TRAINER'S EYE #90 - "Pokemon GO in London" ft. Pokemon GO Central London Group

In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by Stars, a Pokemon Trainer from London who is one of the Community Ambassadors for Pokemon GO Central London.

Stars Pokemon journey started with the Hoenn region and became heavily interested in both Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. Stars expresses his opinions on the games and how they differed from the main series games.

Stars dives into starting Pokemon GO and shares what it's like to play in London. He shares his interest in raiding and how a community formed around that aspect of the game.

Finally, Stars shares insight in re-building his community with the Niantic Ambassador Program. He goes into great detail in the planning he does for events, raids, and creating a community.

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay

Transcript

David Hernandez: 0:00

My name is David Hernandez, and you're listening to As the Pokeball Turns. Today I'm joined by a community ambassador from London stars. Thank you for joining the show

Pokemon GO Central London: 0:50

Yeah, hello, thank you. I'm glad to be here.

David Hernandez: 0:52

And you know, how would you give a brief overview? Like what is the community ambassador program for those who may not be familiar with it?

Pokemon GO Central London: 0:59

Yeah, that's a good place to start. essentially, Pokémon Go, as we know, is a game that's, you know, played a lot in person. And naturally over time people start to form communities around the game. it's, been happening since the beginning. you find lots of groups make little WhatsApp groups or, you know, Discord groups. And people just like to play the game together. And especially with things like Raids now, you have, you know, a lot more communities coming up and people just forming these groups to play the game. and so essentially the community master program is something that was formed to give support to these kind of grassroots communities. it actually started off, in the Silph Road days. so unfortunately we don't have the Silph Road anymore, but for people who don't know Silph Road was basically a platform that started like even before the game launched. We had players kind of coming up with these ideas of how to like connect people around the world through the game. And they used to have the system where, your community could register as a community on the Silph Road platform, uh, you'd go on the website and when people came to your meetups, they could check in, which was essentially, they could register that they attended your meetup and they'll get like an old badge and in their Silph Road accounts to show that they came to the meetup and joined you. after a while, at some point, Niantic, the company that makes the game, they came on board and said, Hey, we'll start supporting this program. I believe for the last year of the Silph Road, Niantic were doing a lot of the funding, for the platform as well, which was really cool. and then I the Silph Road shut down. and Nantic ends up, taking over the community ambassador program for themselves. and so, yeah, so essentially, what it is, is you have people running these communities and Nantic come in and they officially recognize your community. they provide us with some goodies and free stuff. so they send us items that we can distribute to our community members. they give us a bunch of promo codes to give things like free raid passes. So when players come and attend our meetups, they can be rewarded with, items, for free raid passes. They give us like stickers and, other little trinkets and tidbits, which are quite nice. I know, a lot of people often think that, I work for Niantic or the community ambassadors work for Niantic, but we're all volunteers. We don't get paid for it essentially, you know, we're just people who run groups the same way that people have always run groups and the only difference now is that Niantic send us some stuff to help us out and help us grow Which is really cool of them

David Hernandez: 3:09

so you talked about how you started doing this when the Silk Road was active, did you always see yourself as a leader or somebody who's going to like take charge of the community and try to run like the raids and the events and all this? Haha.

