Pokemon Go Players Are Using Their Buddies To Send Each Other Messages

thegamer.com:

Do you nickname your Pokemon? I did when I was a kid - although they were quite off the wall nicknames like ‘PkmnPink’ the Typhlosion - then grew out of it as a teenager. Coming back to the series with Pokemon X, I started nicknaming again: I’m not too cool to show my buddies some love.

Whether your nicknames are incredibly well-thought out or bafflingly stupid (looking at you, ‘Xolotl’ the Yamper and ‘long’ the Ekans respectively), it’s a big part of playing through the main series games and bonding with the Pokemon on your team. However, things are a bit different in Pokemon Go.

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First of all, you don’t have a party, just a box of thousands of creatures. Are you going to nickname them all? I’ll admit, my nicknames in Go are a little bit boring, and a lot bit functional. I’ll pop the IVs of Go Battle League ‘mons as their nickname, and before Niantic implemented the change that allowed you to hold your finger on a Pokemon to check its moves, I’d add an asterisk to indicate if a Pokemon knew a Legacy move. Horribly functional, but ‘1/15/15*’ tells me everything I need to know about Swampert at a glance.

However, running down my friends list to send some gifts got me thinking about nicknames. Some players go traditional: ‘Cutie’ the Togepi. Others go practical: ‘ML12’ the Giratina, indicating that the legendary is ranked 12 in the Master League. But some name their Pokemon after items or times of day. What’s that about?

Pokemon Go has no messaging system, but a lot of systems that require coordination. Trading and raiding both require players to communicate with each other, and yet there is no messaging in place to make things