As The Pokeball Turns
A Pokemon interview podcast where Pokemon Trainers share their experiences from the world of Pokemon! Each journey started with a choice and are as different as the number of Pokemon. Listen to the different ways Pokemon Trainer's interact with the Pokemon franchise ranging from Pokemon GO, Pokemon Battles, Pokemon TCG, and much more!
As The Pokeball Turns
TRAINER'S EYE #20 - "Top 'Koala-ty' Komala Words" ft. LFKomala from Wayspotters Podcast
In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by LFKomala, an avid Australian Pokemon GO player and co-hosts of the Wayspotters Podcast. He's here to share his experience with the game and his passion for Niantic Wayfarer.
LFKomala has been playing Pokemon GO since its release and has been an active player ever since. He's interested in the game's various features, including PVP battles, community day events, and raid battles. He enjoys the game's social aspect and the opportunity to meet new people and explore.
As an Australian, LFKomala has noticed some cultural differences between his home country and the United States. He shares his experience and observations of the different customs, traditions, and attitudes in both countries and how that might affect Wayfarer.
LFKomala attended GoFest Seattle in 2022 and shares his experience at the event. He talks about the different activities, special raids, and the sense of community he felt while there.
LFKomala is a big fan of Niantic Wayfarer and enjoys the process of reviewing and nominating Pokestops and Gyms. He explains how the system works and offers tips for those who are interested in participating. He also co-hosts the Wayspotters Podcast with BlameJamal, where they discuss various topics related to Niantic Wayfarer, including tips and tricks for the nomination process, updates to the system, and community events. He talks about how the podcast got started and shares his goals for the future of the show.
Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!
Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
Connect with LFKomala: Twitter | Website | Wayspotter's Twitter
Connect with David Hernandez: Linktree
E-mail Me: asthepokeballturnspodcast@gmail.com
Join Our Discord Community!
https://discord.gg/AqAbD7FbRt
My name is David Hernandez and you're listening to As The Pokeball Turns. Welcome to another episode of As the Pokeball Turns, where we interview people around the community on how their Pokemon Go journey started, where it has been and where it is currently going. We are on the second episode of a two-part special where we are celebrating the Wayspotters Podcast, one year anniversary. The Wayspotters podcast focuses on Wayfarer, which is the platform that allows players to shape and enrich gameplay experiences for the community by submitting nominations and reviewing local points of interest submitted by other people. These nominations, if accepted, have the possibility of turning into the Pokestops and Gyms we all know and love in the game. To be eligible for a Wayspot, the nomination needs to fall into one of the three criteria: 1) a great place to be social with others. 2) a great place for exercise or 3) a great place for exploration. With all that being said, one underlying principle that hides in the background for each of these criteria is the culture perspective that affects whether the community decides whether a nomination is eligible or not, especially when you have one community reviewing nominations out of another area. For example, what to some may be a mass produced chain like Starbucks or McDonald's may be for other central social hubs for the local community. What looks like a common street sign may be, in fact a trail marker utilized by the local government to mark their trails. Maybe the biggest challenge with Wayfarer is the potential pitfall of ethnocentric behavior by seeing nominations as not meeting our own inherent standards. Standards that aren't rooted within the criteria itself, but rooted within our own personal culture perspective and biases. My guest today is from the Land Down Under and shares insight in how these culture differences exist between America and Australia. He is an admin for Pallet Town PVP, a Wayfarer Explorer, and the co-host of the Wayspotters podcast. Here is his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go. This is LFKomala! Today I am joined by the one and only Lachlan co-host of the Wayspotters podcast and from the land of down under. Welcome Lachlan! How are you doing?
LFKomala:Look, it's early in the morning for me, so I'm doing as well as anyone can in the morning without having any coffee, tea or whatever, but it's a nice day, it was raining last night, so I slept quite well.
David Hernandez:Well, that's very good, man. Before we do get started, how about you introduce yourself, tell people who you are and what you're about.
LFKomala:As David said, I'm Lachlan, I'm the co-host of the Wayspotters podcast with Jamal. We go weekly and our episodes release every Sunday and we have not missed a beat, even while I spent a month traveling around the U.S. We're part of the Pokemon Professor Network, so that means that our parent podcast is basically the Lured Up podcast, which I'm sure many your listeners might know just from the controversial hot takes that Ken likes to put on Twitter. It's great to have Ken cuz he's been podcasting for years and it's good to have his ear when we have any issues or questions. He'll also repromote our episodes every week and use his branding to sort of get a head up on the competition, which was great. And while I say competition, it's not like there's other podcasts that are talking about Niantic and Wayfarer on a weekly basis. So I think it's a nice unique space that we've carved out for ourselves and it's good because there's no competition so we don't have to worry about doubling up cuz I think one of the big issues people have with POGO podcasts in particular, especially on a heavy Newsweek, is that if you listen to one, you've listened to all of them cuz they're basically just reading the blogs verbatim. So it's nice to have sort of banter discussions and not really be locked down to a news cycle and we just have a nice discussion because Niantic is doing a lot. A lot of people just sort of see Niantic as that Pokemon Go company and we're sort of trying to shift the Sigma away from that.
David Hernandez:Definitely and I really love how y'all do the podcast and we're gonna get more into it later, but I just love how y'all really expand on the details of Wayfarer and try to clarify some of the gray areas. Y'all are so well informed and y'all each come from a different perspective on what should be a Wayspot and what shouldn't, if that makes sense.
