Pokemon Go's Next Update Needs To Be For The Casuals

thegamer.com:

There are several apps on my phone that I don't really use, but that I find myself opening habitually. For example, I never post or even engage with Instagram, yet I open it fairly frequently and scroll mindlessly, then close it. I use Sky Sports News almost entirely as a score checker, yet I still open it randomly, realise there are no games on during Wednesday afternoon, then close it. I rarely send emails from my phone, preferring my laptop, but I still check my email all the time to make sure I haven’t missed anything. Sometimes even when I'm sitting at my laptop. For my sins, I even open Buzzfeed from time to time, looking for nothing in particular. Lately, Pokemon Go has become one of these apps, and I can't help but feel a little sad about it.

It was never going to sustain its incredible popularity from the summer of 2016, but for at least three years after that I still played regularly, venturing outside, dashing along to the park for Raids, building decent portions of my free time around playing Pokemon Go. A few factors, personal and global, severed this routine. I moved in with my partner, meaning I lived in a new place away from my PoGo community and, more importantly, had someone to spend time with beyond a virtual Pikachu. Then the pandemic happened, which forced us all inside anyway.

Related: It's Time For Pokemon Go 2

I grew accustomed to playing Pokemon Go without going anywhere, and felt the pandemic-era additions to the game were needed as a constant, not just for the peak of the pandemic. They made the game accessible to rural players and the housebound, and made the whole thing a lot more enjoyable. Some features, like remote raids, have remained, but a lot has been rolled back. Then unrolled back.