TRAINER'S EYE #19 - "The Panther Purred Up The Hornet's Nest" ft. BlameJamal from Wayspotters Podcast

In this Pokemon interview, we are joined by BlameJamal, an experienced Pokemon GO player and a co-host of the popular podcast, Wayspotters.

BlameJamal has been playing Pokemon GO since the game was released in 2016. He enjoys playing the game for its unique gameplay and the opportunity to explore new places. BlameJamal has attended many Pokemon GO events, including Safari Zone and GoFest Seattle.

BlameJamal has a keen interest in Niantic Wayfarer, a platform where players can submit and review locations for Pokestops and Gyms in Pokemon GO. He believes that Wayfarer is an excellent way to improve the overall player experience and encourages players to submit new locations in their area. BlameJamal has also been involved in reviewing submissions on Wayfarer and has helped many players to get new Pokestops and Gyms in their neighborhoods.

BlameJamal believes that Wayfarer has improved significantly over the years, but there is still room for improvement. He thinks that the process of reviewing submissions needs to be more transparent, and Niantic needs to provide better feedback to players.

Finally, BlameJamal shares how he and his co-host, LFKomala, started the Wayspotters Podcast and how they wanted to share their knowledge and experience with Wayfarer. They discuss different aspects of the platform, including submission criteria, review process, and other related topics. BlameJamal hopes that the podcast will help more players get involved with Wayfarer and improve the overall player experience.

Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
Coal of the Week - Lachlan Firth

Connect with BlameJamal: Twitter | Website | Wayspotter's Twitter

Transcript

David Hernandez: 0:00

My name is David Hernandez and you're listening to As the Pokeball Turns! Hello and welcome all Agents, Trainers, Pikmin Bloomers, NBA Ballers, Dragon Tamers, and our explorers and Wayfinders. Since January of 2021, these words have been echoed and heard by the listeners of the Wayspotters Podcast. The Wayspotters Podcast is a podcast that talks about everything Wayfair, ranging from the criteria updates, coal aka this nomination sucks. Are you kidding me? and a few dad jokes thrown in for added humor and entertainment. This episode of Trainer's Eyes is part one of a two part special where I dive into the Pokemon Go Origin stories for each host of the Wayspotters Podcast as they officially celebrate their one year annivesary. But what is Wayfarer? Wayfarer is a platform that allows players to shape and enrich gameplay experiences for the community by submitting nominations and reviewing local points of interest submitted by other people. The origins of Wayfarer could be found in Operation Portal Recon, which was originally built to enable Ingress agents to nominate and review portals. Legend has it that even before Operation Portal Recon, players used to submit nominations through email by providing a photo and coordinates on the location of the nomination. The ability to nominate points of interest officially came to Pokemon Go in October of 2019 and has since allowed players to add Pokestops and Gyms to the local areas. Once barren parks are now able to become centerpieces for Community Days. Areas that had no Pokestops or Gyms were now able to submit nominations with hopes of finally being able to play Pokemon Go. When placed in the right hands, Wayfarer is a powerful tool that can not only impact a park, but can impact an entire community or town. But what are the challenges facing Wayfarer? What motivates a person to spend time learning criteria that isn't well explained and review, with very little incentive from Niantic to do so? To add on what motivates someone to start a podcast around a very niche part of not only Pokemon Go, but Niantic gaming in general. My guest today is a Wayfarer Explorer and the co-host of The Wayspotters Podcast. Here's his origin story into the world of Pokemon Go. This is Blame Jamal! Today I'm joined by one half of the Wayspotters podcast and the biggest Panthers fan you will ever meet. Jamal, Jamal, welcome to the show!

BlameJamal: 3:00

Hey, thanks for having me. And yeah, I'm a Big Panthers fan and hopefully we'll get a win this coming Sunday and screw Tom Brady. Anyways, we're not here to talk about that. But anyway, screw Tom Brady!

David Hernandez: 3:12

Right. That's another podcast for another day,

BlameJamal: 3:15

Absolutely.

David Hernandez: 3:15

Jamal, before we do dive into the questions, how about you give people a brief introduction on who you are, what you do, and what you're all about.

BlameJamal: 3:23

Yeah. So my name is Jamal Harvey. I am one half of the Wayspotters podcast. We talk about everything Niantic Wayfarer, everything about Lightship, everything about all Niantic games. I'm a dad, you know, I got a few kids and I like to do dad things and tell dad jokes and play Pokemon, play Wayfarer, play Ingress, and a little bit of Pikmin.

David Hernandez: 3:43

Well, very cool. And you know, how about you give us some insight on what it's like to play in North Carolina, where you're from? Is it very rural? Is it very like city based? Like what is it?

BlameJamal: 3:52

So I live just north of Charlotte. I'm still in, in the city limits of Charlotte, but where Charlotte starts to get into like the suburb area. But most of my play, quite honestly, is in a very urban setting. I work in what we call uptown Charlotte. Most cities called their uptown downtown, but I work in uptown. My Pokemon journey is one that led me to Wayfarer. I didn't have a lot of stops and spins and gyms in my area, so I started doing Wayfarer and I put them in myself. So I have added over 300 individual gyms and stops to my area. But my local play area is, really like city, you know, lots of spawn density. One of the main places I play for those listening who live in Charlotte or have been to Charlotte is called Elmwood Cemetery. So in our cemetery that's right next to downtown Charlotte, it has five gyms and like 65, 66 stops and it's in a loop. So you can just loop around the graveyard and go a walking speed when you're in your car and it's the hot place to go for community day. I have a saying that like every cell deserves to have a poi in it and if I can find an empty cell, I'm gonna find something interesting and I'm going to nominate it.

David Hernandez: 5:07

Now, before we do get into all that, how about you tell people how you got into Pokemon Go? Like how did your journey start?

