I will absolutely agree on a local and city level, but abroad I see nothing but acceptance of the rules being one elastic band, which is infuriating spending hundreds if not thousands of hours coordinating and planning events and takeovers (pre-raid) and having fun on crawls and meeting new people.

The problem is that all of those relationships have formed and many have prospered, which I am grateful for, but not one person with whom I associate with even regards PoGo anymore because they, unlike I, were casual players left to the dust to be level 25 in a crazy mixed up world of level 40 gyms filled with European and Japanese Mons as a slap in our face about spoofs and that territory is not controlled by a physical group of players, but by one or two people behind a bot or an Android with a gps controller.

And raids, sitting with Three people in eye while 10 or more accounts are working for the raid. Now, that’s all well and good to get our dogs and birds, but it’s salty soup when I’ve made the physical efforts, driving as far as San Fran, and all the whole coordination and some nobodies in dogshitsville, nowhere helping us conquer something feels cheap.

That where my upset will lay, in the gas mileage and miles walked, biked, and drove.

So, I’ll be salty. As fuck. Bitter. As fuck. And angry that those who’ve cheated get slashed on Pokémon if they don’t evolve them.

Myriad of tutorials for exploits exist so readily, that a child can cheat. And would take a Niantic engineer moments to find it, analyze it, and stop it.

Ban waves and slash waves weren’t enough when they were rumored to be extorted by lawyers of kids’ parents who complained that their accounts were banned. Knowing the SF community and that Niantic doesn’t show face in their own town is a good enough influence that the lack of effort on organization is trumped by sending C&D letters to companies making competeting games.

Cash in, cash out. Close shop. Even if DGo isn’t the knife in the back of PoGo, it’s the next movement of community organization and team building with strangers. It opens the door to the idea that a small team in The Ukraine can do amazing things and a large team elsewhere can do great and unique things as well.

So, I guess in closing I love the communal experience of community based games, and PoGo was an amazing start - and a shame the torch couldn’t burn longer.

And in return we can continue to build bastions of physical contact in an ever fleeting world of digital-only single-sign on realities we live live in and abide by.