Explore a New City With Pokémon Go
When I’m in another city and want to see which neighborhoods are best to wander around, I open Foursquare . Someone is using Yelp, someone is looking for brown areas on Google Maps. My friend Henry uses Pokémon Go .
The PokéStops that users can find creatures on in Pokémon Go are based on real world locations. (The location database is originally taken from a previous augmented reality game, Google Ingress .) Some of the stops are businesses, which are known to cause players to congregate around local businesses just to play and sometimes spend money while they there . But popular stop categories also include churches, parks, statues, and even murals.
So when Henry doesn’t know where to go, he just follows the PokéStops. The process works both ways; stops indicate good places to visit, and the type of place affects the type of Pokémon he can collect. (Parks, for example, offer more grass-type Pokémon; on a larger scale, the local climate also influences the types of Pokémon available.) Balanced by some common sense and attention to its surroundings, before stumbling upon something sketchy, Henry takes Henry along more scenic routes than he might otherwise find.
Connecting to real places is a central aspect of the game, used by game developer Niantic in programs such as Pokémon Go Travel and an upcoming series of events with the National Park Foundation . Knowing the parks in the game really helped Henry when Google failed.
Henry snapped the screenshot above at Forest Park in Oregon. “Google Maps didn’t have good trail information, but Pokémon Go did. I actually used Pokémon Go to navigate the trails (although obviously a real trailer app would do better). This application gave me away only when one of the paths was very steep, so I said yes and turned around. “
If you want to see all the stops without playing the game, or zoom out further than the game allows, download PokemonGoMap.Info , a map with over 5 million stops and gyms shown at the top of the post.