BlameJamal: 5:12

Yeah, so I'm an older guy, right? So I was 23 when Pokemon came out, so I was not their target demographic. I remember when Pokemon came out and at the time I could probably name Pikachu and like two or three other Pokemon. I just knew that this is what all the kids were playing, you know, I was kind of a older guy. So I never played Black and White, X and Y, Red and Blue, never. I have never ever, ever, ever, ever played a Main Series Pokemon game. So Pokemon Go comes out 2016 in July, and all of the guys I worked with who were a little bit younger than me were just going nuts over this. They're like,"oh my God. It's like my childhood coming back to life!" I felt like the old man like get off my yard like what is this game? And they were like,"dude, just download it, we'll show you how to play it." So I'm a day three player, and they started to show me how to play it. And I'm like,"oh, this is pretty cool," And I didn't know, like I said, I knew Pikachu, I knew Squirtle and Bulbasaur. Those were probably the three Pokemon that I knew on day three, didn't know anything else, didn't know the stats, I didn't know their moves, I didn't know they had moves. Right. I didn't know anything. So I'm just like spinning and catching and figuring out how to do the, curve throw. Oh, then I get to level five and I get to, you know, pick a team and I get to drop in a gym and, you know, my Pokemon journey started there, day three.

David Hernandez: 6:30

You mentioned how when Pokemon first came out, which is about 98 99 in the States, how, you know, you were kind of past the age of the target demographic at the time.

BlameJamal: 6:38

Oh yeah. I was already like done with school.

David Hernandez: 6:40

Right. So what was it about Pokemon Go that was different? Was just the fact that your, co-workers were playing it, or was there actually more to the gameplay at the time that kind of hooked you in?

BlameJamal: 6:50

So the real world aspect of Pokemon Go I thought was cool. That like, I'm like walking around outside and like here comes this little character that just kind of bebops in and I click on it and I can see it and I catch it and it goes into a ball. So Pokemon for me is more about community than it is the actual gameplay and I think that was from the very beginning that my buddies were like,"yeah, let's go down to the boardwalk and maybe we'll catch some water Pokemon." And I'm like, I don't know what that means, but I'm with you." So it's always been more about the community than the actual gameplay because I didn't have that affection of Pokemon. I remember people were going crazy when they caught a Charmander. And they were like, I gotta evolve this, you know, all the way up, to a Charmeleon and then, all the way up and it's because that was their favorite Pokemon when they were growing up. And I'm like, I have no idea what this is, it's tails on fire, it looks pretty cool. You, you know, so when people got the Charizard, they felt like they were on top of the world. And it took me months to kind of understand why that was a big deal and it wasn't until much later that I got super hooked on the game to where I know everything about every single Pokemon and all their moves and this and that, so it took me a little while to get there.

David Hernandez: 8:00

You know, obviously most people start with Pokemon, they know it from the nineties or wherever they jumped in. From your standpoint, how did you like learn the different Pokemon? Was that just something that people taught you on the way, or did you like do research?

BlameJamal: 8:12

Well, David, I'm a big old nerd, so I was on Google. I was

David Hernandez: 8:15

You're in a good company here.

BlameJamal: 8:16

yeah, I'm looking up things on Google and I'm playing and I had the luxury of having people who were like Pokemon fanatics as friends and they really taught me a lot about. the mechanics and the history and the lore of the game. I never really was into the lore of the game, but I understand it. I never have gone back and watched all the anime, although people have told me I need to go back and watch all the anime. I know enough people who were big into the trading card game and so they've taught me and then, you know, I did my own research and then I got to the point now where if there was a title of like junior professor, I wouldn't be a professor, but I'd probably be a junior professor. I can tell you pretty much anything about the game. I enjoy more of the backend mechanics of the game probably than I do the actual game. My play style is a grinder. I like to just go out and grind and I like to grind Stardust. I'm sitting on like 14 million Stardust right now and I'm almost at 300 million xp. So I play hardcore, like I catch everything, but I don't get attached to anyone Pokemon and I think that's because I didn't play it as a kid and I didn't have that affection. One of my best friends in the game HeracrossBoss is a bug Pokemon guy and he loves Bug Pokemon and Heracross is his favorite Pokemon. I don't really have that because I started, playing on day three and they were all just opportunities to grind up and get candy for me. Oh, this one is good. I didn't know about IVs for probably the first year, so I was looking at like CP and you know, people were like, oh, well this one is good because of this or that, and it didn't mean anything. So I never really had like a favorite Pokemon. I guess if you nailed me down and asked me what my favorite Pokemon is, it's probably Metagross and I couldn't really give you a good reason why it's Metagross, but it's Metagross.

David Hernandez: 10:04

You said your play style is mostly as a grinder, so you go and catch everything, so it sounds like your primary motivation, at least early on, to see your stardust grow and grow,

BlameJamal: 10:13

It was more about XP at first. Stardust has been kind of a thing in the last couple of years. So I'm a pretty competitive guy, always have been in my life and sometimes to my detriment. There's a bunch of people in my community that we just raced to see who can get to level 41st. So that was the big thing. To me that was the motivation was grinding XP because I wanted to stay ahead of them and someone was like,"oh my God, I've got 20 million xp." And I'm like,"oh, I'll get there." You know? Stardust is just something that I have now, like, I like to have a lot of stardust because if I want to spend it, I can, but if I don't spend it, it drives everybody crazy.

David Hernandez: 10:48

So what would it take for you to like to spend all that Stardust?

BlameJamal: 10:51

I will probably never spend it all because it's one of the things, my dad taught me, like, if you save money and you want to go and buy something, you just go and buy it, right? So people are like, well, I want to do P V P, but I need to, go out and catch all these Pokemons so I can power'em up and I don't have any Stardust and I'm like,"okay, I need to build a master league team. Great. I build a master league team." but I don't spend my stardust on weird stuff like, I don't have a maxed out Dunsparce or like five of'em. And some people do. And I'm like, that's just a waste of stardust, you know? So to me if I want to power something I just power it up, right? But I only max out hundos like I don't max out anything that's not a hundo.