LFKomala:Yeah and I think that comes from our different landscapes like Australia is a very different country while being very similar to the U.S. We use different words for different things and our cultural use of various objects is very different, so what I think Australian reviewers and nominators in particular are good at, are following, if Niantic says that something is a good idea, they'll really take it head on and read the clarifications. Whereas I can tell that U.S reviewers probably don't always check the forums. I nominated a few things in your home state of Texas and some edits in the area around Texas and those sped through Wayfarer and I wish, I wish Australia was that quick. So not say it's a bad thing that Australia's a little slower, but they're a little slower and they get things done a little bit more accurately. But by goodness, like Texas is a great place to Wayfind because there are so many active people Wayfinding in Texas, which is great.
David Hernandez:Definitely and there's a lot of stuff to nominate as people who come and visit our state will find out. But before we do get into the whole Wayfarer discussion, we gotta start from the very beginning. So how did your journey in Pokemon go start? When did you start playing?
LFKomala:I was taking out my washing and, a notification pops up saying an app you, following is ready to download. I'm like,"all right!" So I download Pokemon Go, and as a lot of people know, first released in Australia and as an Australia and I got it that day. So I kept hanging out my washing, I caught my starter, which was, Bulbasaur because I wanted to go numerically. I don't really have much bias between Bulbasaur and Squirtle, I just really don't like Charizard. I'm not a huge fan of lizards or dragons, but controversial hot take and I just think Charizard gets a little bit too much attention. Bulbasaur just such a cool Pokemon, especially like what they did in Let's Go to show that it's just a frog jumping around. It was Venusaur, it's great, I love it. later that day, I'd go for a walk, I'm like,"oh, there's a lot more Pokemon if you're walking," and cuz I couldn't see any Pokestops from home when I started playing, there was none. So I kept walking and then I found myself at a bus stop. I'm like,"you know what? I've got a power bank on me" cuz my phone at the time was horrible so I always had it on me anyway, like why don't I go into the city and just sort of see." So I went into Brisbane Southbank and I kid you not on that first day I would say the entire city was there playing Pokemon Go. It was incredible that night and it released in winter in Australia, so a reasonable time to be waltzing around at all times of the day. And it was just an incredible experience to be around thousands of people in my city who had never seen out and about and that you would never have anticipated be out playing Pokemon Go. And I know a lot of people like to joke about the world peace aspects of 2016, but outside of people playing while driving in the night, having to patch that and the entire crowd just going, oh, the blue screen. And then you'd have this one guy who on day two was sitting on a bench and already learnt how to spoof and was just saying,"oh, there's a Dragonair at the other end of the park, I just caught it, I'm like,"you haven't moved from that bench." He's like, I know!" It's crazy how quick people developed those tools, insanely crazy, and I know like location spoofing was always a thing. You are always gonna have people manipulate games and systems because like what people don't realize is the main series games, not just Pokemon Go, is rampant with cheating, especially in the competitive sense. I don't have the exact statistics for it, but I could probably guarantee that 60 plus percent of the Pokemon used at Worlds were probably generated on a computer and just sent over. And knowing that's where the bulk of the competitive Pokemon players mindset comes from, doesn't surprise me that there are people who spoof in Pokemon Go to get perfect IVs for PVP. You know, that's sort of where the competitive Pokemon mindset's always been at, it used to be so clunky to build a Pokemon from scratch, I remember so often riding my bicycle back and forth past that daycare with like a really good IV Ditto that someone traded me. There's something magical about actually putting in the work to get rewarded and that's what I really connected with from the competitive side. And I'm not gonna say I've never not used a gen Pokemon because I've had friends build me teams and just trade them to me before an event. And that's because I just didn't have the time to build a completely different legendary that was only available in Gen five. I fully admit it, like I've used the Gen Pokemon before. I can probably say that for the majority of people. But when it came to breeding Pokemon I wanted or especially breeding competitive shinies, that was what I loved from the main series. So that sort of element of getting out there, chasing down what you want, I love so much. It's so rewarding when you go for a walk and the things that Niantic have done in the last couple years to make Pokemon Go more accessible to people who just want to go for walks and just want to play. I think Remote Raiding is a great addition because it means if I wanna do a janky tier one or tier three with my free raid pass, I can host them on Pokegenie and there's five people in the world who want to use a remote raid pass on it. Great. Cool.
David Hernandez:Do you have like a favorite Pokemon or favorite Pokemons that you like to use or have preference for?
LFKomala:Depends on the generation. If I'm playing an Alola game, I will have Komala in my party without fail. If I'm playing say, gen two, I'm probably gonna have, actually, what do you think from gen two? I would go out of my way to have on my team?
David Hernandez:Wooper. Either that or Quagsire.
LFKomala:Wooper, you think? I'm not a Wooper boy. I love Wooper like I've got a level 50 Wooper in Go, but I've never really been drawn to the Wooper family. I will go outta my way to get a Dunsparce in dark Cave and just have a Dunsparce on my team, and I've never understood why. I also really like Slugma.
David Hernandez:Do you do base odds or do you wait till a swarm kicks in?
LFKomala:Oh, basic odds. I just run around the cave eventually it spawns. Worst case, just get an Oddish with Sweet Scent from the routes around or a sweet center, especially if you're using Chikorita. It's just fun, there's these Pokemon which people don't give enough love and support to and I love them.
David Hernandez:I gotta ask you something about Komala. Right now it's not in Pokemon Go, so my theory honestly is that it's gonna be y'all's regional for Australia.
LFKomala:If it's not,
David Hernandez:you think so?
