It’s two things: a game one plays with one’s smartphone (as CNET explains in the video embedded above), and a reworking of an old set of characters in a new format. The original characters were interesting to millions before, and remain interesting, making their revival in a new format a good bet.
If the characters hadn’t been compelling to a previous generation, and were not still interesting to this generation, the prospects for Pokémon Go as a merely technical offering would be limited.
Not any message will do. However appealing to a few, there’s not, after all, a wildly popular Android and iOS version of sheepshead.
The trick is picking the right content (or message) from the past, still of interest to people now, and matching it with a medium of the present.
See, aditionally, How to Pick Pikachu as Your Starter in Pokémon Go:
Not really about games is it? It’s really about having a message. Colorful cartoon characters beat old fashioned cards. Do you think Whitewater has a new message (in your metaphor like colorful cartoon characters) to interest people?
Thanks much for your question. You’re right, the post wasn’t solely about a game (although the game is clever). No, there’s not (now) one message in Whitewater that has enough currency internally to win over people externally. (There are even some for whom winning over newcomers is unimportant or undesirable.)
Whitewater is a mix of old and new, where old dreams of homogeneity that doesn’t exist and new hopes for an eclectic that’s building but not yet predominant. Old is not as attractive to outsiders as it thinks it is; new is not so evident to them as it would need to be to attract.