Aug. 2, 2023
TRAINER'S EYE #49 - "Pikachu Growing Grassroot Communities" ft. Forte from PoGo Community Checkpoint
In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by Forte, a Pokemon GO Trainer from Peru, Indiana and founder of PoGO Community Checkpoint, who thrives on building Pokemon GO communities through collaboration and friendly competition.
Forte shares valuable tips and suggestions for those looking to establish their own Pokémon GO communities. From organizing events and meetups to fostering a sense of camaraderie, he offers practical insights that can help aspiring Pokemon GO community builders bring their vision to life. Discover how the power of collaboration and competition can unite trainers and create a supportive and engaging Pokémon GO community in any area whether city or small town.
Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!
Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
Connect with Forte: Website | Discord
- Visit our website: www.asthepokeballturns.com
- Join Our Discord Community!
https://discord.gg/AqAbD7FbRt
Your next Pokemon adventure begins here!
Chapters
00:44 - Introduction
01:48 - Interview with Forte
37:02 - Thank You For Listening! :)
Transcript
WEBVTT
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My name is David Hernandez, and you're listening to As the Pokeball Turns.
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Welcome to As the Pokeball Turns, where the stories are real and people still play this game.
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With Silph Road closing its doors, it left behind a huge hole to be filled in Pokemon Go.
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While yes, Project Zygarde is underway, determined to promote and grow the future of grassroots PvP.
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What about the other side of Silph?
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The community building, the connection that Silph Road was able to do for so long.
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You think of the Silph Map where local communities had a place where trainers could place their community for others to find.
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You think of the Traveler's Card that validated trainer's attendance at events or completing raid challenges.
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Not to mention, Silph Road provided infographics for communities to use to promote events and give a professional look for communities who may not have a graphic designer readily available.
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In this episode, my guest is attempting to fill that hole Silph Road left behind.
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With a passion for hosting events and growing his community, he has been working on developing tools to assist in growing other communities and sharing his knowledge with others.
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from Peru, Indiana Here is his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go.
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This is Forte! Now today, I'm joined by the founder of the Pokemon community checkpoint, Forte.
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Forte, welcome to the show.
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All right, thank you for having me.
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Definitely.
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And we've talked a lot just give some background to people who may not know who you are.
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You have a lot of background knowledge on the website and you're even trying to start a new one based on the recent announcement of the Silph Road closing its doors.
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my question, just real quick, not to get too deep into it, is like, what made you want to start something like that for the Pokémon GO community?
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The big thing was just knowing how easy it is to use some of the basic resources and seeing how many communities weren't doing it just because they don't know how easy those resources are to get to.
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So my goal has always been to help other communities not only just know what's out there, but know how easy it is to just add another extra level of presence for their communities and to help build their community better.
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And in your opinion, how can having a website set up help build a community?
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It's way more memorable to send someone to a website domain like pogo.
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community, which is our own, rather than discord.
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gg slash whatever letters.
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It's a lot more easy to remember if you're hosting a community day, you run into some random players who you've never met before, lot easier to just give them your website than having to go through all the fuss of trying to get them into a discord with some random invite code.
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let's start from the beginning of your with Pokemon and your experience with building the community.
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So did you first start playing?
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So as far as Pokemon in general, since as far as I can remember, I remember waking up on Sunday morning, watch WB4 and watch Pokemon growing up.
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as far as Pokemon go, I was actually close to a few people who beta tested it in the early days.
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I was an Ingress player.
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So a lot of the Ingress players who got to beta test it, I was already friends with.
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So I got to see some of the early beta tests of the game and I joined day one.
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I've been around ever since I've taken a couple of hiatuses, but it always draws me back.
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This game has just always scratched a particular itch that no other Pokemon game ever has.
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In your opinion, what's different about Pokemon Go than like maybe a main series or a Pokemon Ranger or a spinoff game?
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Like, what was it about Pokemon Go?
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it's a community like I honestly anymore.
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I'm not.
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I don't even really play all that much.
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at least not compared to some others.
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It's always been about the community for me.