LFKomala:I'm probably gonna stop playing.
David Hernandez:Really? It's just Australian
LFKomala:because if it's not Australian, I'll be very upset. If they make it, even if they make it global, I'd be like, mm, really? And just more pop common in Australia
David Hernandez:Exactly! I'm just waiting for Niantic to announce it for y'all to get a new regional cause you haven't had one since Kangaskhan really? Right?
LFKomala:Well, we have Chatot in the southern hemisphere, but like Chatot's gone around the world as is Kangaskhan numerous times. North Australia you can get Corsola. We've got Pansage. We've got one of the Basculins. It's like we've got things that are technically region into our area, but Kangaskhan basically having a raid day has neutered its, you know, like a raid day with one in 10 shiny, which the RAID day didn't work for Australia, and the compensation was here, have five raid passes back and I'm like, I don't think you get what the problem was guys," but whatever.
David Hernandez:I always feel bad for you guys cuz it seems like, let me ask you this, do you ever feel like you're a Guinea pig in Australia with Niantic games or just Pokemon Go really?
LFKomala:Yes. When Pokemon GO used to be set to server times for their launch of events, it was sort of a whole worldwide experience the nonsense. And I understand the shift to local time cause it made it a lot easier for them to sort of, get consistent like 10:00 AM is a good time. I like that model but also it's turned Kiribati into a Spoofer's paradise, which is actually breaking Wayfarer over there and that's a significant, unintended consequence of what they've done. Don't get me started on what's happening in Kirabati, just don't look at the Intel map over there, you're gonna have a bad time. Every time there's a post on the Wayfarer forums about it, Niantic shut it down because they're sort of start complaining about Pokemon Go spoofing. I'd like to think that they're going through and doing some clear up, but I'm happy that they don't tell us what they're doing internally because cheaters are just gonna use that as their knowledge to get around whatever's happening but yeah, it sucks and like, I'm lucky I'm not in New Zealand and I'm not in the state that observes daylight savings in Australia. When it shifts to daylight savings, Niantic won't realize they've shifted daylight savings for like a week before they shift over New Zealand in their service to daylight savings, which is so stupid and it's happened multiple times. When events stuff up in Australia, like when we had the Oriocorio release, because I wasn't in a time zone with daylight savings, I didn't get the chance to get Sensu style, but for the southern states for the first hour and the Times research was rewarding Sensu style, which wasn't our regional, but it was the regional we thought we would have, instead, we got island Oricorio, which I kind of get, but then going to America via Hawaii and catching my regional Oricorio at Hawaii, I'm like,"why did I bother carrying these with me to America?" I just question how their quality assurance actually goes down because it sort of seemed right after Go Fest, all the creators were saying the exact same tune that were imparted like that NDA crew about Niantic does test their games and their events before they go live. I'm like, but do they test them in the environments that it keeps breaking or they keep testing it in the American environments?
David Hernandez:And then the worst part is y'all suffer for the consequences, cuz I know Niantic will compensate y'all obviously to a degree, but,
LFKomala:Oh, not, not even like I've got a running list of events that have gone wrong where there's been no compensation.
David Hernandez:Well, I mean, even when y'all do get compensated, like it doesn't make up for the time y'all try to play, it doesn't make up for all the resources and hours, you know, it's like there's only so much you can compensate for it and it just seems like y'all get the bad end of the stick.
LFKomala:And you know, like FleeceKing, like we had the first and second people on the world to hit level 50 in Australia. FleeceKing only beat out Lauren from Victoria by about 20 minutes and that's incredible. And I know that was based on a bug again, that let them get through the send 500 gifts faster. But it's just like it can get really frustrating, like back in 2019, and early 2020, every single raid hour in my time zone, if we were still raiding past seven o'clock, you know how sometimes gyms aren't decided so that raids don't spawn on time. If we didn't do a raid at like 6 55 that we didn't catch before seven o'clock, the second raid hour would come online for Japan. The game would just crash in Australia for about five, 10 minutes and Japan would see no compensation. There were raid hours, which just wouldn't spawn and their compensation like, oh, we'll do it again at a different day. And I'm like, that different day we've all assembled on the day you told us this would be happening and now you've picked a different calendar day. Like if it was a, Friday getting repeated the next Friday, I would give it a little bit more pity but like a Friday getting re-done on a Monday. Like what? Like just extend the raid hour. Like it's not gonna break your systems. Community days we used to break consistently and we used to get extension, extension, extension and now it's a case of the last time we needed an extension was Deino and instead of giving us an extension, they just reran the comm day, the day before, Starly Community Day. So that weekend we had two community days and by Starly we were all burnt out.
David Hernandez:I bet that's a lot of playing time
LFKomala:I know. It's just like, why pick the day that's already the day before another community day? I don't get where their brains come from and like to talk about things that they still haven't repeated from back in early Covid days, there was a delayed Kanga-Nidorino Raid day, which has still not been redone for parts of Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. The Articuno raid day that was delayed in Japan, took them nearly 12 months to reschedule because of weather issues. Obviously everyone remembers the 2020 Go Fest, the makeup day of the makeup day because on the makeup day they forgot to enable the Shiny Unowns for Australia and New Zealand and the first shiny Unown wasn't spotted until the first half hour of Japan because we know that there's an Niantic office in Japan who bug tests and fixes the offenses for APAC because we know it's not coming outta the west coast of America.
David Hernandez:It's frustrating. It's very frustrating.
LFKomala:It is very frustrating. And I, wish Americans would deal with this because you guys would have civil action lawsuits within a week.
