Google Maps is overrun with Pokémon for April Fools'

[m0de]

And you can catch them.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/3/31/55...ril-fools-2014

[Snowcrafta]

I'm at 34 right now. The trick is to go to all major cities/landmarks and search there. San Francisco has 5 I believe (GGbridge, Marina, Fishermans Warf, Union Square, GG Park)

[xNiX]

That's a lot of gas.

[Izzy]

At first I thought you would just could only zoom in and out and go all over google maps in a browser to catch pokemon, but this is pretty cool. I assume you can actually go places. I can't wait for more large scale augmented reality tech in the future.

[Evascythe]

I've found Emolga and Gyarados so far.

[welsh_girl]

I found 37 and gave up, gets pretty boring.

[Afrobean]

My Google Maps says it's up-to-date but I never updated it for this. Weird. I guess I can't take part in this.

I just wanted to say, however. Why isn't this idea a real thing? Why isn't a Pokemon augmented reality MMORPG a real thing? Google has an augmented reality game called Ingress and it's kind of boring. Basically, it's capture-the-flag meets MMORPG. You level up by capturing flags and flags can take higher levels or larger groups of people to capture.

But there are no major "straight" MMORPGs. Why can't we have an augmented reality game that plays like Pokemon? Or WoW, even? Instead of meeting up with a handful of Ingress players to capture the flag at a particular landmark, why can't we meet up to battle a dragon? Why can't we find monsters on the street to capture and battle against other nearby players? Why isn't the game they teased in their April Fools video real? Obviously Nintendo probably wouldn't license Pokemon on a competing platform, but how hard would it be to develop a new IP around the idea?

[top]

i like afro's thinking. that sounds amazing