Pokemon GO Central London: 3:21

there was a point in time. So I think I just started, my first job and I moved to an area in London called Kings Cross and there was, an active group in the area. They used to meet up for raids. so when I started my job there, it was very quickly, you know, especially, you know, this was pre COVID before remote raids that were even a thing people thought about. And so everything was very much, you know, in person, people were still like going out and doing lots of raids. so within like a few days of the job, I went to a raid during my lunch break and there were players there. And so I quickly, you know, got added to the WhatsApp group and started raiding with everyone. and yeah, it was just a regular thing. In our lunch breaks, we'd, uh, do raids. Every now and then, maybe it's like sneak out if you could find a free, half an hour. And there's like a really exciting raid boss. A few people would sneak out of the office and like, okay, are there gonna be enough, enough, enough of us? And you go to the raid. And then the big thing as well was the raid hours on the Wednesdays. So what's quite nice is we'd start on the other side of the area. And so this is kind of the furthest gym from the station. and then we'd raid and the last raid would end at the station itself. And then everyone would go home afterwards, right? So it was, you know, Very casual, very informal, wasn't really like a proper structure or anything, it was just, you know, very ad hoc people kind of planning, okay, there's a raid here, is anyone free? Who wants to go? we have raid hour, is anyone free before we go home? And then at the end, everyone here stand around for a bit, complain about the game, complain about the or whatever, uh, and then everyone goes home. But yeah, you know, being someone who's, you know, very passionate about the game, and especially back then I was like, you know, playing quite hardcore and like wanting to do as many raids as possible. So I was the one who would come in and be like, hey, you know, if we change the raid route like this and we do this, then we can get like an extra raid in, in the hour or something. and you know, I'd be the first to arrive, the last to leave. I'd be the one always like trying to push people to do extra raids and stuff. and so yeah, so I guess just after a while it reached a point where. people started turning to me to organize things. I still remember, I don't know what event it was, but I remember the first time there was an event coming up and people were DMing me asking, oh, like, where are we going to meet? Like, when should we start? Like, you know, what's the route going to be? And I found it weird that they were asking me cause I was like, well, it doesn't have to do anything with me. Like I'm not in charge here. Um, and yeah, and then after a while people started calling me like the leader of the group and stuff, like maybe someone new would like, Stumble across us at a raid and people would refer to me as the leader of the group and so yeah So it was quite weird i'm actually quite a shy person. I'm quite introverted A lot of people don't know that about me, especially like running such a big group And so yeah, so it was a little bit weird for me, but I enjoyed it. So Kind of stuck with it and then covid hit and it like destroyed like all the in person communities I ended up helping there's a good friend of mine who used to work in King's Cross at the time before COVID as well. And he has, you know, like an Instagram and Twitter. And so, you know, he's quite popular. He's doing this thing. And so he started, a discord group for remote raids, like day one, when remote raids dropped, he like jumped straight on it and like made this group for people to start, just connecting with other people around the world. and then I hopped in just to check it out and I noticed there was some things that could be improved. And so I, you know, like helped, organize the server a bit better. and then eventually ended up making, discord bots. which would help kind of coordinate the raids and, create private channels for people to, organize their raid lobbies and stuff. so then that kind of started the new era of going fully into remote raids and helping run that group. after a while I burnt out in remote raids and then once things started opening up again, I ended up making a new group which, is now the group I run, which is the Central London Discord group. again focusing back on in person raids. And so it's kind of this like transition between like running like more like very local stuff to then kind of running this like global international group that like blew up over time and so at first it was literally like 10 people in the group and then I think at its peak there were about like 20,000, 40,000 players in this discord group and then similarly like going into this kind of new incarnation of the central london group and our first raid hour was, I think, three people in person and like three people remote and now, we had a big meetup for Shadow Mewtwo and, we estimated about 750 people turned up for that over the weekend. at the peak there would have been like over 500 people like at the same time like following along like doing raids around central London. and so yeah, so it's always been really interesting for me like it started so like humble and small and just like bit by bit got bigger and bigger. I remember, we had a Rayquaza raid hour for the first time and we had 40 people show up and that was like mind blowing. And now yeah, and now it's in the hundreds and yeah, Um, and so yeah, so it's all been you know, like very natural progression and things just like growing little by little. It's not something that I necessarily had experience with it's A lot of the times it feels like it's way out of my depths but just you know taking it a day at a time and Learning what I can and just relying on the community to help out where I fall short, so that's been good

David Hernandez: 7:54

Now, it seems like raiding has been your big focus throughout your entire journey so far. So, is that like your favorite way to kinda embrace Pokemon Go or to dive into Pokemon Go with raiding?