David Hernandez:You're probably right.
LFKomala:Maybe a class action lawsuit about Niantic, because Pikachu spotlight hour, didn't spawn Pikachu with the right hat. We've had spotlight hours spawned the wrong Pokemon, and it just suddenly changes halfway through. We've had events where this shiny isn't turned on for us, for, in the US it's about 12 hours, but for us, that's 36 hours where they forgot to enable a shiny at the start of an event, which the whole point of that event was to get that shiny. It's like not to use the loot box example, but to use the loot box example, If something is promised to be a chance of occurring and you are lying about that chance occurring, you are misleading your consumers. That's what would happen in the U.S. There would be a lawsuit, there would be litigation.
David Hernandez:And especially you add on to what's going on with recently with just a PVP scene. And I know you do PVP to an extent, right?
LFKomala:Yes.
David Hernandez:Do you have a like a preference on the league you do?
LFKomala:I am just waiting for Master League to get back, but I've got a pretty good Ultra League team. I get the most wins during Master League.
David Hernandez:Oh, okay.
LFKomala:When you have level 50 Mewtwo, Kyogre, that are all a hundred percent shiny Dialga level 50, you've got the tools for victory right there. I've got very good ranked Master League Pokemon and I understand Master League best cause I don't have to worry about thinking, hmm. Did they build that with more attack or with more defense? Where in Master League it's just like it was built with more Attack, Defense, and HP
David Hernandez:And especially cuz Master League's more of a confined meta compared to like the wildfire of Great League and even Ultra League to an extent.
LFKomala:I really would love Premier Classic to return without the level 40 limit because Master League without Legendaries and Mythical and Ultra Beasts is so fun and a lot of people have built these Pokemon from Community Days and powered them up to 50 and then they can't use them because The Premier Classic locks it to level 40.
David Hernandez:As we're talking about pvp, you're also involved in the Pallet Town PVP scene, right?
LFKomala:Yeah, Pallet Town PVP, I'm one of the four main administrators in there. It's obviously FishontheHeater's brainchild and he is a top, top bloke like my Lord. It's a great community, you should all join. It's a good little discord community, if you want to talk to people who are really good battlers, and not really gatekeeper battlers. It's an open community and the battlers in there who are willing to help know that you're probably coming from any level of experience. Even though it's not the biggest community when it comes to congruent livestream watches, but this is a space where anyone of the creators that are a part of this group, if they want to go live, they go live to an established audience. Instead of one person having to stream six days a week, it allows that sort of to be spread out across five, six people.
David Hernandez:And how'd you get involved with them?
LFKomala:I've never personally done a solo stream on there. I'll often just do like a CoLab stream, but I just messaged Fish in the early days of him, said,"Hey, I'm also an Aussie, if you ever need any help with moderation or whatever, let me know." Then he brought me on a couple streams. His meme team Mondays are my favorite because it's basically just pick a wild card that's significantly bad and make it work. One week I used Regigigas
David Hernandez:Oh my gosh, that has been interesting.
LFKomala:Well, it had Hidden Power poison so those Togekiss' didn't know what was happening, they're like,"how is he super effective to me?" So it was just entertaining because I didn't go in there intending to win, but I had fun and I think what people lack and forget, especially from like Pokemon is a game for fun. I actually had someone come up to me in Seattle and say, are you Lachlan from Pallet Town PVP?
David Hernandez:Really?
LFKomala:And I'm like what?
David Hernandez:He recognized from the PVP Stream?
LFKomala:Yeah! This is a person who follows, Go Cast quite closely and in the recent months leading since Go Fest has been, a lot more active in the Pallet Town Discord, but that was weird. Chris from Go Cast came up to me and said,"Lachlan, is that just a joke that you're in Pallet Town PVP? I'm like, no, no, I'm actually in Pallet Town PVP with Fish and he's like, I thought you were just joking. And I'm like, no, no, I do do that. I don't stream with him, but I'm involved in it. He's like, oh, I thought you and Fish were just having me on, I'm like no, no, seriously. Fish and I did a podcast with the Wailordz podcast. Great guys. I'm just like, Hey, this is a PVP esque thing. I'm just gonna say I'm Lachlan from Pallet Town PVP. And I just love Fish's way of joking like,"oh no, it's Lachlan's, community."
David Hernandez:And the best part about that, listen to it. And it's like you, you literally took over being the host of that show at one point and
LFKomala:Look I was told we'd be talking about three things and after an hour we hadn't got to the second thing and I'm like, alright, we the ship in. I've got things to do. Um, but no, like, it's fun and like that sort of came outta Seattle because I met them at Seattle and in the Pokemon Go space, there's not really many queer podcasters or at least openly queer. That's one of the advantages for me coming on Wailordz because one of the hosts is openly queer and yeah, the other shows are queer friendly, but it was just nice to sort of have that banter and I think Richard really liked having another queer person to bounce off because a lot of the time jokes would go over Rollie's head. I think that's something bizarre like you look at the big Pokemon Go podcasts and there's not really that much LGBT representation. I know a lot of people who really appreciate just being recognized and shown to be it's okay and you know, in a podcast space, there are different voices. You got Incensed, a bunch of British lads just having a chat, and them being told by Americans that their language is not right and I'm like,"that's just British English." Sorry, like if you came up to an Australian and said, I couldn't say X, Y, or Z, like, I have to be very sensitive when I'm on podcasts because of the US requirements. There are words that Australians say on a daily basis, which we just say like, our word for best friend, starts with the letter C and rhymes with the word bunt.
