who have come in after that.
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And when I say scientists, it's a rank within the silver research group, which essentially a moderator, somebody who handles the decisions of the day-to-day group.
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Anyway, one of the things I implemented was an emeritus status, which essentially meant that you're still connected to the group, but you're not necessarily part of the day-to-day operation.
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That's something I've opted for at this stage in my life, in the Silph Research group, where I can sort of step away.
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I can be that elderly gentleman in a green sweater looking at the paintings on the walls going, Hmm, this is nice.
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I, I don't, I don't have to actually have any responsibility, but I can still be there if I'm needed.
00:17:41.731 --> 00:17:45.872
It sounds like almost a legacy scientist group for a lack a better
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Exactly.
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And it's hard because sometimes you wanna step in, but at the same time you have to say, well, I've helped these people come up through the ranks and I have to let them fly on their own as well.
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Something very unique, I think, to the Silph research group in that it extends outwards to other parts of people's lives, and you teach them skills and things that they take elsewhere as well.
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It's very difficult to pass things on and I'm realizing that myself as a community leader within my area, that with everything I do, right, and I look back and I'm like, I can't do some of the stuff that I used to.
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You know, some of the hands in the dirt, trying to build things up.
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I mean, I know how to do it, but I can't give it the honest effort that it deserves
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Right.
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And that, that's exactly right.
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Like it's about the honesty.
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It's about the if you don't feel it anymore, sometimes it's actually best to step aside, and it doesn't mean that you don't like the game, it doesn't mean that you don't like whatever community you're in.
00:18:42.682 --> 00:18:46.252
It just means that you're not doing the best for it at that particular time.
00:18:46.849 --> 00:18:49.940
What made you want to transition to the role you're in now?
00:18:50.538 --> 00:18:52.728
It was actually a slow process for me.
00:18:53.028 --> 00:19:04.330
One of the things that I told myself early on was I was never going to allow myself to become one of those names that's holding the title, but not actually really doing much.
00:19:04.634 --> 00:19:10.958
And that's, no hate to anyone who came before me because they all did a great job when they were there.
00:19:11.260 --> 00:19:21.520
But when you see somebody in an organization like the Silph research group who's saying I'm a Silph scientist, but they're not actually active, it gives a false impression of what the group is capable of.
00:19:21.843 --> 00:19:44.133
I didn't want to be deadweight, I didn't want to give the impression,"Hey Wood's here, he can handle that." over time I felt like my motivation for the game, in that regard of the trying to understand how the game works, were sinking and I was playing the game in other ways that didn't necessarily gel so well with the Silph Research Group and its mission.
00:19:44.133 --> 00:19:45.573
Sounds like a conflict of interest?
00:19:46.175 --> 00:19:48.425
I dunno if I'd call it a conflict of interest.
00:19:48.729 --> 00:19:50.348
I wouldn't even say I outgrew it.
00:19:50.648 --> 00:20:01.340
I think it's more that I was ready to just enjoy the game for what it was and what it is as opposed to trying to peek behind the curtain at every opportunity, if that makes sense.
00:20:01.340 --> 00:20:02.240
Oh, that makes sense.
00:20:02.540 --> 00:20:04.971
You're not interested in making cupcakes, you're more interested in just eating it.
00:20:04.971 --> 00:20:05.721
Exactly.
00:20:06.320 --> 00:20:09.009
We're gonna take a quick break with a word from our sponsors.
00:20:09.310 --> 00:20:10.414
We'll be right back.
00:22:44.964 --> 00:22:46.615
So how do you feel about your new phase?
00:22:46.615 --> 00:22:48.805
Like do you feel like you made the correct choice?
00:22:49.406 --> 00:23:03.366
It's always hard when you see things happen and you wanted to step in and be like, Hey, this is how I would do it, but as I said, you, you, you kind of gotta let the people who you trusted to take over your role, actually take over your role.
00:23:03.676 --> 00:23:09.946
That's just a fact of life and I think that applies to a lot of things, and it's a really great lesson to learn and take away from that situation.
00:23:10.541 --> 00:23:14.051
Oh yeah, without a doubt and it's hard too because you know, you put so much time into it.
00:23:14.051 --> 00:23:16.511
We're talking, we're not just talking like a couple months.
