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Tech

Here’s a Crowdsourced Map of Where to Find the Best Pokémon In Toronto

Attention, pokémon trainers.
Image: Author

Pokémon Go hasn't been officially released in Canada yet, although lots of people are finding ways to download the app anyway. The streets of Toronto are crawling with pokémon, and now there's a collaborative map to show you where the best ones are hiding.

This is thanks to the 1,000 or so users on the /r/PokemonGOToronto subreddit, who have been busy working on a ready-made crowdsourced map of many of the pokéstops, gyms, and pokémon in the city.

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The collaborative Google map currently lists some very helpful information. For example, there's apparently a Gyarados by the island ferry dock downtown. If you're after an Onix, you might want to catch a bus up to the Jane and Finch area.

Screengrab: Google Maps

Naturally, the 22-year-old undergraduate student who started the map—Angelo Mateo—wrote me in an email that it all started while he was catching pokémon at a bar.

"I started to wonder, what if you can find certain rare pokémon in the same place?" he wrote. "I'm not sure if it actually is true, but there seems to be some evidence that people are finding pokémon in the same place within a particular time."

Common wisdom about the game seems to hold that pokémon will somewhat reliably spawn in the same locations over and over—game maker Niantic has stated that more powerful water-type pokémon will be placed near actual water, for example. However, some players report that pokémon may also move to other locations.

Although this isn't a direct measurement of how many individuals contributed to the map, Mateo said that new markers were added more than 1600 times as of Monday night. That was only a day after Mateo posted in /r/PokemonGOToronto, inviting people to add to it.

"The Pokémon Go experience, in my opinion, so far has created 'in real life' social interactions between people," Mateo wrote. "The collaborative effort of the Google map is indicative of that."

At the time of reporting, the map was temporarily locked down because users were making a mess of it, so it wasn't possible right then to make any additions, Mateosaid. However, since the whole idea is to keep a live map of all the best pokémon in the city going, it'll likely be open for edits again soon.

Wait, why are you still reading this? Go catch some pokémon already.