David Hernandez:Oh, cunt?
LFKomala:Yeah, the C one. So
David Hernandez:I'm not scared to, mark this explicit so feel free to say it, if you want to.
LFKomala:Great but Like that's not explicit down here. That's just your name of a friend. And I think a lot of the time people and this just sort of leads into the Wayfarer chat about localization and stuff, but people forget that different cultures are actually different and Americans like to think that they invented the English language and then I would like to remind them that the English actually invented the English language and the Americans butchered it and Australians also butchered it. And we've got words which mean one thing in our country and it's very different in others. Cause I'm sure I could very easily find things to be insulted about by the American language, but I choose not to be.
David Hernandez:I wanna talk about Seattle real quick what it was like for you being in Seattle for Go Fest?
LFKomala:Oh, it was magical. This was my first trip out of Australia ever.
David Hernandez:Really?
LFKomala:Everything that could have gone wrong with the flights went wrong with the flights leaving in the country. When I finally got to U.S soil in Hawaii, I was very emotional and my connecting flight had already left. So I got to spend an extra nine hours in airports at Hawaii, cuz I obviously couldn't leave the airport cuz I didn't sign a, I'm gonna be staying in Hawaii long term waiver." So, that was fun. But getting into Seattle and landing at six in the morning cuz like this was an overnight flight, it wasn't meant to be an overnight flight, I was meant to be landing at 10:00 PM. I was meant to be landing, getting off the plane, and going into bed. Not landing, trying to wake up after close to 48 hours without bathing and just get where I was going.
David Hernandez:Plus you had the jet lag too, right?
LFKomala:Oh, the jet lag was barely noticeable. I just didn't sleep for about 50 hours. First day was rough.
David Hernandez:I bet, dude, that sounds like a rough trip.
LFKomala:I met up with someone, went to their hotel room, borrowed their shower, felt really relaxed, and then we hung around the town for a bit. And then we eventually got to the park and then we just go into the Armory cuz she's related to one of the people under the NDA. So we were just sort of waiting in there and then when they all came out it was just incredible cause like these are people who I've chatted with online for years like Ken, Adam, Chris and Kyle and like I'd met Zoe in Australia a couple times when she came up to Brisbane for Mudkip Community Day. Chris and Kyle came out with cricket and Chris sees me and you can see him squinting, but when he sees Adam hug me, he's like, that must be Lachlan. So he's standing next to Kriket, bundle of joy, energy queen, she is and he just says, Lachlan!" At the top of his lungs and starts running down the stairs and like meeting Chris and Kyle for the first time was incredible. Meeting the Incensed boys or at least half of them that same night was just amazing. There are some people who you really worry if you're gonna click or not. I really wish I had gone to Alfindeol's trivia, I just needed to catch up on sleep cuz I was so exhausted.
David Hernandez:Those 40 hours caught up to you or 50 hours or something?
LFKomala:Yeah, they, they did, they did in the end. But Alfindeol and I got lunch on Friday. Oh, he's a great person and just the fact that he said to me,"Hey, did you wanna go get lunch?" I nearly broke down in tears just being asked to get lunch with someone who I'd sort of watched for a few years and I don't think he knew how long I watched his Twitch streams. But that was special cuz he saw me as an equal and that's weird because these people shouldn't be seeing me as an equal. All I do is I talk about Wayspots. I'm not
David Hernandez:that matters. Yeah. That has a place.
LFKomala:Yeah. But I, I don't see that as equal to people who had with like the first Pokemon Go affiliated Twitch streamer like, that's incredible. But like Seattle was amazing and everyone was so friendly and the vibes were so much better than I anticipated cuz I was really worried, I traveled from Australia by myself barely knowing anyone and not knowing anyone in person like my personality can be a bit much. I can talk a lot. I can talk a lot and I can talk a lot and sometimes that's a lot for people and-
David Hernandez:Okay.
LFKomala:I remember I was having a shower and I sing in the shower and everyone's like, have you had coffee dear?" I'm like,"no, I haven't had coffee." They're like,"how are you so awake?" I'm like,"oh, had sing in the shower." I'm like,"yeah, we heard you singing in the shower." I'm like,"oh, was it good?" They're like,"yeah, it was great." And I'm like,"oh thanks."
David Hernandez:I gotta ask, do you have like a specific song you like to sing in the shower? I dunno if you wanna share that or not. I'm just curious.
LFKomala:Depends on the mood of the day, but I've got a couple playlists, so I either go for something for musical theater, so go to musicals that are great to sing in the shower would be Mean Girls, the musical, Legally Blonde, the musical. There's a musical called Six. There was a Netflix show called Julian the Phantoms, which is amazing and I'm so upset it never got a second season. Then also the show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and the music from that lives rent free in my head. People will say something and it will just spark an entire song, cause singing does this magical thing where you're sort of just enjoying someone's vibes. Even sad songs can be fun to sing and I think people don't quite understand like, why are you embarrassed? Who told you you should be embarrassed when you sing?
David Hernandez:So part of what you're known for is you eventually got involved into Wayfarer, right?
