A tall, thin young man walked east toward downtown Siloam Springs on Wednesday night.
Head down, phone in hand, he took a sudden and strange right turn into City Park. He quickened his step as he walked though the grass toward Sager Creek.
Safety Tips
Area law enforcement have expressed concern about potential public safety issues regarding Pokemon Go. Here are a few tips to be mindful of:
• Don’t play Pokemon Go and drive
• Be aware of your surroundings; don’t get too comfortable
• Play with others and in well-lit areas
• Don’t trespass or go into areas you usually wouldn’t do to if you weren’t playing the game
• Be cautious of lures in locations that are remote
• Be mindful and courteous of others in public places, such as Crystal Bridges, who are not playing the game
Source: Staff Report
His trance-like state made it appear as though he was commanded to walk into the water.
Not 10 seconds later a couple, likely in their 30s, came from the east and headed in the same direction toward the creek.
"You guys catching Pokemon?" a pedestrian on the sidewalk called out.
The man chuckled. "Yeah," he said sheepishly as if he'd just been caught misbehaving.
Their behavior may have seemed a bit odd had Pokemon Go not become the cultural phenomenon it had in less than a week's time.
It's become the largest mobile game in the nation's history with nearly 21 million active daily users, according to Survey Monkey Intelligence Blog. It surpassed the use of other popular social media apps, such as Twitter, within three days of its July 6 release.
Niantic developed the game using GPS and augmented reality technology allowing participants to capture and battle fictional Pokemon characters virtually on their mobile screens in actual locations.
The real world is transformed into a simplistic landscape in the game, which is sprinkled with icons to indicate game aspects at different locations.
A player walking north on Bentonville's Main Street sees all the blue squares representing Pokestops, locations where needed items are located, on their screen as they get closer to the downtown square.
Rustling leaves indicate there's a Pokemon nearby. The virtual and real worlds can collide when players use their phones' camera instead of the game's default background when capturing a Pokeman. Using the camera places the fictional creature in the real world environment.
Getting in the game
This meshing of virtual and real worlds leads people to behave in ways that make sense to them as they're engulfed in the world on their screen, but is a bit strange to observers.
Nataleigh Marley recalls eating out a couple days after the game was released.
"This girl was eating a meal next to us and got up to go down the street to catch a Pokemon," she said. Marley hasn't jumped on Pokemon Go's virtual bandwagon, yet. People who don't play likely find themselves still getting caught up in conversation about it.
Marley chatted with a Fayetteville Farmers Market vendor about it during the market Thursday. Peppered throughout the square were Pokemon players -- easily identified by their dual interaction between their phone and surrounding environment.
They'd walk guided by the map on their phone, complete a task, look up and evaluate their location to the map and head to the next point of interest.
Averi Johnson with McGarrah Farms said she downloaded the game while at the market because she saw everyone around the market playing it.
"I can see what the hype is about," she said. "It's a lot of fun. I feel like it's helped us connect more people because everyone's doing it, and we see each other doing it and partaking in this guilty pleasure."
It's an entry point, or ice breaker, for strangers to interact with each other as it gives people a common topic to talk about, she said.
And aspects of the game do physically bring people together. A lure module attracts Pokemon to a Pokestop for 30 minutes. It also attracts players looking to capture Pokemon.
Players can identify a lure location by the pink confetti that swirls around it like it did at Twin Springs Park in Siloam Springs around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. A couple dozen players were hanging out, catching Pokemon and enjoying each other's company.
A van full of teenagers drove by. "Woo hoo! Yeah, Pokemon!" one stuck his head out the window and yelled. The driver honked the horn a few times.
Finding Pokespots
Officials at the tourism bureaus in Fayetteville and Bentonville said the game is a great benefit to cities as it gets people to places they may normally may not have explored before.
"It's a nice little boom for tourism at the moment," said Kody Ford, Fayetteville Visitors and Convention Bureau marketing and media relations manager.
The game leads its millions of users to historical sites, public areas and places of interest within the community they're currently in, whether or not those places want to be featured in the game.
Regardless, several Northwest Arkansas places of interest view their involuntary participation as a benefit.
"You don't sign up for anything. You aren't asked to participate," David Johnson, Fayetteville library executive director, said Thursday. "It's just a phenomenon that happened to us."
The Fayetteville Library is a "gym" in Pokemon Go, meaning Pokemon can battle there for control of that location. There are also several Pokestops in an around the library.
Two youth walked through the lobby as Johnson was speaking. Phones in hand, they headed straight to the children's section. Johnson said Pokemon have been caught back there and the Dragon sculpture is a Pokestop.
Two more young players came in asking if there were outlets they could plug their phones in. It's a common lament among players that the game drains phone batteries quickly.
Other library employees commented on how they see people coming in all the time playing the game. They're all welcome to come in and play, Johnson said.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville has also seen a "notable increase" in visitors on the museum's grounds and in its galleries over the past week, Beth Bobbitt, public relations manager, stated in an email.
"As a museum with access at its core...we have embraced this opportunity as a chance to welcome new visitors," she wrote, noting that admission to the museum is free. "We hope they will enjoy their art experience and perhaps even be inspired to learn more about the works (of art) they're encountering."
The museum published a blog post and included photos of Pokemon found around and on pieces of art. Its jovial tone indicates the museum has embraced its role as a featured landmark and willingness to play along.
The blog comments that it's not surprising that Pikachu hangs out around Dan Flavin's light installation as "Pikachu's an electric Pokemon and this is an electric artwork." And it calls out a Rattata for "clearly breaking all the Museum's rules by brazenly standing on Roxy Payne's 'Bad Lawn.'"
Museum employees have also joined the fun by catching Pokemon in the galleries before work and on lunch breaks, the blog points out.
A game for all
There were many players in the museum's galleries Friday. Most seemed to observe art pieces between game action. Players say the game doesn't have to be played continuously, but, like texting, can be done in spurts here and there.
Rogers High School graduates Sanjana Boyapalli, Emily Walla and Sidney Wilson sat at a Pokestop before leaving the museum Friday. They went specially to play Pokemon, but they did check out the art, too, they said.
"It's the best of both worlds," Wilson said. "There's a lot of Pokestops around the grounds and I think it's good because the Wi-Fi reaches that far, which is nice."
The trails around Crystal Bridges were swarming with players by mid-afternoon. Some were adults dressed in business causal, most were teenagers and then there was 6-year-old Judah Libertini.
"He's the only one his age I've seen playing it," said Emily Libertini, his mom.
Judah's vocal enthusiasm was unmatched as he proudly gave a play-by-play commentary of the Pokemon he caught.
Older players may have more of a competitive mentality where "leveling up" and winning gyms is the mission, but Judah, a huge Pokemon fan, is excited about every catch, Emily said.
"He could just catch the lowest level stuff and keep doing it all day long," she said. "He just gets a kick out of it every single time. Everybody's been laughing at us because he's go this high-level of enthusiasm."
NW News on 07/16/2016