00:23:16.511 --> 00:23:19.842
You, this was part of your Pokemon Go journey for what, five years?
00:23:20.021 --> 00:23:24.244
Yeah, it was part of my life like, it was like a second job.
00:23:24.545 --> 00:23:26.644
It was a reality for me.
00:23:26.944 --> 00:23:33.545
So it's very, very hard to walk away, but you've also gotta be cognizant that when the time comes, you've gotta do it.
00:23:33.785 --> 00:23:35.224
Otherwise you become harmful.
00:23:35.825 --> 00:23:39.184
Now I know one thing you're passionate about, and I'm looking forward to talking about this.
00:23:39.489 --> 00:23:41.919
It's the Biomes and Nest with Pokemon Go.
00:23:41.919 --> 00:23:42.709
Yes,
00:23:42.709 --> 00:23:45.588
Was that part of your research or is that just a side project you had?
00:23:46.189 --> 00:24:08.795
it was actually something that drew me into the research group in the first place and it's actually something Drnopes and I talked about a lot as well, and eventually he reached out to me and said,"Hey, I really want you to focus on this wherever you can in the research group." It's very, very difficult though because biomes are incredibly complex and it's something that the research group has never really managed to work out a hundred percent.
00:24:09.184 --> 00:24:18.872
And I think since seasons when things have become even more complicated, you know, they change every three months and things are pulled in and out, and then you've got events all over the place as well.
00:24:19.174 --> 00:24:21.694
It becomes very, very difficult to understand.
00:24:21.999 --> 00:24:28.709
Early on though, biomes was my main motivation for trying to understand this game when I first started playing.
00:24:29.009 --> 00:24:45.449
I live on the New South Wales Central Coast and it's a very, very geographically diverse location, so I had access to a huge number of different biomes, and it goes back to that story I was telling about walking through the Australian bush of my friends and it's the realization of that fantasy.
00:24:45.750 --> 00:24:55.413
I spent a lot of time standing on street corners on S two cell lines, trying to work out what things were what, if that makes sense.
00:24:55.720 --> 00:25:01.269
Working out,"oh, Voltorb stops spawning at this particular point, and then Pidgey starts spawning here.
00:25:01.269 --> 00:25:02.380
What does that mean?
00:25:02.683 --> 00:25:07.527
And I think that still remains one of the great mysteries of Pokemon Go, especially early Pokemon Go.
00:25:08.119 --> 00:25:17.539
You know, it's funny you say that cuz it's, hard for me to fathom that there's a mystery with this game still, how much people dig into the code, with how much people play this game.
00:25:17.844 --> 00:25:20.483
There are still things we don't understand with this game.
00:25:20.483 --> 00:25:23.874
and I think in some ways that's almost art, right?
00:25:24.173 --> 00:25:27.653
It's not just, oh, this is the numbers that appear.
00:25:27.683 --> 00:25:29.829
It's something more than that.
00:25:30.134 --> 00:25:36.720
it's something that's really, really exciting and it's also something that only Pokemon Go can offer or a game like Pokemon Go.
00:25:37.029 --> 00:25:45.856
On the other hand, nest, they're a lot simpler, they're related to open street map features like parks, recreation grounds, even farmland, grasslands.
00:25:46.160 --> 00:25:53.365
And what would happen with Nest is every two weeks there would be a migration and there would be a set list of species of Pokemon that could appear.
00:25:53.662 --> 00:26:03.092
Basically the Pokemon would appear about 25% of the time in that particular nest, so 25% of all the spawn points there would be that particular nesting species.
00:26:03.394 --> 00:26:12.241
And that was something early on where communities shared that information, which meant that, you got a lot of community building out of those early stages of that feature
00:26:12.846 --> 00:26:14.106
Yeah, nowadays.
00:26:14.106 --> 00:26:22.690
I mean, I always say this Nest don't really, I don't wanna say matter anymore, but because of how much they shift both beginning and end, they can shift both times.
00:26:22.990 --> 00:26:24.190
It's hard to keep up with them.
00:26:24.493 --> 00:26:29.354
The game's more event driven, like it makes Nest almost obsolete at this point, which is unfortunate.
00:26:29.953 --> 00:26:30.614
It is.
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