David Hernandez: 11:28

You too? That's actually what I do.

BlameJamal: 11:30

Yeah, because if it's not a hundred percent what good is it? Right. I'll just grind it up for candy.

David Hernandez: 11:34

That's what I always say like people always look at me sideways why don't you just max out something? They always like settle for a 98, 96. Like, no, I have standards. I wanna max out a

BlameJamal: 11:43

Yes,

David Hernandez: 11:44

and now That's been now since like while

BlameJamal: 11:47

I only max out hundos, so I have three level 50 Pokemon that are not hundos and that's only because I was trying to race people to get to 50 and I had to max something out, so I couldn't wait for the hundo, So I got three Pokemon and my level fifties that aren't hundos, but all the rest of'em are level fifties.

David Hernandez: 12:05

No, that makes sense. That, I mean, that's how I've always played since I think gen two. I always maxon Hundos and that's why when I told you I only had 23 star that one day, I only had 20 threes that one day.

BlameJamal: 12:16

had to take a breath when you said that. I was like, whew, somebody fanned me off. But you want a hot take,

David Hernandez: 12:21

Huh?

BlameJamal: 12:22

Do you want, do you want a hot take?

David Hernandez: 12:24

go for it.

BlameJamal: 12:24

I don't care about Shinies.

David Hernandez: 12:26

I don't either.

BlameJamal: 12:27

and, and I know a lot of people, man, a lot of people are like, oh, I need to get this shiny. And I'm trying to conserve my damn bag space here right? My bag is almost full like I have eight shiny Squirtles with sunglasses. What am I ever going to do with eight shiny Squirtles with sunglasses?

David Hernandez: 12:44

Start a rock band?

BlameJamal: 12:45

Right? No, realistically, what am I gonna do with it? they have been sitting in my bag for four years. I think that's when they came out. Okay. They've been sitting in my bag for five years. There's eight of them. What in the name of Arceus am I going to do with them? Everybody's like, you can't delete'em. So I'll ask people who I'm like good friends or best friends with, do you want to squirtle with sunglasses? They're like, yeah. I'm like, let's trade. What do you want? I don't care, gimme a Pidgey. I just want to get this thing outta my inventory so it's not full. I'm probably the person with the highest level 50, besides yourself, who does not care about shinies? Like, I could care less like if there's a shiny I want, I'll go trade for it. I remember when Shinies first came out.

David Hernandez: 13:26

Mm-hmm.

BlameJamal: 13:27

The day I remember it, I was driving around the graveyard and I caught a Shiny Magikarp, but I was like,"Ooh, this one is cool. It's a different color." I didn't really know what a shiny was, cuz again, never played the main series games. And I was showing it to some people and then I started Googling Shinies and I mistakenly thought it was stronger than other Pokemon. So I really started like looking for'em and I was like, Ooh, I gotta get this shiny, you know, kind of how shadows are, now they're a little bit stronger. And then when I found out they're just a different color and I'm like, so Niantic is really distracting me with a shiny object. You know that old saying, you hold up the shiny object and everybody looks and then you go and you do something else. And I'm like, that's literally what it is. It's literally just a different color and it doesn't do anything else. And it was at that moment I stopped shiny hunting and I'm like, if I get one that's cool, I'll trade it to somebody who really wants it. And you know, I've traded away some really rare shinies to people and made their day.

David Hernandez: 14:19

So I actually have a fun fact for you. so you're half right about shiny Pokemon being stronger, believe it or not.

BlameJamal: 14:24

Oh, really? Okay.

David Hernandez: 14:25

Yeah. Well, half right though. Other half that's wrong is that back when they debuted in Gen two, shiny Pokemon were actually weaker than the regular ones because at the time, the way they're determined this through a certain value, which unfortunately made their stats the max, they could get to lower than their regular counterparts.

BlameJamal: 14:42

Interesting!

David Hernandez: 14:43

Yeah, I think that's it, I know that there was something weird with gen two when they introduced shiny Pokemon. I think that was it,

BlameJamal: 14:49

That's a great fun fact. At some point, I'm probably gonna have to go back and play some of the old video games or watch some of the anime, because there's still some things that are kind of lost on me.

David Hernandez: 15:00

Well, that's the fun part about Pokemon Go is that, you can get into as much as you want like there's some people who claim it's not a Pokemon game or they say It's not real Pokemon game. To me it is because you learn Pokemon, you do type advantages, and there is a PVP scene if that interests you at all. Just the way you got introduced to the game, like you wouldn't have been introduced to Pokemon if it wasn't for Pokemon Go. And I think that's the good part about it, is that it brings people who may have missed out like back when you started, you said you were past your age at that point. But Pokemon Go can be for anybody, whether you're as young as maybe 10 or 11 years old, to as old as maybe 60 to 70.

BlameJamal: 15:32

Oh yeah, I've seen a lot of older people out playing Pokemon Go, and I think it's really cute. It's really a game for anybody and I used it for a while to try to get in shape to get out and walk around, and I have seen parts of my city and I've been to more places that I would never have been in my entire life if it wasn't for this game.

David Hernandez: 15:50

Have you had a chance to go to any Niantic live events?

BlameJamal: 15:54

Yeah, so I've been to two live events. So last October, I went to Philadelphia and I went to the Safari Zone, and that was awesome. And then I went to my second live event this past summer and I went to Seattle for GoFest. So those are the two, Niantic events that I've been to.

David Hernandez: 16:10

And what was it like for you to go to the Safari Zone?

BlameJamal: 16:12

Safari Zone was so cool because I went with the Lured Up Crew, Ken Pescatore and Adam Tuttle and a bunch of the patrons from the Lured Up community. And we all stayed in an Airbnb and it was just all the fellas and it was like a really cool event to be there. The gameplay was almost secondary to hanging out with the crew that we had all talked to each other on Zoom calls. And then we got to go play at the Safari Zone in Philly on that Saturday and it was like we were walking around catching things and it was just so cool.

