Lonely Planet has the monopoly on travel books. It’s got a lot going for it; expert local guide writers, name recognition, and that perfect, pocket-sized presentation. I love leafing through their overpriced pages in a bookshop, noting down a couple of top tips for my travel destination before placing it back on the shelf and saving myself £15.99.
There’s something special about a physical guide book – gamers know this – and that’s why I head to a bookshop instead of TripAdvisor (other travel guide websites are available). But Pokemon Go aims to do something similar during Go Fest events, transforming entire cities into hubbubs of PokeStops with eyes to guide tourists to the biggest sites. But how does this even work, and can Pokemon Go succeed as a travel guide?
The idea is simple: players will follow the PokeStops. So Niantic places hundreds of temporary Go Fest PokeStops across the city, mostly at points of interest. There’s a cluster of ‘stops around Tower Bridge, a handful more at Big Ben. A few pop up in weird places, too; I passed a random church that had a Go Fest PokeStop attached, and you’ll notice similar scenarios across the city.
I was mainly in London to find a Route and hopefully evolve my Zygarde (you can see how that went here), but I wanted to hit some tourist spots too. So, I let Pokemon Go lead my day and plan my itinerary. My day started with a meetup at Tower Bridge, and I followed a Thameside Route all the way to Big Ben. So far, so good. I’d seen a bunch of the sites along the river, from the Tower of London, past the Tate Modern, the Globe, the National Theatre, all the way to Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey. That’s most of the big boys ticked off already! But where next?
Pokemon Go offered me nothing. I was swimming in Poke Balls thanks to the abundance of ‘stops by Big Ben, but even zooming out of the map didn’t give me any idea of where to go. Routes are player-made so they headed in all manner of directions like a spider-web, leaving me lost and confused. Thankfully I’ve been to London before, so I doubled back on myself and headed towards the museums and Soho, where I could do some shopping.
Again, I picked up on some Routes on my way, which were of varying quality but consistent quantity, which is admittedly more than can be said for the area around my house in the Liverpool suburbs. I got lucky with the first one, which was helped by the fact that so many of London’s sights lie on the river, but Routes couldn’t help me any more. I started following the PokeStops, looking for clusters that could be new Go Fest spots, but the map just didn’t show enough area for me to successfully pinpoint busy locations.
This was compounded by the fact that I hadn’t spun any of these PokeStops before, meaning they all looked the same. London-based players would be able to easily recognise Go Fest stops by the ring around them which tells you it’s new, but every PokeStop in London is new to me, so they all look the same. Temporary stops like this could do with being highlighted in a different colour like Team Rocket stops if Pokemon Go really wants players to find them.
Ultimately, my day of exploring London was dictated as much by my prior knowledge of the city as it was one lucky Route. While Niantic says that it wants players to explore the cities that Go Fest takes place in, the game is not equipped to be a functional tour guide. Maybe official, recommended Routes could be used for this function rather than relying on players to navigate the awkward map UI and potentially get themselves lost by following a breadcrumb trail of PokeStops that may or may not lead to a sightseeing hotspot?
I don’t think TripAdvisor needs to be looking over its shoulder just yet, but when Pokemon Go can direct me to a Waterstones, Lonely Planet sales will be through the roof.