One of the most frustrating things, next to the battery drainage, of this app is the constant need to update. I was ready to play when I add a nice afternoon. And I lost 15 minutes of buffer time because of having to update the app. With my older model of phone, I even had to delete a couple apps to make room for the game. My frustration level to begin playing was a little higher than I had expected when I set aside time to play today.

I did have the chance to test out a few of the game mechanics that we had discussed in class this week. I found that I did gain more experience points when my pokeball hit a smaller target and in spinning my finger on the screen. But, like we discussed in class, these are not intuitive. I can see this being a benefit for the game designers when the game was most popular after its release. If they only let a few sources know, those sources can spread the word about how to get more points and level up without the company having to invest and create tutorials in the game. But playing this long after the popularity craze of the game makes it harder to learn the ‘unspoken’ mechanics of the game.

I also tried to battle in a gym using augmented reality. And I never want to do that again. I am still completely lost on what I am even supposed to be doing in a gym. Add in a viewpoint that is based on the location of the camera of my phone, I become even more lost. And this makes me even more frustrated. I kept moving my phone around just to try to see what was going on in the battle, and no matter where I moved my phone, I couldn’t see anything! At this point in time, there is nothing that is intuitive about using this game, especially with augmented reality. Without nostalgia for the Pokemon franchise, my motivation as a player is draining. And fast.