David Hernandez: 16:45

And so that was the first time you ever met in person.

BlameJamal: 16:48

Yeah, that was the first time we had all met in person, so we had seen each other on Zoom calls, but we had never met, cuz I'm in Charlotte, Ken's in New Jersey, Adam's in New Hampshire, Justin's in Texas, Hitch is in Iowa, we were all over the country, spread out and it was the first time we were all together.

David Hernandez: 17:05

It almost sounds like it was a reunion based on what you just told me like you all knew each other from across the states and this one event brought you all together,

BlameJamal: 17:12

Yeah, it was like a family reunion, that's one way to say it. It was like a family reunion and it was just hanging out and we got to hang out with JTValor, which was really cool because I didn't know any of the Pokemon YouTubers or any of the content creators. Ken knows everybody and so we're like sitting around the fire pit with JTValor and I'm like, I was just watching you on YouTube, and now I'm like literally sitting right next to you. So it was just a lot of fun to get to meet people and just walking around Philly that day and seeing different content creators and it was just kind of like, okay, these are like real people and meeting the trainer club and all these different people. And it just brought to the surface that like this is more than just like walking around a park, staring at your phone. There's like legit good people who play this game like people that I call my friends that like, I will always be friends with them, whether we play another Pokemon game or not. These are like my brothers now.

David Hernandez: 18:06

So obviously, you went to the Safari Zone, then of course you went to GoFest this past July.

BlameJamal: 18:10

Yeah, so that was, man, I tell you what, so Philly will always have a special place in my heart cuz it was like my first Niantic event and I got to be with all the fellas and all the guys. But when I went to GoFest in Seattle, it was a little bit different. So I was going to play, but by this time I was a content creator, right? So Lachlan and I, you know, shout out to Lachlan, my co-host in Australia, love that guy. You know, everybody's like, Lachlan talks funny, but I'm like, you keep listening because you like Lachlan's voice. But by this time I was a content creator, so we started our podcast January 6th, seventh or eighth, I can't remember, I'm gonna have to go back and look, but we had been doing the podcast for like five and a half months by the time we went to GoFest and I had on my Wayspotters t-shirt and like, I ran into people who were like,"oh, you were on the Wayspotters podcast? I listened to that! And then they pull out their phone and they're showing me the Spotify where they've listened to all the episodes. So I went to Safari Zone in Philly as a fan, but I had a different experience when I went to GoFest. I didn't get anything special or anything like that, but I wasn't as starstruck, as I was when I met some of the creators because during our time of the podcast, I've had a chance to talk to, mingle with a handful of different creators. So when I saw them again in Seattle, it was like, Hey man, what's going on? And you know, and it wasn't like I was a fan, it was almost like I was a peer and they kind of treated Lachlan and I that way. But the gameplay at GoFest, I hadn't been to any other GoFest, but it was amazing. I mean, the way that they had everything set up and they had like a legitimate football stadium set up for P V P where you're standing in the stadium with the seats all around you on a mat that looks like the mat in the game and you're doing P v P. They really did a bang up job putting on that GoFest. And the city of Seattle showed off. One of the cool things, when you got on the tram in downtown Seattle, it played the Pokemon music. So as you're going on the, tram, you're, you're hearing the Pokemon music.

David Hernandez: 20:08

And I think the conductor went like, welcome trainers, welcome to Seattle. Or something like,

BlameJamal: 20:12

Yes. Welcome to Seattle. I mean, it was so cool and just the people I got to meet and the things I got to do, it was a really an experience to be treasured.

David Hernandez: 20:21

Now, I gotta ask you this, since you've gone to both a GoFest and the Safari Zone, like in your opinion, like what's the difference between the two or are they kind of one and the same?

BlameJamal: 20:29

The Safari Zone was probably a little less formal. There weren't as many spawns and there wasn't as much Niantic participation as you would've thought. So I don't know if you saw the pictures, it was just some cardboard cutouts of Willow and the leaders, and it was in a smaller park, and it was more of like, a really, really, really big Community Day, where GoFest was like the annual convention of Pokemon. Everyone was there, there was Niantic employees all over the park, there was signage, there was giveaway, there was like a merch store and not just a tent. It really felt like the culmination of everything, that's how it felt to me. It was like the yearly Pokemon convention and anybody who was, who was there and all the representatives from Niantic were there and they were giving you all the information you could possibly ever want.

David Hernandez: 21:20

You know, you talked about how you went to GoFest as a, content creator. Of course you're one of the co-host of Wayspotters. What people don't know Wayspotters is it's tied into Wayfarer. It's tied into talking about some of the stuff that goes on or why things are the way they are. With Wayfarer, like how did you get involved with Wayfarer?

BlameJamal: 21:36

So that's kind of a funny story that I've told a couple of times. The way I got involved in Wayfarer was, I saw different Pokestops popping up on the map, and I was like,"how does that happen?" I'm like,"oh, Niantic must, really do their research." And they come into all these cities, all across the country and they put things on the map and hey, I want something near me and I want something at this park." So, you know, I got on the internet and I started researching it. And at the time it was like you had to be an Ingress agent of a certain level and you could nominate things. So, through Discord and through Telegram I found some ingress agents in my area and then reached out to them and I'm like,"Hey, can you nominate this for me?" And the early Ingress agents were like terrible, right? I don't wanna, I don't wanna but they were, they were terrible. They were gatekeepers. and essentially the Ingress agent told me to go jump in the lake, go screw myself, is is what he told. You know, I am not gonna nominate that for you we don't want anymore POIs in this park because this is our park and this is how we play the game and we don't want that in there. I took that, you know, that old meme of Michael Jordan, and I took that personally.

David Hernandez: 22:41

I took that personally.

Effect: 22:42

Really. Oh, so that's how you gonna play it? You gonna do this? Okay, fine. That's all I needed. It became personal with me.