LFKomala:Yeah, so, as I alluded to, I didn't see any Wayspots from home when I started playing Pokemon Go, so I needed to fix that. Back in early 2019, I finally picked up Ingress again cuz I installed it a few years earlier to that and I'm like, what is this? I'm so confused. Cuz the tutorial I was just trying to tap through, but then there was no portals around me and the ingress tutorial at the time required a portal to be around you for it to function. I was so confused, I just sort of shut it off until one day I started playing it again. Operation Portal recon was being done quite regularly by Ingress agents, so reviews weren't taking too long, but it was nothing to like Wayfarer, like you couldn't see an entire back catalog of your history of Wayspots, right? You could only see what you'd, had upgraded, that was it. So there were a lot of tools where people would just copy and paste their email into a script, which would then export it to Excel for you, so you could sort of keep track of it. I think Android players would have an app on their phone, which would scrape their Google inbox for emails from Niantic to then push into a Wayfarer category and sort of sought by if it's approved on, based on the other text that you get around those emails. And it was wild. So
David Hernandez:It's amazing how much people go through to just try to get some simple things done from Niantic.
LFKomala:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ingress players are incredible when it comes to their resourcefulness, when it comes to scripts, when it comes to third party tools to sort of assist and I think PGO sort of has that to a similar degree with how Genie has exploded, especially with Remote Raiding. The tools Genie had prior, you could see every Pokemon, expected CP range, the current moves that it would know, and just all of that data. There wasn't really an easy to go place without having a Google search and like it's incredible! There's so much respect to that team before the appraisal system really got fixed and it is now the bar graphs we have now. Players are always gonna be resourceful to try and find ways to do things. So I really got to it, started nominating things and this park I see from home, so there was one gym there and two Pokestops. All around this wall is giant mural and I think one lap of the wall is about 800 meters or just under a kilometer. So I submitted every chunk as I could around that mural. That park itself really motivated because I spoke to some Ingress agents, said,"Hey, like, oh, we can't really drive around that, so it's not a priority for us to put more portals there." So I sort of said,"right, if that's their mentality, where are places they can't easily drive to and I'm just gonna start submitting there?" And then I went to my local shopping center and I just kept noticing things, I'm like,"why is the library here not a Wayspot?" it's not in ingress. It's not in Pego. So I started just going off the off beaten track, walking through places because these people were clearly sitting in their cars and I was doing really well with Wayspot acceptance rates, I think I was like 85% for my first like 60 Wayspots I submitted. When Pokemon Go players got access to Wayfarer, my backlog went from 200 things in queue to 10 things in queue. Since then it's very slow in Brisbane. I think a few people who listen to Wayspotters set their bonus location at Brisbane, which I appreciate, but it doesn't make edits go through any faster.
David Hernandez:Over time, criteria has changed. Do you think that's been for the better or for the worse with how Niantic has changed things over time?
LFKomala:I think the criteria stayed the same and I think people don't understand that the criteria has always been that way. It's just, it's worded in a different way so people understand more what their goals were. So the rejection reasons, yeah, they removed generic businesses as a rejection reason and I'm so happy that they did that because a lot of people were just using it to sort of say no without thinking about it. Like I had sports fields in public parks marked as a generic business and I'm like, is it?"
David Hernandez:Like, how's it look? Where's the business part and how's it generic? Yeah.
LFKomala:So like, and that was meant to be used for like your Walmarts or like your superstores, like your big chains, and people used it for everything. So I think the way that they basically say: a) does it meet any of our rejection criteria, like for location, for any of the other reasons that you can reject? If it doesn't, great. Is it a good place to be social? Is a good place to explore? Is it a good place to exercise? Or has it got like historical cultural value, which becomes a good place to explore cause you're learning. And I think just simplifying it down to those three pillars, I think makes it a lot easier for people to understand why Niantic might think X, Y, or Z is an eligible location because like, I know you might think it, but the tree at the front of your house is not a great place to explore for the entire world.
David Hernandez:That is very true.
LFKomala:I just think Ingress players, from the way that their game is designed, the more portals in hard for quote unquote air quotes,"hard places to reach", the worse it is for them because their fields might be harder to take down or there might be more fields they have to take down to build their big fields. And the ingress team sort of has mitigated this with being able to do smaller fields, under existing fields, which is great and I love that. But I think people from like that original Ingress perspective of just build the biggest triangle possible, really dislike when people can make that goal harder because of these Wayspots, which are, you know, in their eyes, subpar because they were using like the foundation stuff, which was like big historical heritage listed sites or big monuments in cities. And I think at the end of the day, it's just a case of long-term players struggling to accept that. It's better to have more locations in game because it means more players have access to the game.
David Hernandez:In your opinion, since you're so involved in Wayfarer, what do you see as the biggest barrier for people who are coming from the outside looking in, trying to get involved
LFKomala:They probably had something rejected and they don't know why. Because I saw X as a Pokestop, why can't I submit X as a Pokestop is a very common thread. So like take, I saw a Starbucks as a Pokestop, right? I saw a lot of Starbucks while in America, but then I actually saw Starbucks that weren't Pokestops because they were newer location since the sponsorship packed and people probably had submitted them and they were probably rejected and people were like, why are they everywhere else? Why can't my Starbucks be a Pokestop?" And obviously using Starbucks as an example to sort of bleed between the lines.
David Hernandez:Well, another example would be those fountains in the middle of lakes.
LFKomala:Yes.
David Hernandez:I don't remember what they're called, but you know what I'm talking about the
LFKomala:Yeah, yeah.
David Hernandez:Sprout sprouts with that.
LFKomala:The ones that don't have pedestrian access.
David Hernandez:Exactly. Yeah.