Pokemon GO Central London: 8:03

yeah, so, I have like really fond memories of when Raids first started back in, 2017. So, this was about a year into the game. And, yeah, that summer was, I don't know, maybe one of the best summers I've had playing the game. before that, you know, the game went viral in 2016 and like it felt like everyone was playing right But then after a while, you know kind of slumped a bit Most of the people just kind of in it for reality kind of, you know moved on to other things and then there was kind of a new resurgence when raids started because that was the first time people like properly playing together So before that you'd have a bit like oh, there's a dragon knight and like people would like run over or whatever but raze was the first time people actually like properly playing together like meeting up with the same people regularly and back then, a lot of the bonuses used to be split by the teams in the game. so we had like a really big Valor group, a really big Mystic group, and a really big Instinct group that would go around London. and so being on Team Valor myself, I joined the Valor group back in the day, and that group was like proper hardcore. to add some context, at the time I joined, there were three level 40 players in the group. so for anyone newer to the game, level 40 used to be the maximum level. And back then, hitting level 40 was like, you know, you were like, you know, king status. Like it was, amazing. Like, even just like, yeah, just like being around a level 40 player was like, whoa, you know, it was mesmerizing. And I would have been I think level 32 at the time when I found the group. So I happened to bump into a player that lived down the road from me at a gym We're doing a gym battle and so he mentioned the discord group and then I met some more players through that And very soon I was at the point I was meeting up. there were days I think we'd meet up at like 8 30 in the morning And we'd just spend the whole day raiding And those were good times, and at the end of the day, you know, everyone would end up at the pub and, like, hang out a bit longer and, like, put some lures on. so, there was a point in time, like, you know, it was just, like, whole day raiding and just, like, going all over the city and, it was a big thing for me. I mentioned that I used to play, like, pretty hardcore back in the day. And a lot of that was doing raids and I felt like raids were kind of what held things together. So you'd go from raid to raid, but when you're raiding, right, you're spending about maybe five minutes at the raid and then five, 10, 15, sometimes up to 30 minutes traveling to the next raid. And that transition time I think is where like most of the real magic happens. That's the bit where you're having conversations with people, you're making friends, you're finding out more about people. Um, You catch things along the way and you're grinding and you're, leveling up and sharing all these experiences with people. You stop for breaks or you go for lunch together or you go for a drink or you, oh, there's no more raids, there's a pub nearby, let's hang at the pub. And so yeah, it's just been a really good way to connect to people.

David Hernandez: 10:33

So, I want you to pretend that, you know, I'm coming to visit, right? And I want to play Go for like a community day, a raid hour, or, just play in general. where would I go in London to play Pokemon Go?

Pokemon GO Central London: 10:43

so there's a few different ways to go about it. I've met a lot of people who then, you know, they're not necessarily, super social or maybe they're a bit shy. They just kind of want to do their own thing. but they want other players around, but they're not necessarily planning to go to a meetup. you tend to find there's a lot of the busy train stations, especially the ones that, have trains going to other cities. You tend to have a lot of players around, especially just people just literally just waiting for their train, so you have areas like, King's Cross Station, which is where I play a lot, around like Victoria Station, Paddington Station. If you're around there, there's a popular raid, you'll probably find, you know, a few people will jump in as well and you don't really have to interact much. Covent Garden is another really busy part of London and that's quite well known, a lot of the hardcore players like to play around there, there's lots of stops, lots of gyms. And so again, if you go there, you know, you'll probably find people jump in, especially if you get into the raids just as it hatches. Other than that, we do have a lot of really strong communities now, and there's a lot of like really big organized play. So it's not just me. So I run the Central London group, but we have quite a few different groups around the city now. I think we're up to eight community ambassadors in London now. London is a really big city. so there's lots of areas. There's lots of areas that like just aren't covered at all. the campfire app is really good. A lot of people I talk to still tell me they don't know what campfire is or they haven't used campfire before. I'd definitely recommend checking out. So this is the app made by Niantic and it basically has a map of the world and you can see any raids that are happening. you can communicate with other players on there and, people running groups can make their groups on there and post their meetups. and it's got like a nice little list where you can see upcoming meetups near you. so yeah, if you open up Campfire, you'll see tons of meetups always happening. the groups are really active. London in particular is like really, really big, for the game right now. it's very easy to find where people are meeting up and join For community days, my group in particular, we usually play around I think is one of the nicest parks around London. but we have groups to meet at the Olympic Park in East London. There's Walpole Park in West London. There's Crystal Palace Park in South London. so yeah, all over there's people playing. and even now, like I'm still hearing from people say, you know, Oh, I didn't see you at last raid hour. And they're like, Oh yeah, I was playing with my local group. And, you know, I'm finding out there's like new, smaller WhatsApp groups or campfire groups popping up that I didn't even know about and, People are starting to, again, in the way it used to be, people are kind of, encountering each other in the wild and just starting to form these new groups again, which is really good.

David Hernandez: 13:00

So before Pokemon Go, what experience did you have with Pokemon franchise? Did you play the games, the anime? Like, how deep were you into Pokemon before Go?

