The Road to The Pokémon Go Revolution

     Unless you have been living under a rock, you'll have at least heard of the chart-topping, server-crashing, pokeball flinging phenomenon of the augmented reality app Pokémon Go sweeping the world. Over the past week pretty much everything from the news, my social media stream and even Whatsapp groups have laid down their daily trivialities and made room for Pokémon Go.

     To say that Pokémon was a big part of my childhood would be an understatement. I have so many memories tied to the days when grinding through Mt. Silver to battle Red with a Lugia and Ho-Oh by my side in Pokémon Gold taught the 7-year old me the virtue of persistence and patience, and the triumph of success in a way my parents of elders never could. Pokémon Go might not even be the epitome of this franchise, but when I walked down the street to capture an uncommon Vulpix the other day and saw the pokeball snap shut with a burst of sparkles, I felt gratified. Playing Pokémon no longer meant sitting hunched over a GameBoy. Pokémon and it's faithful trainers were liberated. So I decided to sit down and write this article, tracing the origins of Pokémon Go, and find out why literally everyone is playing it now.

     In 1996, the dream of the boy who loved collecting insects, Satoshi Tajiri, became a reality when Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow, filled with 151 Pocket Monsters released for Nintendo's GameBoy. It did not take long for the game to become a smash-hit across Japan and accrue an international release. Twenty years later, Pokémon has evolved into one of the greatest franchises the world has seen. The amazing series of games, and later the anime, became a cornerstone of an entire generation's childhood, and continues to be incredibly successful with no signs of slowing down.

     But Pokémon was in the news for a totally different reason on April 1st, 2014. In the massive fool's day prank which saw a collaboration between Google and Nintendo, users had to go to real world locations with Google Maps in their smartphones, and try to "Catch 'em all" and become the "Pokémon Master".




     While initially just a one-day wonder, the challenge turned heads all over the world, and suddenly the potential of a Pokémon-themed augmented reality(or AR for short) game was the buzz around social media. The talk about AR games, of course, had a few knowledgeable users inevitably pointing their fingers at Niantic Labs, a fairly new internal start-up at Google led by John Hanke (A Google veteran who had founded Keyhole, the company that would eventually become Google Earth, and later the Vice President of Google Maps) which had practically invented the AR gaming genre and gained attention for it's brand new AR game, Ingress.

     Although the rumors were running rampant and hype was in the air for months before, Pokéfans, gamers, and the app-world in general went into meltdown after Nintendo officially announced Pokémon Go on 10th September, 2015. It was going to be a collaboration with Niantic, which had spun out of Google as a separate company after the tech giant restructured as Alphabet Inc.

     But apart from the obvious, what had made this announcement extra-special? Well if you know Nintendo, you already have the answer to that question. Nintendo never releases it's property outside it's own line of consoles. Never. Gamers and entrepreneurs around the world alike had pointed at the humongous potential of Nintendo's crown jewels (Which apart from Pokémon, include the likes of Mario, Legend of Zelda and Metroid) to smash international markets if released on multiple platforms and consoles for decades. But Nintendo stuck to their tradition and did not venture outside the lines of Game Boys, Wii-s and 3DS's. Until Pokémon Go.

     So now we could be an actual Pokémon trainer. All the memories we have from the Pokémon games: Starting out as a nobody leaving their home to be "The very best", wading through tall grass with Pokéballs looking for rare Pokémon, training them, healing them, raising them, winning and losing with them by your side, and eventually engraving your name in the region's Hall of Fame after clearing 8 gyms, making it through Victory Road, and beating the Elite Four and the regional Champion, was going to become reality. Or at least, as close to reality as it could possible get. [Note: No, there is no Victory Road or Elite Four in Pokémon Go. At least, not yet.]

     So despite the fact that the final game suffered from quite a some number of issues, when it eventually got released on July 2016, exactly one week before this post was made, the internet exploded yet again, only this time the shock waves resonated far and wide past the circle of Pokémon lovers. Although Ingress had laid the foundation for AR gaming long ago, the world finally had a mass-market game that needed us to gather our running shoes and step outside. Saying Pokémon Go went viral would be wrong. Pokémon Go was destined to be the unmatched success it is now from the day it was announced. Since then, the game has topped the charts everywhere it went, famously raised Nintendo's stocks by 9 Billion within 3 days, and overtook Facebook & Whatsapp in minutes used per day and zoomed past Twitter in daily active user count. In fact the response was so overwhelming, Niantic is struggling to keep the overloaded servers up and running, with large downtimes still striking everyday. The Journey of Pokémon Go from a Prank to a full-scale spectacle was complete.

     While the game just has the original 151 Pokémon and nothing outside capturing Pokémon, hatching eggs and AI-based gym battles, the game promises much, in the form of trading, PvP battles, adding Pokémon gens and much, much more. Pokémon Go is definitely here to stay. Having to physically move to play a game just shows how much the smartphone era has changed-and is still changing, and the potential of application of augmented reality to more games or even non-gaming apps. There is little wonder why the world has taken it up with utmost curiosity, interest and love.

     Are you enjoying Pokémon Go? Is there anything you'd like to say? Leave them in the comments below. :)

Tutorial on HTML5 Canvas

     The canvas element is one the most important features that HTML5 introduced into the world of web development, allowing the creation of dynamic content in a webpage without having to rely on Flash (Which is notorious for it's plethora of flaws and vulnerabilities). It has since then fueled several popular webpages, and is an essential piece of knowledge for any web developer.

     As for myself, I have developed small games for fun that runs entirely on a canvas element. They are great fun and easy to make, only requiring basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript.

    Here is a video I made that gives a very basic introduction to the HTML5 canvas, how to draw a box and write text onto it, and capture mouse clicks. Enjoy!


     I might continue this as a series and make more videos like this in the future.

     Here is the full source code of the program I used in the video:

<html>
<head><title>Canvas Tutorial</title></head>
<canvas id="stage"></canvas>

<script>
var stage=document.getElementById("stage");
stage.width=500;
stage.height=500;
var ctx=stage.getContext("2d");
ctx.fillStyle="silver";
ctx.fillRect(0,0,stage.width,stage.height);
ctx.fillStyle="black";
ctx.font="20px Impact"
ctx.fillText("AGZuniverse",50,50)
stage.addEventListener("click",clk);

var x=0;
var y=0;
function clk(event)
{
x=event.clientX;
y=event.clientY;
drawbox(x,y);
}

function drawbox(a,b)
{
ctx.beginPath();
ctx.fillStyle="blue";
ctx.rect(a,b,50,50);
ctx.fill();
ctx.strokeStyle="black";
ctx.stroke();
}

</script>
</html>



Notice of inactivity

     While I usually make sure to post at least once a week, some of you might have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while now. Unfortunately things have been pretty tight in my life as a student, and all that academics is taking up my time to such an extent, that I'm not able to make regular posts on this blog I love so much.

     As much as I hate to say this, it looks like the posts will just dry up over the coming months. This does not mean I'll be completely off though. I'll pop up now and then with something interesting. But until such time the grinding on my life is taken off, my online activity will be low. I hope that time will come earlier than I think it will.