No. 50 in The Noteworthy 50 · AR Mobile
Pokémon GO
The only game on this list that made millions of people go outside, sold in 2025 to a company that owns Monopoly Go.
Ten years on it is easy to forget the scale of what happened in July 2016 — parks full of strangers, news coverage of crowds chasing rare spawns, a genuine global phenomenon that lasted a summer and then settled into something more durable. What remains is the only major game on this list whose central mechanic is walking outside, and that is still worth something.
The social layer is the actual product. Community Days bring local players to the same park on the same afternoon. Raids require groups. City-level Discord and Telegram communities coordinate spawns. For a lot of players, particularly those who found the pandemic isolating, this game has been a structured excuse to leave the house and see people, and no amount of criticism of its economy changes that.
The costs
Casual play is free and always has been. Competitive play is not. Raid passes, ticketed research storylines, incubators and storage upgrades add up quickly for anyone chasing complete collections or competitive raiding. The 2023 remote raid pass changes — increasing prices and capping daily use — were framed as encouraging outdoor play and landed as a direct penalty on disabled players and those in rural areas who had come to depend on them.
The open question now is ownership. Niantic sold its games business to Scopely in 2025, and Scopely's catalogue is built on aggressive monetisation. Nothing catastrophic has happened yet. But a decade-old game with a devoted community and a new owner known for extraction is a situation worth watching carefully.
What works
- Genuinely gets people outdoors and into their local area
- Community Days and raids create real-world social gatherings
- A decade of accumulated features and a very large creature roster
- Free to play casually forever, with no pressure to spend
What doesn't
- Serious play — raids, events, ticketed research — costs real money regularly
- Rural players are badly served by the location-based design
- Remote raid pass restrictions in 2023 alienated a large accessibility-dependent audience
- The 2025 sale to Scopely has left the long-term direction unclear
The Catch — what it will cost you
Free to walk around and catch things forever. Everything competitive costs: raid passes, ticketed event research, storage upgrades, and item bundles. The 2023 decision to restrict and reprice remote raid passes disproportionately hit disabled and rural players, and the community reaction to it was severe and largely justified.
Who it's for: Walkers, commuters and local communities — this is a game about your neighbourhood.
If you like this
Review
Brawl Stars
Excellent moment-to-moment design and a brawler economy that still gates too much behind luck and money.
Review
Genshin Impact
Extraordinary production values and real design craft, wrapped around a gacha system you should treat with active suspicion.