Real Life Team Rocket Using Pokemon Go

Team Rocket in Pokemon Go

When I heard about this on the radio this morning I just had to post about it. “Allegedly” four armed robbers used Lure Modules at PokeStops to attract unsuspecting Trainers. The lures act like beacons to attract Pokemon, and naturally trainers to catch them. When a Lure Module is used on a PokeStop, the PokeStop starts to glow pink with what looks like flower petals.

When the Trainers show up to the dark alley or parking lot, Team Rocket the robbers strike! They rob the trainers of their devices and whatever else is on them — yep, including their Pokemon! Interestingly enough, right near where I live there’s a walking path by a lake that had four PokeStops lit up with Lures. Yea, like I’m going to walk around the dark lake at night. I’m onto you.

Similar to Team Rocket’s antics, local businesses are also using these Lure Modules to attract trainers. Lure Modules cost coins, and that means these businesses are actually spending money in Pokemon Go to bring players in to their stores. That right there is the largest implication for this Pokemon Go ‘AR’ experience and a big reason Nintendo’s stocks are up. This ‘experience’ is bigger than just those of us playing to catch Pokemon.

Careful out there, Trainers!

  • I wonder how long until I’m wearing some sort of Augmented reality headset that marries some VR stuff with the Augmented reality stuff. Sorta overlaying the regular worldview with VR gaming stuff.

    I’m envisioning McDonald’s paying to be a “spawn point” for Call of Duty: The Real World. I spawn in, and then go out and play a VR/reality version of Call of Duty in the parking lot against a team of guys that are spawning in over at the Taco Bell on the other side of the strip mall. You get killed, you run back to the spawn point to rejoin the fight.

    This is certainly coming… and it’s going to kill paintball and laser tag surely. I bet it’d be huge on college campuses. Also, physical fitness benefits!

  • Funny you mention college campuses. Colleges are a huge spot for Pokemon Go. So are Libraries. They are all Gyms or have multiple Gyms on them and there are Poke Lure Modules everywhere. Everyone is playing. Also cool fact: Daily active users in Pokemon Go supposedly is about to surpass Twitter. Amazing.

  • I have to say, both my Fiance and I have gotten into. Both today and yesterday we went walking for a couple miles at least each day to catch/hatch/find pokemon and pokestops and gyms in our town.

    Yesterday’s we went down to a walk by the river in our town were we usually have festivals and there’s a bunch of small shops and such, it was really cool how the people were. I was surprised it was actually like in the commercials were people would talk to each other about it randomly. We had random strangers also playing tell us where they had found some rare pokemon, giving it tips on spots with high activity, has a lot asking us what we had caught, another group asking for help taking over a gym. We had a couple people who weren’t playing actually asking about what it was and being really nice about it. It was really cool to see how active the community for it was. Even if short lived I am glad I got to experience that.

    Today however we went to a local park/walking trail and while there were quite a few people you could tell were playing no one talked about it, people tried to hide it, people not playing were giving the people on their cell phone dirty looks. It was surprising how different the two placed (maybe 10 minutes apart by driving) were.