Spreading through the city like a plague, a horde of smartphone users have been engrossed in a world both simultaneously real and imagined.
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And then all a sudden an abrupt stop. Fingers start flying across the phone screen. Success! Pokémon caught. Now on to the next battle.
Pokémon is one of the most popular video games of all time, a part of many childhoods the world over. Enter Pokémon Go, the latest incarnation of the game series, making the platform jump from Nintendo's portable game devices to smart phones.
An augmented-reality game, users must literally walk around streets to access new challenges and rendezvous with monsters.
The app interacts with your GPS data and guides you to places of interest. Your live camera captures the scene around you, and Pokémon jump into your phone screen as you look at the world in front of you.
Groups of 20-somethings huddle in corners, in the middle of footpaths and bridges, their fingers flicking across their screens, faces stony with concentration.
A concern already raised is that the Pokémon often appear in the middle of the road, with absolute disregard for traffic.
There have already been accounts of people nearly being hit by cars while playing the game.
While it would be easy to sensationalise this element of the game, it is a truth, and one parents should be aware of (but not freak out over).
Chances are if you own a smartphone you're probably at the age where you know how to look left, then right, and so forth. But the game is engrossing. And let's face it, kids routinely hijack their parents phones to play games.
Nonetheless Pokémon Go, while still in its early phases and thus 'buggy' (devoid of absolute efficiency and quality in its operation), is pretty amazing.
And most frightening of all, we are still yet to see the full impact of the game.
In playing the game through the city we overheard two colleagues discussing the game's mind-boggling popularity. In a moment of contemplation, one pondered the value of the game to his co-worker.
"I'm still trying to determine the purpose of it."
His colleague's response was the kind of profound statement that only such an app could provoke. "Yeah, but what is the purpose of life?" Indeed.
SMH