The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
"""Even Google couldn’t make Ingress work without reskinning it as Pokémon. And while Pokémon is popular and basically harmless, the alternating reality it offers is still that of a branded, licensed, kiddie cock-fighting fantasy."""
I think the real tragedy is that the author of this thing can't lighten up and enjoy something that is making all kinds of people happy.
Edit: He even links to this example of why it is a wonderful thing! https://imgur.com/KAwwxFp But no, it's a tragedy because it's corporate-branded and juvenile. OK.
People definitely bring it up, but what are they meant to do? Collapse a media franchise worth many millions of dollars?
I'm utterly convinced the average 13 year old can separate the concepts of fake monsters that disappear back inside their little round homes from the reality of two animals trapped in a small area fighting to the death.
Fortunately, most people are able to separate the fantasy/gameplay elements from their (real or perceived) violent equivalents IRL. This is the first time I've encountered the Pokemon/cockfighting analogy. While I find it novel, and while it made me stop and think for a second, a second is all I needed.
You know that's the real rub for the author.
As the article mentions, the gameplay is significantly easier than Ingress. Also, the theme is much more family friendly and less paranoid. It's got cute pocket monsters you can collect throughout the day. Additionally, the camera aspect makes it built-in social sharing material, especially since it's a palatable theme.
I'm not going to share Ingress photos with anyone else, but a humorous picture of Magickarp flopped on the beach is fun to share.
I'm seeing a lot of people who are completely ignorant of Pokémon playing this game. I see parents downloading it to go on walks with their kids. It's fun, easy, and fits in nicely with people's aspirations (more exercise).
None of that was really in place with any of the previous iterations. They were all too "serious", dark, and/or niche audience.
I suspected Niantic expected this to be a moderate hit with Ingress players and Pokémon fans - both were a niche audience. It's the gameplay and family-friendly theme that has made this as popular as it is.
While I appreciate that the article exists, and think that its message (the apparent necessity of corporate branding to drive VR) is a good one to consider, their logic may have some holes. Pokemon is not just re-skinned Ingress.
Majestic's slogan was "it plays you". It played on its schedule, not yours. The pressure made it more compelling, but limited the potential audience. It was like having to be on line for a raid in WoW, or LARPing.
Pokémon Go is a casual augmented reality game. It's not even multiplayer. Simple wins in casual gaming. (Angry Birds, anyone?)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcTDMYq3xCw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG0oY8obuGU
First, the servers have been going up and down like a yoyo, which despite its unprecedented success should never have happened more than once.
Second the app on iOS crashes every few minutes - I've never seen a more buggy app. Using Unity no less. It's not due to some weird edge case, it's constant... log the damn errors and make sure it doesn't happen again. It's Monday, I should have had an update from the App Store by now, but nope.
Third, there's apparently no caching (which might explain their server problems). Every time the app starts (or more likely crashes and restarts), it hits the server to download all the local POI info again from scratch. God help you if you're in a spot with bad connectivity.
Fourth, what is it doing do drain the battery so badly?? I've driven for a couple hours with maps apps running without killing my device. It must have zero logic in the app to manage power drain because it'll kill my iPhone in an hour easily.
This game owes its success 100% to the popularity of Pokemon and nothing else, the app would never had any success if it had to stand on its own merits. As it is, Niantic is doing its utmost to kill the franchise with their ineptitude.
As far as I can tell there are no "friends", "clans", or even any way to battle your pokemon. I think I've clicked through everything and after restarting the game 50 some times looking for the core features associated with pokemon and now I've given up.
In what way does this constitute a game? The technical issues can be fixed but I feel like there are some more fundamental features. What was the company even doing this entire time? Those spinners in the pokecenters couldn't have taken years to build, and it also couldn't have taken years to populate the map with zubats and wevils.
It's a good thing they decided not to include that information from the start. They wouldn't want people to think there might actually be something fun to do.
You might be right! Just think of how unstable the system would be, if people thought that!
More seriously I think as tech people we overvalue product quality and undervalue market demand. If you create something people really want then they will tolerate very poor quality.
Log the damn errors and make sure it doesn't happen again? Have you written software? That is the most simplistic advice in the world. By your thoughts, all software should have been updated in a few days to be bug free.
Had an update from the App Store? You realize that is gated by Apple and that you have to submit the update and wait an indeterminate amount of time for the update to be approved before appearing on the App Store?
No caching? How would you cache game state when at any time the board state can change without warning, due to the actions of another player? And cached game state would invalidate your game actions, which would cause inconsistencies.
With draining battery, it needs location services as well as constant internet connectivity. If you're looking for directions, you can make educated guesses when you're going to have to pull location again. Whereas now, you have to constantly be polling, because you yourself don't know where you're headed.
And re: Nianitic's "ineptitude", you don't have any ideas what problems they're trying to solve.
Anyone who has used this app knows it is extremely crashy. It's not supposed to be bug-free, but releasing an app this crashy is fairly sloppy.
But arguing with "just log it and fix it" is like saying to a plumber "just find the leak and fix it".
It's insulting to both the developer and the plumber.