BlameJamal: 22:49

So I took it upon myself you know, I downloaded Ingress that day and you know, I found some other people in the area, some other friends of mine who played ingress. And I made a point, I'm going to get to level 10, I'm gonna get to level 12 and I'm gonna nominate what I want. I always like poke fun at that Ingress agent who told me to go screw myself, but if it wasn't for him, I might not have been as motivated to learn Wayfarer. Mm-hmm. like I do now. I like to consider myself an expert. You know, we've got a podcast and you know, I've gotten over 300 points of interest in the game, in my city, and surrounding areas. So that's how the whole Wayfarer thing was born, was an ingress agent was being a gatekeeper and ticked me off and I decided that I was gonna go and do everything I could to make his life miserable. Then it got to the point where people figured out that I could put things in, so then I had my Discord dms were blowing up, you know, it was just kind of like everybody was like, Heyer, Jamal can get things in there." And I'm like,"here's what I need you to do. I need you to take a picture of it up close, I need you to take a picture of it from a wide angle, and send me your description and I'll submit it." And I was submitting everything, you know, and then I'm like, this picture isn't good enough. It's too dark. So then I'm giving everybody in my local community lessons on how to submit things and then we set up our own discord where, you know, it's just this is your area town this is my area town, this is her area of town, and we kind of segmented the city and strategically placed things and built parks. Back then you had a little more agency where you could kind of decide where a gym was gonna be depending on votes on pictures. So we made sure that we put certain gyms, certain places, got really good at Wayfarer. Then I was like, you know what, I'm helping people, I really like this, I want to start a podcast. And so I reached out to Ken and he is like,"Hey man, that's a great idea" and I remember we even talked about it last October in Philly, and then I hooked up with Lachlan and we put plans together and we started the podcast. Now if anybody wants to know how to get a Pokestop stop in their area, legally, not in their front yard, they can come to me, they can come to Lachlan, we'll help'em out. I know that's a long answer, but that's how I got started in Wayfarer and where I am now.

David Hernandez: 24:52

No, that's great stuff because I thought about doing something with Wayfarer back when it first came out for Pokemon Go. And you know, I was thinking about how the YouTubers did it to where like do some kind of live B roll and all that. But I realized that part of Wayfarer, I feel like there's a huge gray area with Wayfarer. There's some things like, it kind of depends, and to be, that notable voice like you and Lachlan are, is a huge responsibility in my opinion because A, you are the only ones, and B, if you say something that's wrong, people are gonna come correct you

BlameJamal: 25:22

Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah

David Hernandez: 25:24

it started with ingress and they're, you know, at times, you know, this, I call'em the, old guard is what of like to call And if you're not on top of your stuff, they come after you because they have their idea of what a Wayspot is.

BlameJamal: 25:36

And you know, that is where the Wayfarer community is right now, because you still have the old guard who wants things to be a certain way. And I remember the day when they flipped it to where Pokemon Go players got access and us old people are like, you ever seen the movie Pulp Fiction where they open up the chest and it just glows and it's like, oh, our backlog went from like 400 to zero and like everything got approved. But there's the old guard that are like, this is not what a poi, this is not what a Pokestop, this is not what a portal should be." And they will downvote you on everything. And then you have the people who they never played ingress. So they never knew what it was like prior. They never did Operation Portal recon just like I never played Pokemon growing up. They come on and they're read the criteria and they go in and they vote and it's awesome because they're following the direction. But there are some old school Ingress agents that will still not vote to approve a legitimate Wayspot because it's not the way that it was when they were like, back in my day.

David Hernandez: 26:41

And the best way I've always been able to compare it because it's not only just with Ingress, it's also within Niantic to a degree and I remember when there was the Hear Us Niantic movement to where, you know, Niantic tried to reduce the Pokestop distance I'm sure you probably read the article, but when I read it, it literally gave me chill vibes, because that whole article about how people view Wayspots and that's really where a lot of disagreement comes down to. Ingress, they view that the Wayspot encourages exploration. Pokemon Go they view the area, not the individual Wayspot is what encourages exploration. Pokemon Go, people are not gonna go to a park with one Pokestop.

BlameJamal: 27:14

And as an Ingress agent, that's kind of a dream. You want your anchor to be way far out from everyone else. Somebody has to like hike up to the top of the mountain to take it out. Pokemon, you want clusters, because with a Pokestop, what comes with that? It comes spawns, right? So you want them nicely placed so you can get a lot of spawns, so you can catch a lot of Pokemons, you can get a lot of stardust, so you can get a lot of xp. You know, we've often talked about maybe the need to decouple the system from each other because the needs of a Pokemon Go, player and the needs of an Ingress agent are really opposed to each other.

David Hernandez: 27:49

They are and that's what causes a lot of the dichotomy that you see within the Wayfarer community as a whole, because now you got the Pokemon Go players in there with the old school Ingress agents

BlameJamal: 27:59

And you know, to be honest with you, I love ingress. I've kind of lost my spark for ingress in the last year or so, just for a lot of different reasons. There's not a whole lot of ingress agents that are left in the Wayfarer like people pretend like they're an Ingress agent but it's almost, I would say it's probably 70 30 Pokemon Go players versus Ingress agents. I could be wrong, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say there's very few ingress only agents that do Wayfarer now,

David Hernandez: 28:26

right.

BlameJamal: 28:27

And when we were in Seattle, we had a chance. It was like the coolest moment. If, anybody who's listening to the show is listened to Wayspotters for any length of time, they know that like I've got kind of a man crush on Tintino. he's the, community manager for Wayfarer and we make little songs about him and we do little bits, but we got a chance to meet Tintino in Seattle and everybody joked that like, oh, get this guy a bodyguard, cuz Jamal's gonna stalk him. And uh, no, I'm not gonna, I'm like, you guys have to stop using the S word. like I told Lachlan, that means something different in the States than it does in Australia like Stalkings kind of serious here. you can't just throw that out. But we got a chance to meet Tintino and what's really cool is I've had a chance to have probably three separate conversations with Tintino since GoFest. He hasn't told me anything that's not public knowledge. So I don't wanna say that I have any inside information, but I kind of understand where they're going with Wayfarer, and again, he hasn't told me anything that hasn't been out there on the forums. But when you read something and then you hear somebody explain it to you, to me it hits different when I hear it from your voice versus I hear it in my head reading it through this computer screen. I gave him a Wayspotter's t-shirt and I've seen him wearing the T-shirt, so I'm like, yes!"

