13 Jul 2016 - Tags: mobile, nintendo, pokemon
Few would have thought that Pokemon Go would be the hit that it has been. It has only been a few weeks and Pokemon is all the craze again, with people catching pokemons everywhere you go. As a pokemon fan of course I had to try Pokemon Go and I have spend several hours walking and catching pokemons while going and coming from work. The first few hours were really fun, looking for pokemons around me and trying find which ones live around my usual route, but as I keep catching them I started to feel that maybe my nostalgia and love for the Pokemon franchise was the reason I kept playing.
Pokemon Go is basically a simplified version of Ingress but with a pokemon theme. The first time I tried Ingress I was overwhelmed by the amount of content, data, text and quests I had to do, to the point that I stopped playing because I felt I could not commit to this parallel world. But now when I see Pokemon Go I feel that is such a bare bones game, no in-game chat, no trading, no PvP, lame battle system and such a horrible grind to evolve your pokemons. I understand that for this game to be successful it had to be adapted for a more casual crowd, but may(just maybe) they went a bit too far.
I feel that Pokemon Go has all the characteristics for it to be just a fad. It’s initial appeal came from the use of the Pokemon trademark and It’s popularity exploded thanks to social media and the mouth-to-mouth. Pokemon Go has achieved a very large player-base, but we still need to see what the retention rates will be, specially given some aspects like the amount of grinding required. The problem of when something becomes such a big hit so quickly is that there is the risk of burning out your players. The timers in mobile F2P games are used to prevent players from over- dosing in the game, Pokemon Go does not have this mechanic and instead it always has activities you can do. Even though this may sound like a positive point, on a game with no clear end-game, it can easily lead to players exhausting themselves and leaving the game.
I really hope Pokemon Go will be a success and not just another Periscope or Peach. If Niantic can improve the social features, fix the bugs and add more content, it can really become a new juggernaut in the gaming world. Only time will tell.