Why were dozens of New Orleans residents wandering around the edge of Big Lake in City Park after dark on Sunday (July 10), studying the screens of their iPhones and uttering strange words such as "Pidgey," "Crobat" and "Gyrados?"

They were engaged in a sort of digital-era, imaginary, hunting expedition called Pokemon Go that, since its debut Thursday (July 7), is gaining on Twitter in the number of daily users, according to Forbes Magazine, and has added $11 billion to the value of Nintendo, the company that conceived it, according to the Quartz website. Early on, the avalanche of game users overwhelmed servers, bringing the hunt to a temporary halt.

Pokemon Go player Josh West explained the activity like so: "Basically, Nintendo released an app about a week ago that uses your GPS (the satellite-guided Global Positioning System) in your area to give you a map, and it just places Pokemon all over the map."

Before Nintendo sprinkled Pokemon all over the virtual landscapes of the United States, Australia and New Zealand (with the rest of the globe, too, presumably following) the creatures dwelt on Japanese trading cards, comic books, a long-running animated television adventure series and in video games. According to Wikipedia, the Pokemon game series "is the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's Mario franchise."

Harmlessly capturing Pokemon is the goal. The rarer the mythical creature the better. Practically anyone born after Pokemon was invented in 1995, or anyone who has had a child in the Pokemon era, knows all about it.

The big difference between Pokemon Go and past Pokemon products, is that the new game requires players to leave their lairs and traverse the analog terrain.

"It's '90s nerd nostalgia and it's making everybody get off their behinds and go places," player Cameron Hawkins said. Truth be told, Hawkins used a more colorful term than "behinds."

Playing Pokemon Go - Jan Domingue, Nalita Rosales, and Kammie Pom (Photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

Several players agreed that getting out of the house was, indeed, a big part of the draw. Michael Flynn, whose face was flecked with sweat, said that he'd walked "14 kilometers" on Saturday (July 9), which, he added, was "pretty far" for him. Mohammad Alkurd said that he and his buddies had become so absorbed in the hunt that they wandered the park from midnight Saturday until 7 the following morning.

The glowing purple Pokemon Go smartphone maps are apparently tailor-made for given environments. One player pointed out that the Roy Lichtenstein sculpture in front of the New Orleans Museum of Art is a gathering spot that drew hundreds of players in the first days of the game.

Players scour the landscape, phones in hand, until they encounter a fluttering on-screen purple bat, a bouncing pink bunny/aardvark, a chattering yellow chipmunk, or some such digital denizen. Then they attempt to capture the crature by tossing virtual magical balls at it. The balls act, more or less like lassos.

Like a baseball coach teaching a pitcher to throw a curve ball, one Sunday night player demonstrated the twist of the fingertip that he applies to the digital balls on his touch screen as he lets them fly. He believed that a proper finger twist can make all the difference.

Israel Parrilla, who speeds up the stalking process by playing Pokemon Go from the seat of his bicycle, earned gasps of admiration from fellow players when he declared that while hunting near Costco, he had snared a prized blue dragon called a Gyrados. Near Lelong Drive in City Park someone caught a smaller, cuter blue dragon called a Dratini.

Everyone agreed that the opportunity to socialize with other creature hunters (aka Pokemon trainers) was a big part of the draw. Some players greeted silhouettes in the distance by shouting "Pokemon Go" in the same way a sailor might shout "Ship ahoy."

A reddit page titled NOLAGo seems to be a trove of New Orleans-elated Pokemon Go info.

As with any new phenomena, there have been downsides. The Guardian website reported that armed robbers in Missouri may have used the game to lure unsuspecting victims. The CBCNews website reports that a Wyoming player stumbled upon a dead body. CBCNews also reports that the benignly besieged occupants of an Australian police station wish the game-maker had not marked their the station as a Pokemon Go player gathering spot.

Pokemon Go - Capturing a Crobat (Photo by Doug MacCash / NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)

"I had a crazy experience the first day," said a Pokemon Go player who asked to use the pseudonym Professor Alex. "I basically ran into an escaped pit bull (in the Lakeview neighborhood). I'm, like, looking for monsters and I'm not looking where I'm going and I passed this really mean dog. The dog actually attacked me."

The professor said he escaped by scrambling up the rock embankment of some nearby railroad tracks, then onto a concrete piling, where he tossed rocks (harmlessly) in the dog's direction, until the animal gave up its pursuit.

"It's this really weird learning curve, trying to figure out how to work the game and then having all this, like, real life intriguing crazy stuff happen," the professor said.

Attention Pokemon Go players, I'd love to make a slideshow of Pokemons in the New Orleans environment. If you spot Pikachu in the French Quarter or a Gyrados at Elmwood Shopping Center, or a Crobat at NOMA, please snap a screen grab and send it to dmaccash@nola.com, or just post it in the comment stream of this story.

Pokemon Go - a Krabby in the Quarter (Photo by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune staff)

Pokemon Go - a Horsea near the Natchez (Photo by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune staff)