"[story] Teamwork really does make this game worth playing again."

#PokemonGO: I live in a town in rural Cambridgeshire in the UK. We have around 5-6 gyms spread across a walkable distance, lots of pokestops, and nests to boot in various parks. It’s not amazing but it’s not dull, boring or baron. When the game was released, the town was buzzing with people in lots of focal points fighting over gyms, congregating at pokestops with lures on etc. Over the autumn and winter though, the game has pretty much wound down. Gyms remained at level 10 in a particular teams hands for months on end and lures only appeared when events were on. People whom used to play with their friends now play solo, which makes taking and holding gyms very difficult. It also makes it harder to justify exactly why you’re still playing a game that ‘nobody plays’. However, there has been a revival in my town of late. And it’s not come from the warmer weather or events, or updates to the game.  It has come from communication between these solo players and the development of the local community. Like most towns in the UK, we have a Pokemon Go group. But it’s rarely used or contributed to so it doesn’t see much action. It’s also a cross-team group which I think makes people reluctant to share things sometimes. There was this user on team Valor (like me) who, overnight, would turn every single gym in town Red by morning. So on my way to work, I would just mop up the open spaces. I assumed this guy was a spoofer, because it was always at night and he got absolutely everywhere. That was until one day in January on my way to work, I saw a guy beating down and putting pokemon on a pub gym. He was sitting in a mincab/van.. suddenly it all made sense. His job simply allowed him to mooch around all night playing. “Are you [username]?” I asked. He said he was.And so it began. We developed a Facebook chat group, adding players from Valor. What we had in common was that we all started playing with friends. But all slowly those friends stop playing and we became solo trainers. But not any more. Although we only have around 6 players active at any one time, we’ve successful taken and held just about every gym in town for the past month.We’re even planning trips to other towns to jointly attack strongholds. The competitiveness of the game for us has really flourished. It’s fun again. We’re meeting new people and going new places and really looking forward to the changes and challenges the potential gym re-work might have. This is what the game is about. It just took some time to figure that out. In my opinion Niantic need to do a bit more to encourage people to work in this way. The mechanics are there to encourage it, but I feel something more direct is required. TL;DR Used Facebook messenger groups to bring together strangers to play. Game is much more enjoyable and playable. edit: line spacing and minor text fixes. via /r/pokemongo http://ift.tt/2qbTU2t