How I quit Pokémon Go after almost 10 years

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Pokémon Go just turned 10. And yes, I still play Pokémon Go.<br>Wait, no, sorry: force of habit. I used to play Pokémon Go. I stopped six months ago.<br>Pokémon Go was more than a game to me. It was a constant of my life. The last decade marked a series of major events: I got married, I changed jobs three times, moved twice, had two children and survived a global pandemic. And through it all, I kept playing Pokémon Go.<br>I’m still using a Pokémon I caught over 20 years ago<br>Keeping old Pokémon is about more than holding on to memories.<br>Ravi 64Ravi Hiranand

I played it at home. I played it at work. I played it on the way to pick up lunch. I teamed up with other players to catch powerful Pokémon in malls. I played it in Victoria Park at 3am. I played it on my honeymoon. Major in-game events like Community Days or Go Fest were marked out in my calendar so I could adjust my plans around them.<br>Okay, reading that, back, that makes it sound like a terrible addiction. But I promise you, it wasn’t that bad! I actually carried around a second phone just for Pokémon Go.<br>Uh, okay, that sounds worse. Let me try that again.<br>The thing about Pokémon Go is that it is not a game that demands a lot of your time. It’s a thing that you play in, at best, short bursts: see Pokémon on map, tap on it, throw a Poké Ball, and you’ve (hopefully) caught it. It's over in a few seconds.<br>So it’s a game that benefits from running all the time so you can keep an eye on it, but not one that you need to constantly engage with. By carrying a second phone, I didn't have to keep switching away from the stuff that mattered (messages, Slack, email) on my main device.<br>Look, I wasn't kidding when I said that I dedicated a phone to playing Pokémon Go.And so, for almost a decade, Pokémon Go was my default phone activity. You know how people are addicted to doomscrolling Reels or TikTok for mindless enjoyment? Pokémon Go filled that space for me. Waiting for the train, Pokémon Go. Walking around, Pokémon Go. Half-time in football, Pokémon Go.<br>It wasn’t just an addiction, I genuinely enjoyed it. I love Pokémon, and this was, from a certain point of view, the closest I’ll ever come to actually being a Pokémon trainer. In other Pokémon games, you're role-playing as a young kid in a fantasy world. In Pokémon Go, you're you, in your own city, physically moving around to find Pokémon hidden around you.<br>Trying to “catch ‘em all” is addictive in any game in this series, but it feels more personal in Pokémon Go. I still remember the time I raced out in my car to find an Unown at 1am, only to get there too late. Or the time they surprised everyone by flooding the map with a never-before-seen Pokémon. That epic Zacian raid that we won at the last second. And it’s also the best place to find Shiny Pokémon, alternate-colored variants that are extremely rare. Tapping a seemingly ordinary Pokémon on the map and seeing the sparkles that signal a shiny is genuinely the best feeling.<br>Seeing Meltan suddenly appear for the first time in Pokémon Go was a shock in the best way.Our whole family got into it. My wife played. My son played. We’d go for walks on weekends hunting for rare Pokémon or taking on tough battles together.<br>So how did it all end? Why did I quit?<br>For years, I had idly wondered about how the end would come; about what it would take to break me from Pokémon Go. I thought it might be something dramatic, but the pandemic didn’t do it. Having children didn’t do it. The controversial sale of the game to the Saudi-owned firm Scopely didn’t do it.<br>Nope, it was simple absent-mindedness.<br>After working from home for years, I started a new job in an office back in the city. I’d worked there before, and actually, it was a great place to catch Pokémon: there were always loads on the map, plenty of places to get items and lots of players to team up with to take down powerful Pokémon in raid battles. Playing together turned some colleagues into good friends during my first stint, so I actually thought I’d be playing more Pokémon Go now.<br>Then, one day, I forgot my second phone.<br>And then I forgot it again.<br>And again.<br>You might think, well, you still had a phone, right? Why not play Pokémon Go on that? But that's the thing about habits. You do things a certain way so often that it becomes routine. And when you break that very specific pattern, it can be oddly hard to go back.<br>I love collecting Shiny Pokémon.Weirdly, it wasn't a case of realizing that, huh, I guess I don't miss it. With me, it was actually a little bit of the opposite: I did miss it, but I was too daunted to return.<br>When I forgot my phone and didn’t play, it meant I was late to start a new in-game challenge. The only way to catch up is to play more, but… sigh, I don’t have time today, I’d better do that tomorrow. That added another day’s worth of stuff to catch up on, and I didn’t have time the next day either.<br>You can see where this is going. I was...