"Shinies will be this game's driving force (a water fest case study)"

#PokemonGO: Rewind the clock back a year. Many of us discussed a Pokémon's potential value in the upcoming Pokémon Go game. At the time, naively, I was excited to have a really high level Vulpix and Scyther. We knew nothing of Niantic's plans for a CP system, or that we'd mash our pets into candy to create a "stronger" pet. In hindsight, it's probably fair to say that most of us thought this game would be less of a mindless scavenger hunt and more of an RPG with a lot more gameplay depth all around. There have been many amazing mockups like this one. But they didn't happen, oh well we move on.Here we are, coming up on 1 year since release, and there really are no valuable Pokémon. We know this is in large part due to the gym system (changing soon?) where you can send out pretty much any ice type to tap fest a Dragonite (that someone walked for 300km) and you'll win. This got me thinking. In this game's current form, what would motivate me to go for a 10km run? A Larvitar appeared on the sightings the other day while I was in the car, would have had to cross a major highway to get it...didn't bother (please don't leave a hypocritical "playing and driving speech", I said I was IN the car). Why didn't I go out of my way to get the Larvitar? Why am I not overly inspired to go running for Pokemon? Because no Pokémon hold high enough value currently.Any dog owner will tell you that dogs associate a value to the treats you give them (for Bruce it's peanut butter that trumps all). Pokémon Go is the same for us in the sense that none of the treats are currently high enough value. You've got a moderate level treat in Dratini, Larvitar, Snorlax, etc. and then a whole crap load of low level treats. Enter shinies...If we can take anything from the water festival, it's that people will go out of their mind for shinies. How many "I caught __ karp and still no shinies! F U Niantic!" comments did you read? Me too, but guess what those people kept hunting. The fest had a positive effect...it got us moving. I know it got me moving. My steps per day were about 5000 higher than normal.So why is this? It's because shinies, for the first time in Pokémon Go, have inherent value. They're rare, they require work to get them (you can't really spoof them or buy incubators to get them), and most of all they're different. Even with a completely meaningless gym system currently, we all want to show off a shiny. Imagine when all shinies are released. Suddenly those Charmander nests become a hot spot. Imagine if/when a gym system is released that is less reliant on the same 7 high CP Pokémon....suddenly I'm going on those 10km runs to find a shiny Vulpix and Scyther to show off. I know the odds are low, but it doesn't matter, the water festival proved that the fact that it's possible will get us out.Thanks for reading, my point in all this is that TLDR: shinies, for the first time in the existence of Pokémon Go, are Pokémon with real value. Trading (when/if) will only involve shinies, don't even bother talking about a non-shiny Charizard. Hope we have them soon, lets discuss (because the silph road is a proactive place) and happy hunting! via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2nzZYQM