Pokemon GO Central London: 13:08

Yes, I've been a diehard Pokémon fan, like, my whole life, literally, as long as I can remember. I was still very young when it came out, and so I ended up missing the first couple of generations. I know I really wanted to play them, but, I couldn't convince my parents to get me, like a Game Boy and the games back in the day. So the first game I actually owned myself was Pokemon Sapphire on the Game Boy Advance. and so, you know, I'd played some Gen 1 and Gen 2 on like friends consoles and stuff. but Gen 3 for me was, okay, this is my game, I own it, I'm, you know, staying up late at night to play the game when I'm supposed to be asleep and there's school in the morning. Um, that was the one I was, playing on the coach while we were on school trips and playing with my friends in secret, trying not to get caught by the teachers. so yes, I put a ton, a ton of hours into Gen 3 and then I've played, every single Gen since then. I've met tons of Pokemon Go players who'll, you know, if you ask them, they'll say, Oh, yeah, I played, you know, Red and Blue back in the day, but, oh, I don't know what all the Gen 4 Pokemon are. These things look weird to me, right? But I was the opposite. I've played everything. I played most of the spin off games. yeah, spent a ton of time with Pokemon. my favorite games were Pokemon Colosseum and XD on the GameCube. and I was the first person in the world to figure out how to mod those games. And so I actually ran another group. based around making mods and things like that, and you know, just like reverse engineering, researching the games, you know, the game mechanics, preserving like historical data around the game, stuff like that, so yeah, so I'm like super hardcore, like super into Pokemon, been playing for a very, very long time, and yeah, and I was really happy when Pokemon Go came out. And for the first time it felt like oh like being a diehard pokemon fan was kind of cool Because like everyone was playing and I was the one who knew everything. I knew all the pokemon I knew all the tips and tricks. Um, i'd been following pokemon go before it released. So I wasn't able to get into the beta myself, but you know, I was following like the news updates waiting for the release date I downloaded it like day one I think it hadn't even released in the uk officially at the time It was only in the u. s. But I think back in, back then it was easy to like make a US, App Store account and you could like, download it. And I've been playing ever since, you know, I've taken a few like, small breaks here and there, but, But yeah, I've been playing for a very long time.

David Hernandez: 15:15

You mentioned how Pokemon Colosseum and XD Guild Arches are your games from the franchise. What is it about those games that kinda stood out to you compared to everything else?

Pokemon GO Central London: 15:23

for people that don't know, um, so those games they came on the GameCube, so at the time, if you look back at the Game Boy Advance games, so the Gen 3 games which have been around at the same time, so that was Sapphire, Ruby, LeafGreen, and Emerald. so there's all, you know, very 2D. Um, the Game Boy screen, you know, doesn't have the highest resolution by today's standards. everything was very static. There wasn't a lot of animations to the Pokémon. And so it's, it's really hard to kind of convey to people today what it was like seeing the Pokémon in full 3D on your TV screen. and it was such an amazing experience. The animations in those games were like really detailed and expressive. And even today, like people still look back at that and, always wish that we could have animations as, as expressive as that now. and yeah, just playing in 3d again, like it's, it's so hard to imagine now because like everything's 3d and we're so used to, and everything's all like HD and 4k now, but at the time, like being able to, you could literally connect your game board once to the GameCube and like do the battles in 3d. and it looked really cool. the stories, in those games were a lot darker. the premise was essentially these games actually where the concept of shadow pokemon originally came from a lot of people in pokemon who play Pokemon go don't know that so they introduced the concept of shadow pokemon, pokemon that have been turned evil by the baddies And your job was to steal those pokemon back from the bad guys and purify them and return them to their, you know Good natured state. and so you had a device which lets you steal pokemon from other trainers and so yeah, so it was you know, it was a bit edgier a bit grittier Um I think Pokemon Colosseum, the opening scene, one of the, like, coolest openings in all of Pokemon, is literally your character, like, blowing up, like, the base of the evil team that he used to work for, and he steals the Snag Machine from them, which is a device that you can steal Pokemon with. and then you see him, and he, like, blows up the building, and, like, runs off, and everyone's trying to chase him, and he's got, like, this, like, cool motorbike that he rides off in, and, yeah, and it was just, like, so cool. at the time, and getting to play as that character and you like, you really felt like you were, especially like being a kid playing this, you felt like you were that character, like, I'm that guy, right? Um, um, and so yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, it was just a really cool game. really cool environments. Yeah, it was just a lot of fun and I feel like, You don't really have a lot of pokemon games like that, these days So those games weren't made by game freak which is a company that usually makes most of the main series games Um also made by a smaller company called genius sonority and so yeah, so they just had you know, very different sensibility around them The art style was very different. The story was very different. And yeah, and also known for being a little bit harder than typical pokemon games tend to be You Um, so they have a reputation for being, you know, a bit hard and, you know, people like to pride themselves on, Oh, yeah, you think, oh, these games are too easy, uh, but you should have seen the games we had back in my day, right? Um, so