LFKomala:There's a famous gym at my university that was one of those fountains, but the original Wayspot for it was actually a plaque on the side of the lake for the fountain. So I'm very happy that's the case so that the marker is where the plaque is, not where the fountain is, but the photo is of the fountain cuz it looks a lot nicer than this old rusty plaque. So I think it's just a case of people see"x", expect X, don't get x, get upset, or their nomination will sit in voting for three months, then get rejected and they don't know how to log into Wayfarer to see why it got rejected, they just get an email saying no. I think the way that Niantic has it now, that in order to nominate or edit or submit or review, you have to pass the Wayfarer exam not just to review. So it sort of takes people down the path of what makes a good Wayspot and going through the criteria with them. It's a better onboarding process. And I think my community outside of areas which are recently been built or redeveloped, probably has everything it needs. I don't feel the need to go out and use my 40 Pokemon Go on my 40 ingress nominations daily anymore. And I'm sort of quite contentious to sit back and relax because I'm quite happy with the Wayspots I've got near me. If I see something I can submit, I'll submit it. I don't care if it's gonna be Lightship only or not because that might appear in Pikmin Bloom, it might appear in NBA All-World, et cetera, et cetera and that's my view on it. I don't need there'd be an infinite number of stops near me because I did a lot of work in 2019 to get my side of the world to the point where I didn't have to worry about it anymore.
David Hernandez:Definitely and then even your interest in Wayfarer eventually had you be part of what we know as the Wayspotters podcast. So how did that all start?
LFKomala:As a patron of the Pokemon Professor Network, we had weekly Zoom calls and people were talking and I was just sort of showing,"Hey, this is what I built in Wayfarer." like,"oh, cool, cool, cool." And then Jamal on the call, like,"I love Wayfarer!" And it was just sort of this conversation started from there, and then sort of bled into various Discord channels. Jamal just sent me a message in August last year and said,"Hey, we should record this help we give people and sort of put it to a show like 10, 20 minutes, every two weeks. I'm like,"yeah, okay, that sounds manageable." God, I wish it was 20 minutes, every two weeks.
David Hernandez:Now it's an hour, almost an hour show every week. Right?
LFKomala:Well, it's meant to be a 50 minute show and we normally overshoot that to about an hour and a half. But you know, we get our release every week, rain, hail or shine and I enjoy it, but it's a big time commitment, especially cuz Jamal does all the editing.
David Hernandez:And when you listen it feels like both you and Jamal come from different places and y'all see things in different ways, which I think adds to the whole Wayfarer experience because I feel like Wayfarer in a nutshell, we have different views on what should be available and what shouldn't be.
LFKomala:Yeah, and I think, because again, I sort of alluded to it earlier, that you know, Australia is such a different place to America that things that happen over here, like gazebos over here as Jamal likes to give me a lot of crap for like basically a gazebo or a picnic shelter, cuz Australia is a big barbecue place. So if the place has got a table and it's got a metal roof and it was put there by the government and it's fixed to the ground, that's a perfect gazebo. It doesn't matter how many corners the roof has, if it's a shelter that's concreted in and stuck into the ground by the government, she's fair game. And that's one of my favorite cultural discrepancies because I submitted the other week a gazebo which has four legs, but two of the legs like lean in on each other and it sort of becomes a two-legged structure. But it's a good place to meet up and be social at the end of the day. So when Niantic said gazebos are four stars, is what they originally said on the O P R, how to review page, gazebos just started popping up everywhere, in the, Wayspot databases in Australia because we took that literally and that most of our parks have one or two like picnic shelters in them. But the word picnic would get you rejected for whatever reason, so we just sort of resorted to calling them gazebos cuz it's what they are.
David Hernandez:Amazing the vocabulary they have to use to just get something passed sometimes.
LFKomala:Well like it is, but like if you say the word picnic for whatever reason, everyone's like,"oh no, that's not a good nomination spot." Not a good, yeah cuz a picnic is temporary
David Hernandez:Yeah, exactly.
LFKomala:Like someone came up to me and said,"no, a picnic is temporary Lachlan" and I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna fight you on this."
David Hernandez:Can you just tell yourself you're the idiot and save us some time?
LFKomala:Yeah, so like there's, there's lots of things that you could get through the Niantic lens and I've had some really entertaining things approved over appeal, but I think the highlight of having Jamal there is he views the game so differently. If he submits something in Wayfarer and it doesn't appear in Ingress and Pokemon Go, he's gonna be upset. If I submit something in Wayfarer and it only appears in Ingress, I'm still quite happy. If it only appears in Pokemon Go, I'm still quite happy. If it just goes into the Wayfarer network, cool. I put it in the right spot, I know I did the right thing and then I was validated a couple weeks ago in one of those locations I stumbled across that I knew wasn't in Pokemon Go and I knew wasn't in Ingress was a flower in Pikmin Bloom and I'm like,"haha, validation. Nice!
David Hernandez:Well, very cool, and then one thing I had to ask you, so unlike, Pokemon Go, we have a lot of content usually every week. Wayfarer I feel like it's a different beast because y'all don't have constant content that comes to you guys. Do y'all ever have problems just trying to develop a show, trying to find something new to talk about without repeating something before?
LFKomala:Oh, it's a blessing because it allows Jamal and I to sometimes record a couple shows in advance, because if we're not locked to a news cycle, we can talk about stuff and it's just sort of there. We don't need to worry about when we record it based on Niantic release schedule, we're not waiting for them to update the seasonal blog posts with information of the next event before we can record a show and drop it. It allows us to really stick with our schedule and like the Wayfarer forum has so many people talking about questions, ideas, or concepts. And we can talk about what we played in Pokemon Go, we can talk about, you know Ingress experiences, we can talk about Pikmin Bloom. We can talk about anything in the Niantic space really and it's great because we have an infinite amount of content.