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the whole aspect of Pokemon go being this in person game, it's what drew me into Ingress back in the day and, getting in person with people has always been the highlight of my gaming experience, regardless what game, like conventions and whatnot, that was always my favorite part of getting a nerd culture growing up.
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Pokemon goes, scratches that same itch.
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Now, you said that you prefer the community aspect, so did you feel like maybe those are lacking in the, regular Pokemon, like, video game scene compared to, Pokemon Go, or is it just different?
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Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it exists.
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It was never something I really got deep into.
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when it came to my nerd culture, the most I ever did really for in person stuff was, when I was really little, I went to a TCG tournament.
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I was a little, so I got my butt handed to me, but, I never really got deeper into that because as I started to get older and old enough to really be more into it, I also got old enough to have to be responsible for buying my own cards, which meant I fell out of that pretty quick.
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None of the other games really naturally led to an in person experience, the same way Pokémon does.
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I'm sure if you're looking for it, there are for the main series games and for all the others, but Pokémon Go, first and foremost, was an in person game, so it pretty much forced me into that, which...
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would be normally outside of my comfort zone, but because of how long I've been in Pokemon Go, obviously it's became my comfort zone.
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That makes sense, especially if you consider, you've been playing Pokemon from the beginning, right?
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main series, yeah, as long as I can remember, one of my first Christmases that I can remember was a Game Boy Color, with Pokemon Silver.
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Oh, so you started with Johto,
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I also played first gen Kanto.
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I don't remember it very well.
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I know that I had it, but I don't remember it.
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I don't ever remember receiving it.
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I just remember already having it.
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think about the early days, right?
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This is before the internet before video games had online ability You were reliant just like Pokemon Go in a way of having people around you, especially at our age, right?
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Like I don't know how old you are, but like we're like maybe 8 to 11 that age.
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There wasn't really that of scene after the fandom.
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It died down in a similar way Pokemon Go was.
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even growing up, there was a bit of it, but I also grew up in a small town.
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So even when I was big into it, it was always a solo experience for me, even when online play started to get bigger, online play doesn't have the same community feel, so I still felt, it was still a solo experience by far and large.
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And then with Pokemon Go, you're strongly encouraged go out and meet other people.
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Yeah, and especially in the beginning, you were forced.
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Trying to play this game from home, especially in the beginning, is just not fun.
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At least not for me.
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I don't know, I can't speak for everyone, but, even now, even with remote raid passes, even with as much play from home, even during the pandemic, That was when I took my hiatus during the pandemic phase, when everything was being, play from home phase.
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I did not enjoy that.
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I know it's really controversial, but I've actually enjoyed some of Niantic's tweaks and actions in terms of rebalancing the game.
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I've Got mixed feelings on it because obviously as a player who wants to be able to do remote raids, I don't like the price going up either.
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And on the few times when, I am in a position where I can't go out, I share the same feelings as everyone else.
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But I also value the in person stuff so much that it's a trade off for me that's been worth it.
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So you said you took a break during the pandemic was just Pokemon go had become like a one person kind of style, like what made you have to take a break?
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yeah, it was mostly that.
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it was a combination of a few different factors in my personal life as well where...
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I enjoy the game for the community aspect, and during that time, due to a combination of everything that was happening, I didn't have that community aspect anymore.
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I took a bit of a hiatus, not that I had to, it's just I wasn't interested, I mean, there would be weeks at a time when I'm not even open the game during that time.
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Right before lockdown started, I had just moved across to a different state, which means that I didn't get a chance to get established with my local community before lockdown happened.
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So I very much alone in my play with me having my focus being so much on the local community fresh after a move, getting into that like, I didn't have a community day meet up for over a year and There were times when I just wasn't motivated to even open it.
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It's not that I had to take a break, it's that I didn't want to play.
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It's just that I got, I was bored of it.
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I didn't want to do it because I didn't have that community aspect there.
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Well, let's talk about your old community real quick.
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So before you moved, during the pandemic, was your old community where you started playing Pokemon go?