David Hernandez: 17:57

just to tag team on that. So I think a good comparison would be, say Game Freak releases a game that's holograms. would be a fair comparison to how it was for us back in the day when we just knew the bits and we got 3D Pokemon. So for me, my experience these games was actually the teaser. My mom got me a Mario Kart Double Dash bonus disc. on that bonus disc was the teaser for Pokemon Colosseum. And I got to see all the Hoenn Pokemon in 3D. I saw a giant Wailord. saw Cacturne doing Solar Beam. They're all like level 70s or something like that. And it blew my mind. It blew my little, I think, I don't know how it was like 12 year old kid's mind right there. I'm like, I have to get this game. It's just, it has the Hoenn. It's like, I thought it was like Pokemon Stadium, but just was Pokemon Colosseum. And like you, it has that darker premise to where the guy was originally part of Team Snagum, he left it for an unknown reason, I don't think we ever got the answer why, but he betrayed them, stole the snack machine, and then basically went on this mission to kinda catch the shadow Pokemon that were closed by the heart, which is what we know for Pokemon Go now. was just a very fun game to play, and you got to do double battles throughout the entire time, still not been repeated to this day outside of XD.

Pokemon GO Central London: 19:10

Yeah, yeah, it was just it was really cool and just so much fun Another thing as well is so these days most games have to scale down a lot of the bigger pokemon so they fit on the screen properly And so like the battlefields aren't too big but colosseum nxd did not do that at all Like if you sent out a waylord It was full size like your character was like that big in the corner And you would see like the full sized waylord on screen. We got to see the scale of the pokemon The moves were really dynamic. Um, so yeah, it was really cool And so I guess a lot of people would be familiar with like pokemon stadium And Colosseum and XD were kind of like, spiritual successor to the Stadium series. and so yeah, so it was a similar kind of thing, like these kind of grand battles on this grand scale. and fully 3D, especially in an era where 3D, you know, wasn't as common, especially in Pokemon games.

David Hernandez: 19:53

So, returning back to Pokémon GO, You talked about how you only had three to five people for the first raid hour. And then eventually it grew up to what we saw with the Mewtwo up to 700 and 700 people. What was it like, you know, early on trying to rebuild the community and to what it is today?

Pokemon GO Central London: 20:11

Yeah, it was a really interesting experience. cause yeah, so like I mentioned, you know, I was like quite deeply integrated with a lot of the communities before COVID. Um, so I was in, you know, tons of WhatsApp groups, Discord groups. Uh, I knew a lot of the players, I knew a lot of the OGs, I knew, you know, I knew all the, like, the people who used to be, like, level 40 back in the day, who were, like, the, like, legends in the city. and so yeah, so it was quite interesting, kind of, trying to come back to the game when, you know, starting to feel comfortable going outside again, and, you know, events were, pushing a bit more for in person stuff again. and I would, you know, reach out to all my contacts in all these different groups, and no one wanted to come out anymore, right? it's an experience, you know, if you go on like Reddit or you go online and see people talking about like, Oh, I don't have a community around me, and every time I try to ask my friends, no one wants to play. It, you know, it was the same here. And so yeah, I'll reach out to people and say, Oh, there's a community day coming up. Would you like to go to Regent's Park? Like the good old days and people say, Oh, you know, I'm busy. I don't play the game that much. Oh, I've had a kid in the last year. And you know, I've got to look after my kids now. Or, oh, during lockdown, I actually started remote working. So I moved, you know, I had a friend who used to be in the group. He moved like right on the tip of Scotland Like I saw someone else showed me on the map literally like right on the top like northern coast of Scotland He moved all the way there and he was uh working remotely. I'm, probably I don't know. I imagine he like found some like castle or something like super cheap. I don't know um And so yeah So like every person he spoke to like there was all these stories like they'd moved away or they were Busy or they're doing other things or they found a different game that they enjoyed more You and also, you know, I, I think it's, it's fair as well. Like, you're never going to be interested in the same thing forever. and so it's normal that even without COVID, there would have been many people that moved on. But it was a period where like a lot of people moved on at the same time. And then also with like remote raids and remote play, a lot of people weren't as excited by the idea of like going outside and like walking around to do raids when they could like sit at home and do it anyway. And yeah, and a lot of people just kind of wanted to play solo even if they were playing They didn't there was no incentive to really like go play together And like they can just walk around their own area and do community day from home or whatever. So I spent a lot of time basically trying to reach out to people reach out to all my connections try and you know Inspire them to come out again remind them how much fun we used to have playing the game and oh the weather's nice And it was the summer But yeah, I had like no success. No one wants to play anymore. and so yeah, meetups would be like three of us, four of us maybe. So raid hours would be like three people and then like three people would join remotely. and you know, it was a little bit disheartening. but I remember playing a community day, at Regent's Park. And So it was a similar situation. There was literally one person that I knew from the old group who was there. He happened to live, you know, like down the road, so he still went out for those. But as I looked around the park, I started to notice I was seeing a lot of other players. They just weren't players that I recognized, they weren't people I knew. but you always have the telltale signs, so you know, people with their battery packs walking around, that's usually an obvious sign they're playing Pokemon Go. people drawing circles on their screen when they're doing like curveball throws. and you know, you go to a raid and you see like people standing around, you're like, this is kind of like a random area to just be standing. So they're probably here for the raid as well, right? and so yeah, so it was just That realization that, oh wait there are a lot of players around, they're just not the same players that I used to know, they're just not the players that are in my old whatsapp groups, right? and so it started a habit, which I still do to this day. Where every single time I see someone playing Pokemon Go, I go up to them and introduce myself and say hi, and ask them if they want to join the group. and again, like, I'm super shy, super introverted, so this was, yeah, so was like, so this was way outside my comfort zone. but over time it got a bit easier as I got used to it and something that helps is like, every time I, like I've never regretted it, because I've always met like really lovely people. and like some of these people now are like, you know, months, years later, like really good friends and people that even outside of the game, like we'll meet up and like go for lunch and stuff.

