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Online Ethnography: The Silph Road

Emily Milord

North Central College

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The Silph-Road: Pokemon GOs Largest Grassroots Network

The purpose of this investigation was to explore the impact, influence, and purpose of virtual

communities that revolve around Pokmon Go, and their effects on the players of the game. The virtual

community I chose revolves around Pokmon Go, a popular augmented reality game that takes place in

the virtual world on mobile devices but is also dependent on geographic location, which makes gameplay

in tune with players location in the real world. The game requires players to go out in the world to access

many of the games features. Many connections and friendships have arisen from playing this game,

through online communities, meeting in person, and most notably, the formation by players of an

interconnected web of online communities in support of and mutual love for Pokmon Go and as an

adjunct to playing the game.

The chosen Pokmon Go related virtual community I studied was the Silph Road, a grassroots

online network that originated as a subbreddit on Reddit, but also has its own website which functions as

an encyclopedia of Pokmon Go-related research, and information about the game. On their reddit page

the Silph Road describes itself as a friendly and active community with three main objectives: 1)

constructing a real-world network of Pokmon Go enthusiasts, 2) researching and discussing game

mechanics, and 3) strategy -- helping newbies improve and learn. (Dronopes, 2016)

The Silph Road is known for being a well-established online community that has high standards

for reporting factual information. It is seen as a great resource for information on how to figure out the

game, and the research presented on the Silph Road website is conducted by the communitys official

research team consisting of dedicated players. It is run by a set of moderators who oversee the

community, but at a global scale many dedicated players contribute to the plethora of knowledge and

share their own personal anecdotal experiences, as well as their adventures.

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How does it work?

The Silph Road subreddit has 231,036 subscribers, to be exact, although there are likely many

other participants involved in this virtual community not only on Reddit, but also using the Silph Roads

official website to gather data and give back to the community. Players who are active members of the

Silph Road come together to share knowledge, and to debunk and understand the game through a

collective intelligence, a term coined by the scholar Henry Jenkins who describes this phenomenon it in

his book Convergence Culture. A collective intelligence is evident through discourse on the official Silph

Road subbreddit page. Conversation is welcomed, collaboration is encouraged, and active participation

arises between players seeking their individual findings and discoveries in a joint push towards common

goals. These mutual efforts between members of the Silph Road community have served to foster

comraderie, and have helped form a cohesive network.

One example of how players give back to one another is through a defining feature of the Silph

Road: the Global Nest Atlas. This is a world-wide atlas on the website that uses location services data to

document where Pokmon nests are located, according to their actual geographic location. If a player

suspects there is a nest of Pokmon, due to multiple spawns of the same Pokmon at a location such as a

park, he or she can report it to that exact location on the Global Nest Atlas and wait for their report to be

verified by another traveler (player). As a result, the players assists others in revealing a nest where

many Pokmon of the exact same kind will spawn.

Methods and a new understanding

Although I personally have been a part of the subbreddit Silph Road community for a few

months, I mainly visited the subreddit as a beginner to Pokmon Go, but still visit the website and make

my own contributions to the Global Nest Atlas. However, for this project I decided to take investigate the

community more deeply. The methods used for my inquiry were spending time on the Silph Road

subreddit, asking members of this community to offer their opinions and experiences, and looking for

details about what the grassroots movement is all about.

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Case Examples

I was fortunate to be able to get in contact with a user on Reddit, and asked them about their

experiences with the Silph Road community. The user told me during his first few months of Pokmon

Go, he was introduced to the Silph Road by a friend. This user described Silph Road as a Pokmon Go

encyclopedia, and is the go-to for everything you need to know about Pokemon Go: itwas the main source

of learning about the game such as facts about hatching eggs, and the rarity and chances of catching each

Pokmon. Is there anything missing from the Silph Road subreddit? I asked. He commented that it is less

goofy and fun-oriented than some of the other POGO (Pokemon Go) subreddits but everything

revolving Pokmon Go is interconnected so that is not a problem. I asked what other websites he visited

to stay connected to other players. He said mainly Gamepress and YouTube. He explained to me that

these are what keep him playing, even when there are no exciting new updates in the game. He described

himself as a hard-core player, and said I didnt follow the bandwagon, and I still play every day.

male, age 28, level 36, Team Instinct

I also got in touch with another member of the Silph Road community, and was able to interview

her, and she shared similar opinions with me. She said she loved the Silph Road website as a go-to source

of reliable content, especially the way everything on the website was verified. She did say that she checks

the Reddit subreddit page often, but her favorite platform for involvement in the greater POGO

community was watching YouTube videos from bloggers, because seeing them play and getting to know

their personalities was enjoyable as well as comforting. It let her know that a lot of other people love the

game even after the first few months when POGO was a massive phenomenon, after many other players

stopped playing. -female, age 24, level 27, Team Mystic.

Many Modes of Communication

After observing the feed of the Silph Road subreddit, you will find that the players who

participate are highly active users. It appears that the discourse is lighthearted much of the time, but I

have concluded that the Silph Road is dedicated to Pokmon Go exchanges and new developments.
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Players share with one another how to most effectively take down Snorlax, or Blissey, two of the

tankiest, resilient Pokmon while battling in the metagame. The Silph Road is a forum for expressing

and exploring pressing issues, such as why the servers are crashing, the prevention of bots, and in-game

event information.

Much of the discussion on the Silph Road subreddit takes place within the comments sections of

the individual posts, but many users use other means of communication such as a link to a chat room on

the site, or direct messaging with one another. Overall, the Silph Road is a trustworthy source for

information, but my experience with the subbreddit page has not always been met with openness and

friendliness, and I attribute this to the serious attitude of those posting.

The Silph Road has some general rules for posting on its subreddit, such as instructing members

to not post memes, and to avoid posts such as,am I the only one who experiences. These would be more

appropriate to use for a different subreddit. In my opinion rules on posting etiquette facilitate serious

discussion, but too many rules can be too exclusive, and not be conducive to camaraderie. However, with

further investigation I discovered that these seemingly strict rules for posting are not adhered to

completely.

My impressions of Silph Road community

Overall, I was surprised by the activeness of this online community, even after nearly a year since

the games release. I am thankful that some friendly players took the time to discuss the community with

me. I was also impressed by the specificity and dedication of the Silph Road community towards

discovering new developments about the game. Through my research and observations, I discovered just

how linked the Pokemon Go virtual communities are with one another: the Silph Road subreddit is

connected to Twitter, and there are references to the Gamepress website, links to YouTube videos,

mentions of various Pokemon Go bloggers, as well as links to various subreddits that are related. This all

points to the idea of convergence between media platforms as described by Henry Jenkins. Through my

ethnography, I have developed a clear understanding of the operation of the Silph Road as a virtual
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community, how its members have developed a collective intelligence about the game, and the role the

community plays within the expansive interweb of Pokemon Go communities.

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References

Dronopes (2016, Aug ). Welcome to the Silph Road! Heres what you need to know

about the community. Message posted to https://redd.it/4tll96

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York

University Press.