EVOLVING FORMS OF PANDERING TO POKEMON PLAYERS 
Looking for ways to lure the hordes of virtual gamers sent wandering through actual streets by the Pokemon Go app, which has surpassed Twitter in terms of daily users? You’re not the only one — last week the city promoter types at HoustonFirst Corporation published a guide to the Pokemon ecology of select Houston tourist destinations, from the Rothko Chapel to the Kemah Boardwalk and NASA. And Kyle Haggerty writes this week that while businesses around town can already pay small fees inside the game world to make extra Pokemon (and Pokemon players) show up near their brick-and-mortar locations, filling your store with phone-enraptured bodies could get easier: Niantic has announced plans to let businesses directly buy their way into the landscape with formal sponsorship deals. [Houston BisNow] Screenshot of Doduo at Bohemeo’s at 708 Telephone Rd.: Lauren Meyers
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Tag: Games
BOOMTOWN HOUSTON IS BACK, THOUGH MAYBE A LITTLE DUSTY “Boomtown is a strategy game simple in concept but surprisingly difficult to master. The board features several groups of properties – Rice, Montrose, River Oaks, Downtown, Bellaire, West U. and others. Four people can play, as characters Billy Bob, Fast Eddie, Aunt Hattie and Day Bue, charmingly drawn in old-fashioned style by Merriman. Each player starts out with a certain amount of money and bids against the others, trying to build real estate empires.” [Hair Balls, via Swamplot Inbox]