David Hernandez: 23:50

So you talked about how you go up to people now, why did you feel like you needed to do that now?

Pokemon GO Central London: 23:55

I found that a lot of people are very shy to talk to each other which I completely understand because I'm the same way. again, what I realized is every time I've spoken to someone, especially someone I met through the game, like I always meet really lovely people. and always remind people like we're playing the same way. Like if you're playing Pokemon Go and I'm playing Pokemon Go, like there's no ice between us. Right. So. I always like to go in and break the ice for people. But I always try to tell people, like, there, there really isn't ice in the first place. Like, all it takes, right, go up to someone and say, Oh, did you get shiny today? They will not stop talking to you, right? You will talk for hours hours, and not run out of things to say. You'll tell stories about, oh yeah, there was an unknown, and I jumped over the fence, and this and that, or we were doing this raid, and we had to run because I was about to run out, and you know, you can go all day, Oh, I was doing a Shadow Lugia raid train, and it wouldn't stop doing flips, and it was so hard to catch them, and I had to use Nanite, You can talk all day about Pokemon Go. And all the experiences you've had with the game and not run out of things to say All it takes is that like initial interaction that says like hey, it's okay to talk to each other, right? hey, like we're doing the same thing No, you know, i'm not a weirdo and you're not a weirdo like we're both just people playing the game. and then people will like, talk and bond and then you meet each other again you get closer and closer and Eventually down the line I can reach the point like you're genuinely like oh i'm friends with this person, you know, like This is my friend and I'm looking forward to seeing them again. but the hardest part is literally that into like initial breaking the ice and getting people to like, just acknowledge each other and talk to each other and say like, Hey, Oh, we just did this way together. There's another rate over there. Like, do you want to go do that rate? And sometimes that's, that's all it takes. Right. and so, yeah, so essentially that process of going up to people and Introducing myself. and started saying to people, Hey, I've got this group, would you like to join? Invite people. Some people turned me down, that was fine. Some people didn't want to talk to me, that was fine. Some people turned out they weren't playing Pokemon Go, they just looked like they were, and that was fine too. Um, but over time, one by one, adding people to the group. At first, no one was talking, no one was really saying anything, but I'll just post, Hey. Raid Hour, we're meeting here, so and so, community day, meet at this time, blah, blah, blah. and then over time, it's got more and more people, as people got more comfortable with each other, you know, the conversation started flowing. people started meeting each other, and then, you know, kind of, you reach this critical mass, and then word of mouth starts to spread. now it's at the point where people are finding us, and people are bringing their friends, or people are hearing stories about the group. And I've literally, like, met people at meetups who said they, like, flew in from other countries. And they saw there was like a yeah They saw there was a big meetup happening in london And they didn't really have one near them So they made a whole weekend out of it and tried to do some sightseeing and then come play an event with the london group And things like that, right? it was quite a long journey to get to that point, but it literally just came down to just starting those conversations and just breaking the ice between people and giving people permission to talk to each other and And have fun

David Hernandez: 26:32

What goes throught your mind when you think about how people traveling, Taking a weekend out of their day to come and experience your group. That's gotta make you feel a different kind of way, right?

