How far this former April Fool’s joke has come.
In 2014, Google engineers thought it would be a fun idea for April Fool’s to put Pokémon on Google Maps. One could catch Pokémon by looking around via augmented reality and catch them by shaking your screen and tapping them. Niantic, a then little-known developer of the mobile game Ingress, saw the potential for an actual game and approached Nintendo with the framework of their game, claiming it would be a perfect fit for a mobile based, real world Pokémon game. Said framework would go on to lay the foundations for what came to be known as “Pokémon GO” (or PoGo for short by hardcore fans.)
With Nintendo’s blessings (and a minor purchase in the stake of the company), Niantic fully developed the idea and brought it to market on July 6, 2016 to an immense and exuberant reception. Since the inception of the smart phone, fans of the Pokémon series had questioned if they could bring the game into the real world via augmented reality simulations. With Pokémon GO, their desires had been actualized; for the first time you could explore our world on your own quest to become a Pokémon master.
The game was a sensation right from the start, with staggering statistics, records smashed, and worldwide culture completely shifted. In a mere twenty days, the game had eclipsed $100 Million in microtransactions, and by September would go on to surpass $500 Million. “PoGo” would go on to rack up five Guinness World Records that summer, including most revenue in release month, most downloads in initial month, and fastest gross of $100 million by a mobile game.
Unfortunately, those incredible numbers were not to last, as by September, the active player base had shrank over 79%. Of course, when you have over 500 Million downloads across all platforms at that point, you’re left with a player base of just over 100 Million people. By every financial measure the game was a success, but the cracks quickly showed and only widened during the initial months of the game. This was only further compounded by Niantic’s failure to anticipate rapid, intense growth. Their company, to that point, did not have a comprehensive community outreach or management team, or even showed signs of having a strategy in place for the communities that would invariably develop, hungry for information and content.
Said communities would become increasingly incensed and despondent at the perceived lack of communication coming from Niantic as complaints mounted about the game, from a lack of intuitiveness to the game’s “footprint” system (a system for tracking down Pokémon you could not yet see on your map to catch) to severe server ingest issues, to the game hard crashing without plausible explanation. Niantic was excruciatingly slow at conveying that they had taken note of all of these problems, with patch notes often being issued days before the patch was to launch.
Those who stayed behind were rewarded quite richly, however. The footprint tracking system was overhauled thoroughly (though not without controversy,) a Halloween themed event would revitalize some of the player base in late October, and further events would allow players to catch difficult to find Pokémon such as water or rock types out of their native biomes. In late November 2016, Niantic took some strong hints from the community and introduced a double XP/Stardust week as a thank you to the faithful who had stuck with the game all year.
As the game shifted and grew, so too did the cultural impact around it. From the onset, police were acutely aware of the game and would patrol areas in neighborhoods that were known to have several “PokéStops” (a place for one to restock on in game items for free) in game. Video gaming in general was seen as something one did at home, often alone or in a virtual space with people from all over the world. With the advent of Pokémon GO, you became forced and even encouraged to meet people in your town, your real life community, and help each other out. Players also became fiercely defensive of the game’s three teams, Valor, Mystic, and Instinct, to the point where the three leaders of each team became memes in their own right.
Gym battles and earning the game’s primary in game currency, simply styled “Poké Coins” would undergo overhauls as well. Originally being incredibly difficult, almost insurmountable challenges for new trainers to complete if facing down veterans of the game, gyms were simplified in July along with the introduction of my personal favorite feature: the raid system. Unfortunately for Niantic, the launch of raiding went off rather poorly, as the first raid was held in a densely packed Chicago park where 4G reception quickly became congested, causing trainers who had purchased tickets to the event to angrily receive refunds.
The raid system, to its credit, single-handedly dragged me back into the game so as to allow me to catch my favorite Pokémon, Articuno. Since then, I’ve logged hundreds of hours in the game, spent walking to and from the office, in a park on a sunny (or preferably rainy) day, or meeting up with other raiders to “catch ’em all.” The amount of friends I’ve made in my town since my rather abrupt move last year to where I now reside has been refreshing and done my personal health a world of good.
Pokémon GO has made quite a few strides, but is still struggling in some notable areas, the first and most important of which is community outreach. As it was at launch, patch notes and event announcements are on very short notice, leaving players who like to plan meticulously their moves in the game quite irate. Trainers need constant updates as to what Niantic is up to, what their future plans for the game are, and a way to highlight members of the community for being outstanding leaders in and out of the game.
“PoGo” also needs a comprehensive overhaul with regards to in game information and communication about other trainers. While I’m not asking for the game to go WatchDogs style invasive, there needs to be more in terms of letting you know when other trainers are around. At the very least, there should be a system in game that allows for Trainers to see if others have gathered at a local gym at a glance, so they may walk over and join the fun. As it stands now, there are two primary methods to organizing and attempting a difficult raid: utilization of third party chat programs such as Facebook, Whatsapp, and Discord (of which, in the interests of disclosure, I am a partner of) or wandering over to a raid and waiting for an hour or more at the gym’s location in the hopes that others will stumble by and coalesce into a makeshift raid group. Some notification on the UI either above a gym or when you select it that at least enumerates the amount of trainers within “spinning” distance of a gym (the distance where one may select and interact with a gym, whether to insert a Pokémon, battle the gym’s current residents, or “spin” the PokéStop at the top of each gym) would go a long way toward keeping raids fresh with players who may otherwise be unaware of or unwilling to use third party programs to participate in raids.
Rural players continue to struggle with enjoyment of Pokémon GO, with PokéStops few and far between, raids difficult to organize for the few gyms that may be found within a reasonable distance to rural Trainers, and the footprint tracking system being less precise for those who wander in nature to find Pokémon. To their credit, Niantic has responded, albeit a year late. Unfortunately, the statement they put out is rather vague and leaves Trainers hanging with a few questions, such as “How can gyms be expanded in rural areas if Niantic is currently not accepting any new applications for gyms or PokéStops?”
The report feature needs to be taken far more seriously in game, as well. Niantic has taken measured steps in cracking down on what is known in the game as “Spoofers.” Spoofing is considered to be the act of manipulating the GPS tracking on a phone to present your Trainer’s location at a spot where that trainer is not currently located. This allows some trainers to “travel” to distant locations to obtain rare Pokémon, which sounds rather benign all things considered. However, it also allows these players, from the comfort of their own home, to defend and attack gyms with impunity. Niantic, in an amusing and respectable move, did institute “shadow bans” for players it determined had been cheating by only allowing them to see extremely common Pokémon in game such as Pidgey, Ratatta, and Weedle. Controversially, these shadow bans were handed out to players who also took advantage of third party programs to use the game’s API to determine the strengths and weaknesses of their Pokémon, in favor of promoting the game’s poorly received and vague “appraisal system.”
Pokémon GO is one of only two mobile games on my phone, and with good reason. Despite its flaws, the game is engaging, allows room for casual players and hardcore players to get the most out of the game in the ways they choose to play the game, whether that is to be a completionist of their Pokédex or “paint the town red/blue/yellow,” and has encouraged a multitude of trainers, young and old, to get out of their houses and comfort zones and re-engage in their community to come together for a wonderful purpose: to catch ’em all.
-Mitsu
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