David Hernandez: 29:43

Well, that's what I wanted ask you actually. So were you surprised when you found out that people from Niantic actually listened to y'alls podcast?

BlameJamal: 29:48

Very surprised. Extremely surprised. It's one of those things that you hope somebody from Niantic is listening. but then when you like talk to the guy and the team and they're like, yeah, we play it in the office. We get a couple of laughs out of it." And I'm like," really? You've

David Hernandez: 30:02

that's blew my mind is they played in the office like, Pokemon Go's very critical of Niantic. Let's be fair, I will be sur surprised. I'll be flabbergasted to find out that my podcast is actually played in a company that, you know, runs the game. And that mind when I found that.

BlameJamal: 30:17

Right? And he's like, yeah, we put it on an office. And I'm like, that is awesome. So then I started saying stuff to people like. I've got it on good authority that Niantic is listening. I don't know if they play every single podcast, but I know they've played a couple, so, you know, people will send Lachlan and I things on Twitter and we'll say it because maybe they're listening to this episode and they'll hear it because Pokemon Go is at a place right now where the players of Pokemon Go, the trainers, I believe they feel that they care about the game more than the company does, right? And I think everybody who's a hardcore player of Pokemon Go will say,"if Niantic cared about the game, they would do this and if Niantic cared about the game, then they would do that." And they're not wrong. I just think that Niantic looks at Pokemon Go differently than the trainers do. Right? And that goes back to me not ever being a trainer until it came out. Again, I'll go back to that like I didn't grow up with a Squirtle as my best friend or a Charizard as my best friend. And people who are like really into it and like the hear me Niantic, they're like, this is not what Pokemon is supposed to be. Pokemon is supposed to be the spirit of that 10 year old boy, going out and catching Pokemon and you guys are affecting the way that I want to play the game and I think what people struggle with and the reason why I don't, cuz I don't have that history with the franchise. I see it more of a game that they are trying to make an AR platform out of it and they're using Pokemon as the IP to get to where they need to be. People who are hardcore Pokemon players have like a real issue with that. They're like, this is the game of my childhood. This is the game that I grew up with and you're just blatantly using this platform to create an AR space in the real world. And that's why I think you see Niantic make some of the decisions that they make because if this was the Pokemon company making the game I don't think you would see a lot of decisions made the way they are. Just look at just a few other things that Niantic has done, and they're doing this because it's good for Niantic. It's not necessarily good for Pokemon Go, or it's not necessarily good for the trainers. It's good for Niantic and what they want to do in the future.

David Hernandez: 32:33

Now I need to ask you a question on regards to how the design for Pokemon Go is. So, one of the worst kept secrets within the Wayfarer community is the S2 cells

BlameJamal: 32:42

Oh my goodness.

David Hernandez: 32:47

That's how you know we're getting into something

BlameJamal: 32:49

Oh

David Hernandez: 32:50

here. So obviously, like I said, it's the worst kept secret. For those who don't know Pokestops and Gyms are determined by S2 cells, that's the TL D o, if you want more, listen to the Wayspotters podcast. You know obviously Niantic does not formally acknowledge the S2 cells. Do you think that's a hindrance that Niantic doesn't acknowledge it for Pokemon Go?

BlameJamal: 33:08

Do you wanna hear a funny story?

David Hernandez: 33:09

I'm all ears.

BlameJamal: 33:11

In Seattle, I point in blank ask the Wayfarer team about S2 cells and I have never seen someone go into corporate deflection as quick as they did. And Lachlan asked one of the members of the campfire team and they're like, oh yeah, we use S2 cells for everything." and, and you should have seen the Wayfarer team's faces. I have never seen someone who has like brown skin like me go pale in like three seconds. But it, but it happened, right? So, the campfire team just kind of put it all out there on Front Street, but Niantic's official position is that different games have different rules for inclusion, right? Isn't that the most corporate thing you've ever heard? We all know S2 cells are out there and I think it's a hindrance to the game and I'll tell you why. If I'm in Texas, right? Let's say I'm in Texas and my mom is from Texas, she's from Austin. So let's say I'm in Austin, Texas, right? And I see a really cool statue of somebody from Texas that did something really cool. And the statue is there, and let's say 30 feet down the road is a road plaque. If they happen to be in the same cell, only one of them is gonna make it into the game when they probably both deserve to be in the game because they're historical. You have to go out and see it, and you're learning things. But if they're too close together and they could be just three or four meters or three or four feet from being legally in the game. You can't get it in because of the S2 cell rule. The thing that frustrates most new wayfinders and it's so sad and it's like, I wish I could talk to everybody in the world before they start submitting. They'll see something that's really cool and really interesting and something that 100% deserves to be in the game, but it's in a cell with something currently and Niantic does not talk about that anywhere. There's no way for them to know, unless they're a geek like me and they're scouring the intel map and they have the S2 cell layout and they can look and see the reason why nobody has taken a picture of that is cuz there's something in the game that's blocking like that will never ever get in the game because of the way the cells are laid out. We've had so many people hit us up on Twitter or our dms or through our email and say, I'm so disappointed that I did all this work and I reviewed hundreds of Wayspots and I earned my upgrade and I used my upgrade and then it's not in the game.

David Hernandez: 35:25

Say for example, we have a random listener who, has avoided Wayfarer for whatever reason, and they wanted to get into Wayfarer. What advice would you give them and where should they start?