Pokemon GO Central London: 26:43

Yeah, I mean, I'm really proud of, what the group's been able to achieve. you know, I get a lot of the credit as, kind of the person who organized a lot of the stuff. But I always say to people, like, at the day, it comes down to the community. I could say to everyone, like, hey, let's meet at this location at this time. If no one shows up, there's no group, right? There's no meetup. and so just, it just comes down to the people who turn up every day, the people who talk to each other, the people are friendly, the people are nice, so that when people do come, they have a good experience, the group leaves a good impression, and then they want to come back, and next time they want to bring their friends, they want to bring their family with them, and so, yes, I'm glad, you know, the group has a really good reputation, it's at the point now that, people expect That when they show up, they're going to have a good time. There's going to be a big group. I know the day they announced the Shadow Mewtwo was coming back, I think I had at least four separate DMs from people telling me they'd booked their train ticket from different cities to come into London to play. You know, I hadn't, I hadn't posted anything yet, but they knew London's going to go hard. There's going to be a big group. They're going to crush the raids. I'm going to be there, right? and so yeah, so I'm glad we're in that position again, like comparing to two years ago when. it was like three people at raid events, and no one was playing, and it felt like nobody wanted to play the game anymore, and like, It generally felt like that was the end of the game, you know, like, maybe this was it, in a couple of years, there'll be no game left, there'll be no one playing, so,

David Hernandez: 27:53

You said how you had 750 people for Shadow Mewtwo. How did you coordinate that? How did you organize that? What was like to kind of have that many people in a raid at raids? That's crazy.

Pokemon GO Central London: 28:03

Yeah, it's funny. I tend to downplay it a lot. And when people ask me, I always say, Oh, it's easy. I just tell people the time and place. And as long as people show up at time and place fine, but it's, it's, it's actually not that simple. I spend weeks obsessing over every single detail about the meetups, especially now that the group is so big. something I've been saying is, For the first, like, year or two, my job was basically just, like, organize the group and, make sure people know where they're going, make sure, you know, people aren't, walking into roads without looking, you know, just make sure everyone's safe and everyone's having a good time. now for these, like, super massive meetups, my priorities are kind of the other way, where my job is to, like, protect the general public from the group. And my job's to make sure that the group aren't, like, running Trampling pedestrians who aren't looking, they're not causing traffic jams, they're not, I don't know, trampling on flowers in the park, and all kinds of stuff. And so yeah, so my job now is essentially Figuring out, how do you make sure that this is safe, for everyone? How do I make sure we're not going to end up in the newspapers for like, causing like, some kind of trouble? I'm not going to get a knock on my door from the police saying, Are you the stars guy that runs the group? Um, Which is, it's one of my fears, I feel like that's going to happen at some point eventually. But yeah, and so I spend a lot of like a lot of time a lot more time than people probably realize like obsessing over every single detail figuring out like, you know, what's the best meeting point? What's the best meeting time? how do you keep the hardcore players happy who want to go really quickly? How do you make sure the? slower, more casual players are okay? How do you make sure that kids with iPads are gonna be okay? when, you know, inevitably the group's gonna have to split up a bit. So, which kind of people are gonna be leading? So, who's good at leading the fast group? Who's good at leading the slow group? How do you make sure there's enough social people in each group? That people are gonna keep talking to each other? And so yeah, so so a lot of work goes into it. there's a lot of work in like how do you market it? You know, how do you make sure people know that's happening? Making sure that you advertise things early on is a big thing as well I need to make sure that people know from day one, Okay, we're meeting at this point, at this time, this is the plan. Or, even if it's not set in stone, this is the kind of general area we'll be in, and then people can start spreading the word. what you don't want is people kind of making their own plans, and then people get confused, am I going to this one, am I going to that one? So, Like I'm, you know, I'm perfectly happy with people having their own meetups and doing whatever But it needs to be clear that if you're coming to our meetup if you come to like the central London one like this is The plan this is the meetup. This is what's going on for the vast majority of people like I make like really detailed notes about the meetups like every single detail I have enough experience now that I know all the commonly asked questions that people ask So I make posts with like literally every single question that people are going to ask. I have the answer put down and then when people ask, I can literally link them to it. And be like, look, I posted this like three weeks ago. I knew people were going to ask this. Here's the answer. but the thing is like 99 percent of the people who come to the meetups will never see any of that information. And so the two most important things are like the time and the meeting point. And how do you like make sure that everybody knows that and thankfully there's members who help spread that information around I go on reddit and post there are people who are like in all the little facebook groups And they go post to people on there and let them know what's going on And so yeah, so it does end up being like quite a large operation and it's a lot to sort of all out and make sure that everyone turns up in the right place at the right time and that everyone's safe Everyone knows what's going on Everyone feels welcome. It's a big thing as well. tons of people who will come in and say hey Am I welcome? You know, I have this background or you know, I have this religion or this sexuality or Whatever, especially in london being such a multicultural and diverse city You meet all kinds of people here and sometimes you know some groups aren't always the most welcoming or you know, sometimes all it takes is like one person like Saying something bad to like ruin the experience for someone and make them not feel safe Um, so yes There's a lot of stuff like that making sure that there's good moderation in the group making sure that people feel safe making sure that when people you know, saying things that make people uncomfortable that you're dealing with that appropriately and like reassuring people that, you know, it's not the place for that kind of, sentiment and that, you know, we welcome everyone here and everyone should be able to get along.

