Saturday 25th April 2020

Today was Pokemon Go community day, and it was spent on the sofa.

In our local community, Community Day is usually just that, a day for our community to meet up and spend time playing together.  We usually all convene at our local hotspot for Pokemon spawns and then wander around catching the nominated Community Day pokemon, bragging to each other on the number of shiny variants we caught.

I’ll be honest and say I’ve not really been feeling Pokemon Go lately.  I’d rather put that time into Warcraft.  I love our community but not being able to see them, or travel around taking gyms and spinning stops, the game has lost some of the magic for me.  For me, who doesn’t mind the isolation too much, it’s the biggest reminder of the greater world at large and the lockdown / social distancing world we now find ourselves in.

As a result, I’m only playing the big events, and when I do there seems a touch of resentment – that I can’t play it the way I like.

My feeling is that when things return back to normal(ish) and we can meet up again, my enjoyment and participation levels will rise again, and so for now, I just tick along.

But this weekend has both the 5 hour community day and a PVP tournament tomorrow.  Even though I don’t have any plans, these events both in the middle of the day seem like a disruption.

But to be fair to Niantic, given this was the first community day done from the sofa, I think it worked well.  Buddies supplied Pokeballs every 30 mins and incense ensured that I had a constant supply of Pokemon.  As a result, I weirdly had probably the best community day ever, with 23 shinies.  I also got some really good IV regular abras to evolve.

I found time to go out and walk a lap of the park to get some exercise towards the end but it was pretty busy.

I still wish I could play the game the way it was originally intended, but for now I intend to just bumble along, ensuring that I try and keep up with the game and new releases, ready to go full out when the situation allows.  I don’t see that being any time soon, so for now, like everyone, I have to find ways to adapt.

At least I still had fun.

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