I've been increasing how much I walk anyway and bought a nice pair of trainers for that recently anyway. I was getting bored of the same old routes around my area.
This game has given me a reason to go to places I wouldn't normally, or find things I didn't know were there. I'm in Glasgow and outside the Tennents factory there is a plaque to the writer of "Wee Willie Winkie". It's just a small thing, but it's telling me stuff I didn't know about my area. Or other things I have always wondered about, like the weird bull statue, or why they saved the front of a building. I could get all this if I remembered, and actively looked into it; but I don't. By gamifying this, it keeps me interested.
Also that I have a bunch of other people I know doing it helps massively, so that we compare for best, coolest, and dumbest.
I've seen a good number of other people doing it, and even had a few brief conversations where we say "pokemon?" laugh and move on to whatever point as are trying to steal.
It helps that I've not played an AR game before, and rarely use my phone for gaming at all. I tend to not have time to play while I'm out and about, but pokemon takes a few seconds every few minutes. It's not the commitment of a fully pokemon game.
In the end this is casual fun. But it's fun in the real world, using things we know about.
Also I can make it look like Slowpoke is about to get hit by a car.
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