David Hernandez: 31:51

There's a lot of people who are on the other side, You already, you know, working with Niantic to, you know, grow your community and keep growing it. What do you, what advice would you give to people who are barely starting out or still trying kind of grow the community? What would you tell them?

Pokemon GO Central London: 32:05

Yeah, so a big thing I always tell people is it really doesn't take much to be a community, like in terms of numbers. Most of the raids in the game, you can do with like three, four, five players. and so I know a lot of people, you know, they see the big meetups, they see the hundreds of players and they think, oh, if I don't have hundreds of players, then my community isn't important or it doesn't matter but generally, you know I meet people in whatsapp groups with five of them and they just live in the same area and they go out and do a Few raids, uh on the weekend And that's a community and that's completely fine even the community ambassador program, the requirements to get in are Intentionally set to be fairly low so the minimum requirement is you need 10 players in your community of course for some areas, especially a lot of rural areas, you know, even 10 is quite a lot But for a lot of people, especially if you're in a city, if you put in some effort and you, you know, step out of your comfort zone a little bit, say hi to players that you see around, like, you can get 10 players, you know? people often say, like, in my area, I see people in gyms, right? You see the same few names in the gyms, and it's people, and you know, every day, people are knocking your Pokémon out of the gyms. There are players around, right? And so the hard part is just kind of finding that first, like that initial core of like literally just four or five players that can have enough firepower to beat a raid. And once you have enough to beat a raid, everything else is a bonus. And it's a lot easier to convince someone like, hey, we've got a group that will definitely be doing raids. We will definitely be able to beat this raid. If you want to join, you can come along and now you've got an extra person. And then the next person comes along, here's a dedicated group. I think the hardest part is reaching that point because for a lot of people. You know, you can advertise, okay, we're going to meet at this, place in this time. But if only two people show up, then you can't raid, and then people aren't going to have confidence to come for the next one. so the main thing is just, focus on having your core little group, and just, you know, just have fun with the game. And don't worry about, you know, being the biggest group. don't worry about, you know, having hundreds of players. Enjoy the game and just remember what made the game fun, I know after lockdown and remote raids a lot of people kind of feel like They can't enjoy the game the same way anymore or they can't go out. Um, let's remind people like There are so many games out there. that you play at home but the thing that made pokemon go unique was, you know, kind of going out and playing the game like meeting people I guarantee you like the reason you loved the game so much the reason like you got into it in the first place was because there was that kind of unique spark to it, like going out and having these unique experiences with the game and just, you know, trying to remember what that was like, you know, I get it, you know, some people we don't live in the best city, you know, I'm very privileged to live in such a big city like London where the experience is very different. Some people don't have a lot of players around. Some people just don't have the time they used to have and that's fine too. But, if you do have that bit of time, if you can step out of your comfort zone a little bit, you can travel just a little bit further than you were planning to, go an extra road, away from your house, you know, you might be surprised what you'll find, you know, like, there, there is a lot of fun to be had with this game, and, I think there really is something special here.

David Hernandez: 34:48

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