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It was like, that was day one up until you moved.
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That was the second.
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I initially started playing in Charlotte, North Carolina.
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That's where I was living at the time the game came out.
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they were a big community, but they were fairly unfocused.
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I love Charlotte and all respect to the people who run the discord server and everyone there.
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It's just, difficult to manage that big of a community.
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their servers were huge.
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so I didn't, I did a little bit of event hosting when I was there.
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that was a couple years into that.
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I had hosted a handful of events.
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I hosted a GoFest meetup where we collected information on like how many Pokemon people have caught throughout the day.
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So I was able to post some group photos and some statistics in terms of, Hey, as a community, we caught, however many thousand Pokemon that day.
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even back then, even before Community Day was a thing, I would try to host regular events.
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One of the specific things that we did was I organized the Pokemon Go 3rd Saturday.
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So In Ingress there was a monthly community event called First Saturday.
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It was an event that was designed to help new players to the game get oriented.
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You'd have old players of the game come out and meet up and bring any of their new players that they're recruiting into the game, It was always a bit of, it was always a community building, event.
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Details don't really matter for the purposes of Pokémon, but that community building was huge when it came to the way I see community.
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So basically it sounds like the third Saturday would be the veteran players would invite newer players from a discord or a Facebook or whatever, have you, and what would they do when they would show up during the event?
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Sure, yeah, so we want to get more into the details of that.
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Yeah, sure.
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so to, get the foundation with the Ingress side, Ingress for a lot of people was the first game that they played where it was an in person focused game.
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some of the mechanics of Ingress made it far more likely for people to run into each other and actually talk to each other.
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Ingress was far more of a, team game.
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If you playing solo in Ingress, you're not going to have very much fun.
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So you're very much incentivized to talk to other players when you run into them.
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Obviously, they can't lean into that as heavy with Pogo just because of the whole safety aspect with it being more of a family friendly IP than an adult IP.
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so you'd have veteran players, running in and introducing themselves to new players that they find and they'd invite them to first Saturday and during the event the veteran players would, there's not really an analog to this in Pokemon Go, the closest I could think of is, let's say the veteran players go through and wipe out all the gyms and letting the new players come and reclaim them to help train them and get them experience in the game and help them level up.
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That's effectively what they would do.
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okay.
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And you would do this for Pokemon go, right?
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Kind of.
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So I took the same spirit of that.
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Obviously, claiming gyms in Pokemon Go is not really a great grinding mechanic.
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there's not really a ton of benefit to grinding gym claiming, all at the same time.
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That's more of something you do over time so you can get the coins.
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What I translated that to was an event where we gave prizes and incentives for people to do things like leveling up, like total Pokemon caught, different ways that we could award players for coming out and having fun with the game and the types of things that we would reward people for the types of competitions and winners would be balanced in terms of there are some that were way easier for a new person to the game to play, like leveling up.
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It's way easier for someone who's new to the game to level up than someone who is a long time veteran.
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we weren't able to do as much of the whole like mentorship kind of thing.
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It was mostly the angle of the community building is where it leaned into mostly when it came to the Pokemon Go side.
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Well, I think it's an interesting idea because one of the biggest problems within the Pokemon Go community, and you've probably experienced this with Ingress, there's no instruction booklet that comes with this.
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Um, I'm on Reddit, I'm on Facebook, I'm on everywhere, and a lot of people just don't know about some of the simple things that, myself, you, and even other veteran players know, that we've known for years.
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And I like that concept to where you're doing the third Saturday, similar to Ingress, to where maybe there's an idea to where, and maybe this goes beyond me, maybe the people, maybe leaders who are listening to this episode can figure it out, there's an idea to where we think of some of the more complicated stuff that comes with Pokemon Go that needs better explanation that you can't do online, and develop some kind of, almost like a miniature community day but to where we do, we invite trainers out, maybe do some raids together, Tell about the game, and it also brings people together and I think there's something there that I had never thought of until it's something so simple until you somebody else brings it up.
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I'm like, why didn't I of that kind of idea?
