Downtown Prince George, as it usually is on the Monday of a long weekend, was deserted.
If you were hoping to find a restaurant open for lunch, there were very few choices. The usual busy places were locked and dark.
There were a few people walking around, enjoying the sun.
Some of them were looking down at their phones, then glancing up.
They would walk a few steps.
Stop.
Their faces would suddenly tighten in concentration, both hands now gripping the phone, thumbs pounding the screen.
Then a smile.
Maybe even a fist pump and a "Yes!"
Then they'd keep walking, still looking down at their phones, glancing up to watch for trees, traffic and to get their bearings of how far away they were from certain nearby landmarks.
Of course, they were playing Pokemon Go.
Even some of the scarce amount of vehicle traffic seen downtown on Monday afternoon featured adults driving and then pulling over suddenly, spouses in the passenger seat and kids in the backseat anxiously catching the critters on their phones, eager to move up to new levels.
Older, more experienced folks have been playing a nearly identical game for many years. They call it geocaching.
The principles of Pokemon Go and geocaching the same. Using the global positional system (GPS) software in a smartphone, players wander around trying to find treasure.
In Pokemon Go, the "treasure" are cute virtual collectibles that pop up on the screen of the phone when they've been discovered. With geocaching, the "treasure" is reality-based, a hidden object, usually tucked inside a weatherproof plastic container, that the players need to locate, just for fun. They don't keep the whole treasure. They may take an item from the container but they must leave something small of equal or greater value behind or they can simply record they found the treasure, restoring it to its hidden location for the next player to find.
Geocaching initially started as an activity for outdoor enthusiasts to explore wilderness areas but has since become urbanized. Geocaches not only surround Prince George but can be found throughout the city and there are millions stashed around the world, including some of the most remote and difficult to access locations on Earth.
Like Pokemon Go, geocaching gets individuals and families off their butts and out of the house, trying to find treasure either alone or in small groups. Like geocaching, Pokemon Go is addictive. Although no score is kept per se and there is no direct competition, serious players try to rise to higher and higher levels, collecting more and more treasure in more and more locations.
Similar low-tech games have been around for a long time, some to this day.
Old-fashioned scavenger hunts are still popular, especially with parents and their little kids. They are low-tech and the lists take minimal effort to prepare. The players simply need to return to a collective location by a deadline with as many of the items on their list as possible.
Orienteering remains a common game in the youth scouting movement, but also as a training tool for the military and search and rescue organizations.
Participants are given a map with topographical and other geographical data to lead them to control points.
This game is competitive because the fastest individual or team to locate all of the control points wins.
Letterboxing, which dates back to the 19th century, is probably the closest low-tech version of Pokemon Go and geocaching. The boxes look like old-fashioned mailboxes (hence the name) and are stashed in various locations, with clues on their locations shared through word-of-mouth, through clubs or now online. Every player and letterbox has an ink stamp and a notebook.
Players keep score by taking the letterbox's ink stamp and marking a blank page in their notebook and then leaving their personal ink stamp in the letterbox's notebook.
Regardless of the format or whether the game is called letterboxing, orienteering, geocaching or Pokemon Go, the object is to explore, seek hidden treasure and have fun with friends and family.
The names of the games change but those simple goals remain the same.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
