On a rainy fall day in Columbia, more than 100 people have gathered at Cosmo-Bethel Park. Some hide from the downpour under the park’s pavilion, while others walk around the fishing lake. All of them stare at their phones, waiting for the top of the hour.
That’s when players get the chance to battle and capture one of the strongest creatures in the mobile game “Pokémon Go.” More than nine years after releasing and hitting peak popularity in the summer of 2016, local groups still meet up and play the game.
One of them is in Columbia.
113 people signed up for the so-called “Raid Day” on October 18. These meetups happen every week or so, and this one was particularly appealing.
Players had the chance to acquire a powerful form of one of the game’s strongest creatures: Rayquaza. It’s a legendary Pokémon that looks like a flying green serpent with gold threads trailing off its body.
At the top of the hour, raids unlock and players join forces to battle Rayquaza. Winners get a chance to try and catch it. Then, everyone leaves the pavilion and walks around to join more raids scattered about the park. Some carry umbrellas or wear ponchos to shield from the rain.
Many players were hoping for a rare “shiny” version of Rayquaza. 13-year-old Jensen Moorman came to the event with his father. He captured the shiny one before leaving the pavilion.
“So a shiny is a variation of color from the original Pokémon, for example, Rayquaza,” Jensen said. “This one is black and, yeah, it's very cool.”
Providing some structure amidst the downpour was Hezer Pixcar. He’s a Pokémon Go Community Ambassador — a volunteer tasked by the game’s developer to host meetups and ensure everything goes smoothly.
When Pokémon Go first came out, Pixcar lived in Guatemala. He immigrated to Missouri about a month later, and said the game helped him connect with the local community.
The meetups started a lot smaller and mostly happened at Stephens Lake Park. Over time, the group size grew, events moved to Cosmo-Bethel Park and Pixcar became one of the group’s leaders.
He said his favorite part of the work is watching all the players team up and form friendships.
“Now seeing more than 50, sometimes like 80 people at the park, and you see everybody just talking to each other, like there is not any wall between everybody,” Pixcar said. “Everybody wants to connect.”
After the birth of his son about six months ago, Pixcar had to take a step back and participate in fewer Pokémon meetups.
That’s where Paul Spring stepped in. He’s been playing Pokémon Go since it first came out and now leads some meetups in Pixcar’s place.
“I had this — I built this consistency so the players; they were expecting that,” Pixcar said. “So that's why I asked him to help me in that place, because I knew with the baby coming, when the baby gets here, I'm not going to have enough time.”
They both refer to Spring as a community “admin,” but he’s currently in the lengthy application process to become an official ambassador as well.
The application involves both a criminal background check and an investigation into whether the prospective ambassador has ever cheated, according to the developer’s website. Spring was notified the background check started in September.
“They go through a background check just to make sure that the ambassadors are people that they want to represent them in the community,” he said.
“South Columbia PoGo,” which is Columbia’s largest online Pokémon Go community at more than 1,000 members, is just one of many similar groups in communities all over the world. The developer has an app called “Campfire” that acts as a social page for players in a community, allowing them to connect with one another.
Long before this app existed, Kellie Vella, a visiting fellow at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, studied the effect Pokémon Go had on social connectedness.
Her research was done around when the game was its most popular, as she wanted to strike “while the iron is hot.”
Vella said some socially anxious players used Pokémon Go to work past their struggles talking to others in person. The game acted as an icebreaker for strangers to initiate conversations. Family members who played Pokémon Go also grew closer.
Vella said some of that may be because of the inter-generational nature of the Pokémon franchise.
“I think as well, because it was an outdoor game play, that people who wouldn't typically play video games saw this as a sort of safer bridge, or something they could encourage with their children,” she said.
Pokémon Go’s popularity may have peaked in 2016. But plenty of people have held on, creating a new community in the process.
And on a rainy fall day in Columbia, many of them seeking rare Pokémon — and connection with fellow gamers — held umbrellas for one another to protect phone screens from the rain.