BlameJamal: 35:34

The first thing that, that I would tell them to do is go to Wayfarer.NianticLabs.com and they're gonna need to log in with the same username that they use for either Pokemon Go or for Ingress, whichever login they use, whether that's through Google or Facebook. And when they get there, they're gonna get to the Wayfarer home page and it's automatically gonna bring up the showcase where it's gonna have featured Wayspots. The thing that I would tell them to do is go to the criteria button, it's gonna be the second one down. It's gonna give them a page and it says, what makes a place or object eligible to be a Wayspot? And it's a very good informational page and it tells you everything you need to know about how to nominate a Wayspot and what to do. It has the acceptance criteria, the rejection criteria, and then it has content guidelines. So that would be the first thing I would tell someone or shameless plug, they could listen to like episodes one through six of the Wayspotters podcast and we cover all that information there. Once they do that and they're still curious about things, don't be afraid to go and look at other sites like the Intel map and look at where the cells are placed and look at how the cells are laid out and find an empty cell and go submit something and let's go.

David Hernandez: 36:44

You started with Wayfarer and eventually made you want to start a podcast, which is known as the Wayspotters Podcast. When y'all started this podcast, like how did the planning go? Did y'all have different names y'all wanted to name it before released an episode, or how did that all work?

BlameJamal: 36:57

Yeah, you know, we sat down and we came up with what are the things that we want to talk about? So Lachlan and I talked for, you know, a few weeks before we actually started and then we recorded episode zero, which was terrible, we were both like super nervous and then we realized like, this isn't live. If we mess up, we can just rerecord it and I'll just edit it out. We wanted to be an educational podcast, but then we knew we had to be entertaining because like nobody likes to watch an infomercial, but people like to watch entertaining content and we're on an audio format, and so we know most of the people are gonna be in a car, or on public transportation, or on a walk. So we have to be informational to tell people what they need to know, but then we also need to be entertaining enough to have people to continue to come back. When we planned it out, we planned out kind of our first four or five episodes of what we wanted to talk about: what is a Wayspot? What should you nominate? What shouldn't you nominate? because we know people were gonna go back and play those over and over and over. And then as we went on, we developed our own little inside jokes and things that like people come back for and then it evolved into the dad jokes that we play and then we started to find our niche and, what's fun. At the end of the day, we want to be educational for people, we want people to be able to pull up Wayspotters, listen to an episode, and walk away from there knowing one thing that they didn't know before. After 30 some episodes, it's getting harder and harder to do cuz we have to go and learn something new to be able to tell people.

David Hernandez: 38:31

What I love about y'all's show and what I alluded to earlier, I thought about doing something with Wayfarer, but there's some gray areas, but the fact that you and Locklin both, have different views of how a POI should, operate or how things should be done and that's what makes the show very entertaining because like with anything else, there's two sides to every argument. For me and you we're very pro every sports field should be a POI, stuff like that. Then of course you get the other side to where Lachlan believes only one poi for per sports field.

BlameJamal: 38:56

I love to make Lachlan uncomfortable. I love to like show him stuff like off the air that I'm doing. I'll take you behind the curtain a little bit. There's a lot of things that I nominate and a lot of things that I do that I don't talk about because I love to push the gray area. I get a lot of rejections because I try to squeeze that square peg into the round hole and I am not ashamed about it. But I know it's like something that like I shouldn't speak to the masses. I know where that line is, right? I wouldn't say it's cheating, but there are some things that I've gotten through that like most people wouldn't have gotten through because there's a saying in our discord, you Jamal up the description." I will tell a damn good story in my nomination to get it through and things like that make Lachlan uncomfortable and I give him such a hard time about that like he's a rule follower and I am out here in the gray area with the shovel and I'm digging. Part of that you alluded to a couple of times, is Niantic's fault. They don't give us black and white instructions on certain things when it comes to Wayspots and it's made life for me, people like me really easy because I look at the map and I say, every single cell should have a POI. And if I've got figure out a way to get this in this cell, I'm gonna do it. and so what makes our show entertaining is we've got very different ways to look at it. And the fact that he's in Australia also is different because there's some things in Australia that are good that here we're like, no, and vice versa.

David Hernandez: 40:29

Well, on that point, like, what is it about the gray area that you think scares some of the Wayfarer community?

BlameJamal: 40:35

I don't know if it scares him and I don't wanna speak for Lachlan, but you know how like some people are like strict constitutionalists or you're in Texas, you're in the Bible Belt like me. People who are like they strictly interpret the Bible one specific way. That's what it says in the Bible and by God, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. And other people are gonna read that and go, I'm gonna put a little common sense on that and this is what it says, but this is what it means to me. I think that's probably the best way to talk about the differences in the Wayfarer community. There are some people that will say,"well, Niantic said this and this is all we're going to do." And I look at it and go, they said that, but this is what it means to me and this is what I'm gonna do." And I think that's kind of where Locklin and I are and I think we have enough of those differences that it makes for fun podcasting. That we're not both just reading from the same hymn and on the same line like we're in the same book, but he's in chapter one and I'm in chapter 17. You know

David Hernandez: 41:31

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So obviously one feature of the show is the dad jokes, gotta ask like, you know, how did that get incorporated in? Was that something you kind of just wanted to include in, or is that just part of the entertainment value?

BlameJamal: 41:43

So the way the dad jokes happened, it's actually a really funny story, so I'm a big goober, right? I'm a dad, dad jokes just naturally come to me and I just say them all the time, just in normal lingo when I'm talking. In our first call it five or 10 episodes, I don't even remember. I would just be like, Hey, Lachlan," And I'd set the joke up and he'd be like,"oh God, what now?" And I'd and I'd, and I'd drop a dad joke, right?

David Hernandez: 42:07

Right.