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And we still do that kind of stuff as as an after party for community day.
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So every community day we have an after party.
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And so like I actually taught a bunch of the people how to do quick catch,
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Exactly.
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That's that's one of them.
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Yeah, because if you try to explain quick catch on text, it's near impossible.
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That's something that's perfect.
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That's one of the good example right there.
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Yep.
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Yep.
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And there are a lot of people who are like, they were worried that, that kind of thing was cheating or whatever.
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or like they were duping balls.
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And I was also able to address those concerns as well.
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Like, no, Niantic has, made very clear that in game glitches are not cheating.
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I would reference the old, community ambassador FAQ page where it would describe, hey, what do we define as cheating?
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and I'd explain like why, hey, no, fast catch while it is technically a glitch.
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Totally acceptable.
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And we actually encourage it as part of our community's way of, encouraging players to, have more fun, get more of a challenge, people love that kind of stuff.
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where would you host this kind of event for Pokemon Go?
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would you go to a community spot or would you just pick a random park or a mall?
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generally, I have found that parks are the best one.
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what I would do in Charlotte back when, before Community Day was a thing, we just rent a shelter at a local Pokémon GO Hotspot Park, Because that's also the most likely place for a Pokémon GO player to be, even if they're not even aware of our event.
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That made it so that people could discover us organically.
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which, At the very beginning of our events, a vast majority of people had no idea the event was happening.
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They just happened to be in the park, see what we were doing, cause we'd, I'd set up some sort of sign that says Pokemon Go event or something like that.
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And they'd just walk up, ask what's going on, and we'd invite them in, Clue them into all the different places the community was and they eventually turn into regulars.
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I still have someone who didn't know we existed, but ever since they stumbled upon us they have came to every single community meet up.
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Wow, dang, so they're really dedicated ever since being involved with your group.
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yeah, and you've got a lot of different demographics in Pokemon Go.
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got some of the younger kids, or some of the younger adults they were Pokemon fans as a kid, and they play for Pokemon.
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You've also got a bunch of the older crowd who didn't really care for Pokemon, they didn't really grow up with it or anything, but they just discovered the game and just legitimately enjoy it as their only Pokemon go experience or Pokemon experience.
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This is one of those players.
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They're one of the older players in our community that have no idea what Pokemon is outside of Pokemon go.
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they are also one of the other players who the community is what pulls them in, and, we want to be that for them.
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what's your favorite part besides the setting of events?
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what's your way to play Pokemon Go?
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are you a shiny hunter or PVP collector?
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Like,
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Well,
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style?
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as odd as it is, I am an extremely casual player when it comes to my actual normal day to day gameplay, but if I had to pick one, it would be Gyms.
00:14:52.557 --> 00:14:56.518
the territory war of Gyms reminds me more of my old Ingress days.
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one of the things that I loved about Ingress was that the Team Turf War.
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The both collaborative within your team, but also competitive with the other team.
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I've always been a fan of both collaboration and competition, and that's In Ingress it was the perfect mix.
00:15:11.099 --> 00:15:20.999
Pokemon Go, not many people care about the competition of gyms, but I still get a kick out of rolling through town, flipping every gym yellow and being able to just look over at everything I've claimed.
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the coins for me are a bonus, I claim the gyms just for the satisfaction of the turf war.
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it's good, clean fun in my opinion.
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So you basically have free reign because most of the time instinct is the minority when it comes to these turf wars, it's usually a valor or mystic, right?
00:15:36.100 --> 00:15:37.541
And it varies a lot.
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I've been, Ingress would always have me traveling a lot to different areas.
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So I have got connections in a bunch of different, smaller towns around and different cities and states.
00:15:45.541 --> 00:15:49.211
so it would have me travel sometimes and I'd flip over to Ingress and it varies a lot.
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I've been to some towns where instinct was by far the dominating force.
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but in general, yeah, instinct usually not.
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where's the hotspot to go whenever, like, you have a community day or a raid day?
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Like, where's the area you go in the town you're currently living in?
