Pokémon GO Turns 10: How One Game Changed the Way We Exist in the World

On the morning of July 6, 2016, Niantic published Pokémon GO on the US App Store.

Over the next 24 hours, the game broke download records in the store’s history. Within a week, it had more daily active users than Twitter. Within three weeks, roughly 45 million people around the world were playing.

But the numbers only tell half the story.

What Pokémon GO did that no game had done before

Pokémon GO’s real breakthrough wasn’t technological — it was behavioral. The game used augmented reality and GPS to turn the city into a game board. Parks became gyms. Landmarks became PokéStops. Streets people had ignored for years suddenly had a Snorlax sitting in the middle of them.

And people went. They literally went.

Gyms and parks saw a jump in foot traffic in the weeks after launch. US national parks reported lines longer than summer crowds. Ice cream shop owners near PokéStops watched their revenue climb after spending a few dollars to lure Pokémon closer to their store.

The game turned public space into shared territory for a brand-new reason.

The summer of 2016

Anyone who lived through Pokémon GO’s first summer knows it felt different. At night the streets held groups of people who didn’t know each other but were all looking at the same horizon. Strangers shouted to strangers: “There’s a Pikachu over there!” And everyone ran together.

There was something utopian about it. An implicit invitation to exist in the same physical space with a purpose that was ridiculous, light, and completely human.

Ten years later

Pokémon GO reaches its 10th anniversary with hundreds of millions of downloads and gross revenue already counted in the billions of dollars. It still runs live events. It still has active local communities. It still adds new Pokémon. It still makes your phone buzz at absolutely the wrong moment.

And there are still people who stop in the middle of the sidewalk, look at the screen, and smile.

That says something about what the game got right: it wasn’t the technology. It was understanding that people need an excuse to go outside. To look at the world. To get close to someone.

Sometimes that excuse is a Pikachu.

Happy birthday, Pokémon GO. You were so much more than a game.

2010s nostalgia today. Check out our Ocarina of Time piece too — another case of a game that became an entire generation’s memory.