BlameJamal: 42:07

And what would happen was it would really throw him off his game. He'd be making this serious point and he'd say something about a duck, and then I'd make a duck dad joke or he'd be talking about this bull statue and then I'd come in and I'd say,"well, how do you stop a bull from charging?" He's like,"what?" I'm like,"take away its credit card," and it would throw him off. He'd be like, oh, you made a joke." You know? I'm like, yeah, bull charging, take away its credit card. I would just throw things in there and he'd be talking about like, doing things at the ocean and the sea and, you know, I'd say,"Hey, Lachlan, why does Seagul fly over the sea?" And he is like, why Jamal?" I'm like,"if they flew over the bay, they'd be bagels." I started throwing things in like that and people loved it, people thought it was really funny, but it was getting in the way of like the podcast. So I came up with the idea I'm just gonna record dad jokes and I'm gonna put it in in the edit. So we had the people from the Round Table Chat(ot) on, and I had an idea, I'm like,"Hey, you guys are dads," and actually they're not dads, but they give off that dad vibe. I said bring a dad joke to the show and we played it in the show and I edited it together. People like loved it. We actually got the most emails and responses that we've ever gotten up to that point. They were like,"wow, that dad joke segment was really cool!" And then from then on, we've had a dad joke segment. It's been a really good formula and it was something totally organic that we did not plan for when we started the podcast, but it just kind of evolved and now it's one of our main segments.

David Hernandez: 43:34

So obviously your podcast is coming up on the one year anniversary in January. have big plans or stuff y'all are thinking about doing?

BlameJamal: 43:43

Lachlan has like 50 big plans. We'll see what happens for the one year, we're gonna do something cool, just don't know what it is yet. We'll probably do a two or three hour show or something. Lachlan's got some ideas and I told him I let him plan it, so I'm just going to let him plan it and we'll see what happens.

David Hernandez: 44:00

Ooh, so you're gonna be going in blind with this one, it sounds like?

BlameJamal: 44:03

Oh yeah, absolutely. So that's another thing about our podcast, if you haven't noticed, we alternate shows. You'll have a Lachlan show and you'll have a Jamal show. And on the Lachlan shows, he comes up with all the content, he comes up with all the coal of the week, the Wayspot of the week, he comes up with all the show notes. And on a Jamal show, I put everything together, so you can tell whoever does the intro, that's whose show it is. We just alternate and sometimes he'll do two shows in a row, sometimes I'll do two shows in a row, but whoever does the intro, it's their show and so you'll get the feel and the flow of the show of who's doing it. My shows are always a little more humorous, again, I'm a dad, I got that dad joke, energy, and I'm always gonna work a live animal into my show. And you know, Lachlan is gonna have the things that make his shows unique too, so if people have only listened to a couple. Listen to three or four in a row and then you'll get to see, you can tell right away whose show it is. And when we started it, we didn't want it to be one person was the host or the other person was the co-host. We didn't want to like, make some like artificial titles and have someone be second fiddle. It was more of this is our podcast together and we've got very different ideas and if Lachlan led every show, then my specific ideas would never get out there and vice versa. So we just alternate and we just, have the ultimate respect for each other that he knows when it's a Jamal show, I'm gonna talk about pushing the envelope and I know when it's a Lachlan show, he's gonna play it a little more close to the vest.

David Hernandez: 45:27

And I think that's what makes the show work so well is that, like I said, again, you know, you got two different perspectives, you got two different people leading the show, and it gives its own flavor if so you will.

BlameJamal: 45:36

Right, and it works

David Hernandez: 45:37

So obviously you started in, 2016, you know you've had a chance to go to Safari Zone, you've had a chance to do GoFest, you've had a chance to do Wayspotters. Since you started Pokemon Go, what do you consider your biggest accomplishment?

BlameJamal: 45:48

Ooh. My biggest accomplishment in Pokemon Go is I've created a community of people, I say I, not like I did it, but in my city, in my area, we have our own discord and we have people that never, ever, ever, ever, ever knew each other before. And we like meet up in the park on Wednesdays and we raid together, and I've got people that I call my friends through Pokemon Go. And I think that's probably my biggest accomplishment in Pokemon Go. I built a park through Wayfarer that people come to play Community Day at and that would've never happened. And there's people that like legitimately get together on Saturdays and Sundays and the weekends and go to the park and play. And like me and my community, we did that, like there's people that are friends now that hang out every weekend in the park to play Pokemon Go

David Hernandez: 46:39

Thank you Jamal for coming on the show. If people wanted to get connected with you, your show, how can they find you? Please, by all means, plug away.

BlameJamal: 46:46

Yeah, so the easiest way to find us, it's probably our best social media, is, go on Twitter. We're@Wayspotters and like we say, and when we close the show, one of us is usually awake cuz Lachlan is in Australia and he's 14 hours difference for me, so if it's noon in Charlotte, North Carolina, it's 2:00 AM in Australia. If you send something to@Wayspotters on Twitter, one of us will respond. But then you can also go to the pod catcher of your choice, so Spotify, Apple, Google, iHeartMedia, any one of those podcasters, and type in Wayspotters, W-A-Y-S-P-O-T-T-E-R-S, and it will pull up our podcast and I would be honored if you would listen to our podcast and subscribe to our podcast and rate our podcast. And then we also have a website, www.wayspotters.com, and you can go there and it will tell you everywhere where you can download the show. Finally, we have a phone number,(704) 426-3710, that's our hotline. If you want your voice featured on the Wayspotters Podcast, call that hotline, leave us a message, and we will play it on the show.

David Hernandez: 47:53

Definitely, and for anybody who's listening, I'll also include all the information in the description of today's episode. Thank you for listening to another episode of As The Pokeball Turns! You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Remember to give the show a rating of five stars. If you wanna do four stars, sleep on it and come back tomorrow. If you're feeling eh with three stars, come back in about two days. If you think this podcast is like McDonald's with two stars, come back in about three days. And for some reason, if you feel like you can only give this show one star, come back next week because no matter what, each road lead to five stars. I'll see you next time. Here's the sneak peek for the next episode of As The Pokeball Turns!