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So that's going to be, our Riverwalk.
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So I live in a town of Peru, Indiana.
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and we have a Riverwalk Park.
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it's a strip about a kilometer or two long.
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and I know that because you can hatch a single two kilometer egg less than a lap.
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I don't know exactly what it is, but it's roughly that.
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it's dense with Pokestops.
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It's probably the best Pokemon Go grinding spot, at least in my opinion, for at least an hour to drive.
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It's a relatively small town, but the town has a decent amount of mix of historic and also just informational plaques along the Riverwalk.
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it's one of the places where our park budget goes the most too, just because it's one of our town's favorite parks and so there's a good amount of nominatable stuff along it, and we've been building it for a while.
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So, by building it, I'm guessing, are you involved in Wayfair?
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Is it like, there's some
00:16:47.974 --> 00:16:49.634
oh yeah, sorry, I should probably be more clear.
00:16:49.634 --> 00:16:54.783
Yeah, back when it was still just Ingress, I nominated most of the portals in this town.
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between me and my father, we both played pretty hardcore in this town, and we nominated most of the ones that the game started with.
00:17:01.174 --> 00:17:13.532
So when Pokemon Go first launched, everything that was already here, They were mostly things that me and my father nominated through Ingress, but since Pokemon Go has gained access to, nominations as well, the Go community has gone crazy.
00:17:13.532 --> 00:17:14.949
There's been a lot of great building here.
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I would consider myself laying the groundwork, but the community, the local community, especially a local player we have called Iceberg, They have done a great job of making sure everything stays filled in, especially as new things get built, they've been on top of things.
00:17:27.490 --> 00:17:33.130
So you said you laid the groundwork, like you started the city, but You see these Pokemon Go players who are building on top of what you built.
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what goes through your mind when you see these Pokemon players being so active trying to add POI to the city you and your father first started?
00:17:41.525 --> 00:17:41.964
Yeah.
00:17:42.015 --> 00:17:48.214
so when Ingress first started, they used a generic, it's called a historical marker database.
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HMDB.
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I believe it's HMDB.
00:17:50.999 --> 00:17:51.348
org.
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They started with just their database.
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And we only had I want to say three or four POIs in our town.
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we nominated a bunch.
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and so yeah, there's the groundwork there.
00:18:01.298 --> 00:18:11.093
And then as far as seeing the GO community take over, I'll be completely honest, as an Ingress veteran, I was extremely nervous, because anytime that you crowdsource something like this.
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While having a low barrier to entry is great for letting players have fun, when it comes to doing things like building the Wayfarer network, having that low barrier to entry also means A lot more crap gets through, just to be blunt.
00:18:23.015 --> 00:18:27.181
and so I was really nervous about that and I have seen where in some communities it's gone bad.
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But, at least as far as my local community, it's been awesome.
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I have been extremely proud of my local community.
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I have also seen some where it's not been quite so positive.
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I'm sure you've seen occasionally on social media, those areas where someone uses it, someone abuses the system to cram like a hundred Pokestops in a really tight spot and it's all fake.
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It, those actual nominations aren't there.
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they've just been abusing the wayfarer edit system.
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it's a mixed bag.
00:18:51.748 --> 00:18:58.117
When you have that low barrier to entry, it's easy for people who have good intentions, but it's also easy for people who have bad intentions.
00:18:58.713 --> 00:19:01.423
Now, with your experience with Pokemon, do you have any favorite Pokemon at all?
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I always feel so basic when people ask me this question, because it's always been Pikachu.
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just because he's always been the mascot, and ever since I was a little kid, he's always been the one who I've been the most emotionally attached to, because he's, he's the show made you emotionally attached to.
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Like, when I was a kid, the episode in the, I believe it was the first season of the anime, where Ash almost, said goodbye to Pikachu.
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I was a tearjerker.
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It was! even, so I have the song from that episode in some of my playlists, and I still get emotional listening to that song.
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you didn't know as a kid, like if this was permanent and even the ending of how it ended, it's a happy ending and you still get emotional about it.
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