Having launched recently, Pokémon Go has taken the world by storm. PHOTO: REUTERS
Going by the username ftb_hodor on Reddit, Johnson posted last Thursday that in order to catch all 142 of the currently-available critters, he had to snag a total of 4,629 Pokémon, and hatch 303 eggs. He did so almost entirely within the confines of Manhattan and Brooklyn and spent “a couple hundred dollars” in the process.
The game recorded him walking a staggering 95 miles over the past two weeks to complete his epic task, although he confirmed what many had suspected, that the game’s tracking is actually pretty sloppy, because it only tracks steps when the game itself is open.
“According to the Health app I’ve walked 129 miles in that time,” he said. He also mentioned that he’d lost eight pounds. “Walking an average of eight miles a day for two weeks will do that for you, apparently,” he joked.
Johnson was initially drawn to Pokémon Go because of his job, rather than his love of pocket monsters. He is the head of platform at mobile technology company Applico in Manhattan, and also the co-author of the recently published book Modern Monopolies, an exploration of the business models behind Google, Snapchat, Tinder, and other companies that create digital platforms to grow their businesses.
“We work with lots of companies, including social gaming platforms, and I’m very interested in what makes them tick, how they engage users, what the underlying mechanics are,” he said. “So my initial attraction to the game was the chance to pick apart how it worked … to understand the underlying mechanics of things like spawn points, mapping, and how players interact with each other.”
Johnson was a fan of the original Game Boy games back in 1996, but hasn’t been much of player since. “I played Blue and Red — I caught ‘em all in both versions,” he said. “I’m a gen 1 guy though, so I’m not as into all the future generations of Pokémon that younger people are familiar with. When I was a kid, I used to pit my Pokémon in battles against friends around my neighborhood. At one point we even created a league to battle each other.”
If you’re wondering about the discrepancy between the 142 Pokémon that Johnson has caught and the 150 that are supposed to be in the game, there are currently five unreleased Pokémon yet to appear in Go, including Mewtwo, Ditto, and the legendary birds Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres.
There are also four region-specific Pokémon, so while he has managed to capture the North American Tauros, he’s currently missing Mr. Mime (unique to Western Europe), Farfetch’d (Asia), and Kangaskhan (Australia and New Zealand). “I’d love to travel to catch the three remaining Pokémon that aren’t available inside the US,” Johnson said. “I’m looking for a company to partner with to help me travel to Europe, Asia and Australia to catch ‘em!”
Published in The Express Tribune, July 28th, 2016.
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