Niantic Lab’s Pokemon Go has been tearing up the mobile app charts since it was officially released last week, and while hundreds of millions of people have been enjoying the augmented reality game, pretty much every user has run into a host of issues in Pokemon Go, from app crashes to server problems and more. But in spite of all of that, it is clear that fans are in love with the app, no matter how many problems it might have.

Why is Pokemon Go so popular?

When you break it down, Pokemon Go is not particularly amazing from a gameplay perspective. You tap on a Pokemon, swipe a pokeball at it, and hope you catch it. Sure, you can take part in gym battles and increase the combat power of your little minions, but the simple act of finding a Pokemon and catching it is 90 percent of the experience. So why is Pokemon Go so popular?

Being a free-to-play game certainly helps, especially since the in-app purchases are not required to actually enjoy the game. Nostalgia also plays a major factor. The Pokemon franchise celebrated its twentieth anniversary this year, and people who grew up playing the games and watching the cartoon series in the mid-to-late 1990s are now at an age where they are feeling nostalgic for their childhood.

Perhaps the most important factor is the almost inescapable communal nature of the game. Pokemon Go requires players to go out and explore their city to play. The pokestop and gym mechanics naturally draw players together, leading to real life interactions that encourage bonding over the game and a feeling of community. Local businesses have even started jumping on the trend by offering discounts to players who place lures nearby, which draw more people to the area looking to catch more Pokemon.

Where will it go from here?

As fun as Pokemon Go is, the game certainly has room for improvement, and Niantic has already said that it plans on introducing the ability to trade Pokemon with friends sometime in the near future. Many players also want to be able to battle directly with one another, but so far there has been no word on whether Pokemon Go will be getting that feature or not.

The app also needs a number of bug fixes and stability improvements to cope with the enormous number of people continuously clogging its servers. Amazon CTO Werner Vogels even jokingly plugged AWS as a fix for the game’s servers on Twitter, saying, “Dear cool folks at @NianticLabs please let us know if there is anything we can do to help! (I wanted that drowzee).”

Image courtesy of Niantic Labs