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How Pokémon GO got my son active outdoors


Find and catch Pokémon characters like this
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past few weeks, you’re likely to have heard of the latest craze of Pokémon GO. The virtual reality game has certainly been getting a lot of media interest lately, some good, some bad. But when my seven-year-old son, Nathan, and my husband, Mark, started to play it, I decided it was time to see what all the fuss was about.
 
Pokémon GO is based on another game called Ingress where opposing teams had to capture portals. Players walked around to find the portals that were usually found at places of interest such as public art locations, monuments and places of cultural importance. Pokémon GO has used the same data to place its PokeGyms and PokeStops.  

The game can be downloaded from Google Play or Apple’s App Store for free and while you can make in-app purchases, it’s not a requirement to play the game. PokeStops replenish a player’s stock of PokeBalls, which are used to catch the Pokémon characters, and also sometimes spawn eggs that hatch to give you more Pokémon. This is another clever feature of the game because to hatch the eggs you have to walk a certain distance – two, five or ten kilometres. 

Pokemon GO is great for encouraging youngsters to get outside and exploreI was glad we all started to play the game before we went on our annual camping holiday because Mark and I love walking but it has always been difficult to do this with a child that hates it with a passion. This year, however, he was begging us to take him for a walk. Luckily there was a PokeStop at the campsite entrance but unless you have a phone or tablet with its own mobile data package or a WiFi connection, you can’t connect to the game. This has the advantage that Nathan can’t go off to them without one of us being with him.  

The aspect we found most difficult while on holiday was that many areas had little or no mobile signal, which meant we often couldn’t connect to the game servers. We both use different networks and we used our data sharing to 
A typical Pokestop
enable Nathan to play the game when we were able to get a signal. Thankfully, between us we were usually able to get some sort of connection in most places and Mark was always happy to find a pub that had WiFi to eat lunch and take a break from the walking.

Despite my initial scepticism, I found this game not only got Nathan out and about exercising in the fresh air – my Fitbit confirms this was our most active holiday yet – but it gave us a common interest in which we could all enjoy the excitement of finding new Pokémon and battling them in the PokeGyms. At the same time, we were able to point out lots of places of interest that we would probably have walked past without noticing had we not have been playing Pokémon GO. So despite its critics it gets a huge thumbs-up from me.


Author and Club member Kathryn Whelan is mum to three boys, loves camping and is a recent convert to caravanning.

Guest Blog This is a guest blog entry. All views are that of the author and not necessarily shared by the Club. Mention of any product or service on the blog does not constitute endorsement by the Club. All blog posts are moderated before going live. Read other posts by this author