The Ever-Changing Crowd of Campus

Believe it or not, there is still an active player base on the Delta State University campus for Pokemon Go. 

Everyday, a group of at least five individuals walk or bike around campus hitting “Pokestops” and participating in “Raids.”

Pokestops are geolocated places in the game that are attached to different buildings or structures. There are many of them located on DSU’s campus. 

Raids are in-game events in which players band together to catch “legendary” or “shiny legendary” Pokemon.

If the Raid is more difficult than usual, it requires more people to defeat it. To coordinate these efforts, many different group chats on different platforms help everyone keep in touch on the weekly Raid Days. 

An individual who goes by the name Sebastian is the creator of one particular group chat that takes place on a chat/voice call app called Discord.

Sebastian states the purpose of Discord is “to unify all of the chat groups that there were so it would make it easier to coordinate raids and schedule meet-ups for events.”

“There were a couple of Snapchat groups and Facebook Messenger group chats we used before Discord, and it was often difficult to coordinate raids,” Sebastian says. 

“Having used Discord for a few years now, I figured this would be a lot easier if everyone was in one large server so we wouldn’t have to worry about member limits.”

Given that this Discord group revolves around the Cleveland area, Sebastian meets a majority of the members of the group chat through Raids or “Community Days.” Community Days are the days where a certain Pokemon is more common than others. 

Even though students of Delta State are coming and going, there will always be a sense of community within the people who play Pokemon Go here in Cleveland.