David Hernandez:I know y'all did coal of the week where you come on saying Cold of the week, cold of the week, and stuff like that. Like how did you develop that? Like how did that come about?
LFKomala:Well, it's quite simple. I was watching it up episode the Doctor who right before recording with Jamal and the theme tune for Doctor Who is da da da da da da. And like you could put anything to that. Like genuinely anything to that. Like, I like cheese. I like cheese, I like cheese, I like cheese. I like cheese, I like cheese, cheese, cheese is delightful. Like you can genuinely put anything to the Doctor who theme and I was, thinking about ways that we can implement sort of theme tunes for other things and like Jamal sort of edited that together after the first initial time I did it. But I kind of like it's jankiness where it's not quite in sync and it's just like Doctor who's an amazing show and it lives rent free in my head like if I was to a podcast for anything that wasn't Pokemon, it probably would be a Doctor Who podcast.
David Hernandez:Well, I gotta ask you real quick, who's your favorite doctor?
LFKomala:Uh, Matt Smith for the moderns, so the 11th, and classic would be Colin Baker, so the sixth doctor. Is it because he is wearing a giant rainbow coat? Possibly. Is it because I think that he has a more nuanced performance and I really wish he had more episodes. Definitely! And his portrayal is, it's just eclectic and great and the way his regeneration happens from Peter Davidson's fifth doctor into his sixth doctor reminds me a lot of the way David Tennant regenerates into Matt Smith, where it's sort of a case of, and this is a completely different doctor and they're a little bit crazy, and I'm here for it.
David Hernandez:Very cool. Now I got one more question before we cut the show off. Since you've played Pokemon Go since 2016 and even the stuff you've done with Wayfarer and even the Wayspotters podcast, in your opinion, like what do you consider your biggest accomplishment up to this point?
LFKomala:It would have to be how I benefited my community with Wayspots. There's, um, one person who I won't mention, but she's an absolute gem, like she is everyone's grandmother basically. An area near her, she went from seeing two gyms to now seeing 12 and she goes on a walk every night with her grandson and her son and they all have their devices and they're all on different teams. And she came up to me when the third gym appeared and said,"thank you Lachlan, we don't have to fight over who isn't in a gym tonight." And it's just the small things like that and like when you get a gift sent to you from a Wayspot you submitted, it just sort of hits different cuz people who've just started the game don't know you are the reason that stops there, they think it's Niantic who put it there. It's just sort of this nice just being able to sit in the background and just say, oh yeah, that's cool, isn't it?" And you're sort of letting them experience the game and what I have done to help players, like there are people who now have stops they can spin from their house cuz they living near parks. There are streets on parks which had like two Pokestops before, which now are 30. There are people who I now see playing in those locations who would never have played there before and it's getting people out and experiencing these locations. I think I told this anecdote on Wayspotters but just before I left for Seattle, there was a group of people, like mums and their kids, so the kids using the iPads or the mum's phones just trying to take down a raid and they jump in and I help them out. And the end of it, the kid says,"oh, Mr, do you know where this is? I've been looking for it in the shopping center, but mommy doesn't know where it is." And I just sort of said,"do you want me to tell you where it is?" and she's like,"oh, that'd be great!" And she's like, how do you know that? I'm like, I submitted that one to Niantic." Because it was just a plaque on a wall and the kids were just so confused cuz it was on a brick wall and this is a modern shopping center and it's like the brick wall was there as a remnant from the original shopping center built. And then the kids all sent me a gift from that Pokestop. It's just moments like that where you realize that by submitting that Wayspot, you've made someone's day better and not just your own. You've actually helped your community. People can play a community day at this location, if they're mobility impaired without having to get pushed around the park cuz there's a reasonable place just to sit and lure where they get enough spawns and they get enough spins to keep replenishing that. So I think it's just making positive impacts that you don't realize on people, that's the biggest milestone for me. It's a really impactful feeling.
David Hernandez:And you know, I applaud all the hard work you've done over the years, both just with Wayfarer and even now with the Wayspotters podcast to where you impart your knowledge to people who either maybe already know it, or maybe just some people new listeners to who are just unfamiliar with Wayfarer and just don't know where to start and what you and Jamal do with the Wayspotter is just amazing.
LFKomala:Well, thank you for that. I appreciate that,
David Hernandez:You're very welcome. Now, before we do go, if people wanna find your podcast, if people want to follow you on Twitter, you know, please, how can they find you plug away?
LFKomala:So, the podcast is called The Way Spotts Podcast, w a y s P o double t e r s. So you can find us on all good podcasting platforms. I personally recommend Spotify because it's the easiest place to leave a review, especially if you're on Android. You can find us on Twitter@Wayspotters. I'm on Twitter@LachlanEdFi. There will be someone able to answer your questions about Wayfarer all hours of the day.
David Hernandez:And for anybody who's listening, I'll make sure to include links to the Wayspotters podcast, down in today's description of the episode. Thank you for listening to another episode of As The Pokeball Turns. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Remember to give the show a rating of five stars. If you wanna do four stars, sleep on it and come back tomorrow. If you're feeling eh with three stars, come back in about two days. If you think this podcast is like McDonald's with two stars, come back in about three days. And for some reason, if you feel like you can only give this show one star, come back next week because no matter what, each road should lead to five stars. Until then, I'll see you next time. Here's the sneak peek for the next episode of As The Pokeball Turns.