Look, it's a new app. There's going to be issues with it. There's going to be missing features that everybody wants. Does that mean they did a shitty job? No, not at all. I get that releasing a buggy app is far from ideal, but does anyone here actually know what they're going through? What constraints they had? What their budget was? No, no we don't. So who are we to sit here on a form and put down something that our fellow developers have built? To talk about how much better we would have done it?
I don't have the game yet, but my wife does, and it's been a ton of fun. We walked around our quiet little neighbourhood the other night. We both honestly figured we'd be the only people playing. Then we saw a mother and her son sitting on a bench at a corner defending their gym. Not 50 meters down the road an elderly couple, easily in their 70's asked us what team we were on, and playfully gave us crap since we were yellow and they were blue! In the end, we walked around for an hour and saw at least 20 different people or groups playing. Everyone with smiles on their faces. Everyone being friendly, outgoing, and talking to strangers. How can you consider this game anything but a huge success?
>No caching? How would you cache game state when at any time the board state can change without warning, due to the actions of another player? And cached game state would invalidate your game actions, which would cause inconsistencies. The app could at least cache some of the info of your pokemon as well as the locations of nearby stops and gyms. Then only the status of those gyms and nearby pokemon would need to be synchronized when you reopen it.
That's like saying "they have Google engineers, therefore they must have Google funding and they should be able to smart things out." AFAIK, Ingress was built on app engine, and had huge scaling issues.
> The app could at least cache some of the info of your pokemon as well as the locations of nearby stops and gyms. Then only the status of those gyms and nearby pokemon would need to be synchronized when you reopen it.
It's not clear how much faster that would be. The majority of the RPC time is probably due to network latency issues, not the amount of data being fetched. That said, without slapping a profiler on it, you can't tell either way.
I say this as an individual who has made something of a career out of fixing/polishing mobile Unity apps from utterly unshippable garbage to decent products. More than a few have called for significant native code accessed via the FFI, because Unity just can't cut it.
I would recommend not using Unity at all, but that would mean losing out on the cheap labour pouring out of the dime-a-dozen game development schools.
- buggy unreliable code is inevitable, but it shouldn't bring down the whole app. It isn't often that I see mobile apps crash to OS. There should be a finite number of things that can cause it.
- The are well know strategies to cache data that may change over time, this is true for all caches, if it can't change over time it isn't even really a cache, its just a static asset.
This app crashes so much, it must be some really obvious exception they're not catching. I don't expect it to be bug free, but constantly crashing? Since you're obviously such a pro, let me ask you: Would you release software that crashes so often?
Apple doesn't have contigencies for top-tier developers and emergency updates? Huh.
Caching is a famously hard problem, but wiping the entire state and starting again for basic information that doesn't change is sloppy. Deltas and common sense helps here. Same thing for use of GPS and data.
Seriously, I have no idea why you're defending such cruddy work, but even if I was completely clueless or outright hypocritical (I've launched buggy software, trust me), it doesn't excuse Niantic's complete screw-up here. Normally I give devs the benefit of the doubt, but this is crazy. So many people affected for no good reason.
Thanks to the mysteries of Apple, sometimes your emergency update to fix a crashing bug takes several more days to get approved than the update that introduced the crash in the first place...
Where was I condescending? I gave good answers to all your points.
>This app crashes so much, it must be some really obvious exception they're not catching.
Who's condescending now? "Since it breaks so much, sheesh, it should be really obvious how to fix it." Nothing is really obvious how to fix, if they knew how to fix it they already wood have
>I don't expect it to be bug free, but constantly crashing? Since you're obviously such a pro, let me ask you: Would you release software that crashes so often?
Inferiority complex much? I never said I was a pro. And releasing an obviously buggy product sometimes is tied to contractual agreements or marketing deals. Once you start a marketing blitz, you _need_to release something. Engineering is subordinate to actually, you know, making money.
>Apple doesn't have contigencies for top-tier developers and emergency updates? Huh.
Not for "top tier developers". Also emergency updates are generally only relate to when there are security or privacy concerns. Crashing doesn't bother them much, if it made it through their initial vetting process.
>Caching is a famously hard problem, but wiping the entire state and starting again for basic information that doesn't change is sloppy. Deltas and common sense helps here. Same thing for use of GPS and data.
You said yourself that the app is really buggy, and then you also want to introduce a level of caching on top of it? That will make it even buggier and harder to diagnose.
>So many people affected for no good reason.
Which lays credence to the fact that Niantic made the right balance between buggy software and shipping. Not many people would be affected if the game weren't popular despite its bugs and limitations, so shipping at this stage seems like the proper thing to do.
I haven't played ingress in a couple of years. if it was simply a reskin, they'd have avoided so many "the network is always available" errors.
Also, I don't think people are as invested in Pokemon Go as the numbers seem to suggest. It's something fun for a few days, but because of how legitimately boring the game is, normal people won't be able to keep playing once their friends stop posting about it.
Then I'll posit you haven't played many mobile games, much less the top 10 for the past few years. Blood Brothers 1 (as with most DeNA titles) was notoriously this unstable, for example.
My thoughts: I've met dozens of people while playing Pokemon Go in the past few days. Seen many clumps of strangers trading tips about where different Pokemon are and comparing the ones they caught. The gameplay is not particularly polished or deep, and the servers are constantly being overwhelmed by the game's success-disaster, but overall, I see a lot of promise. If they add more mechanics that encourage people to form groups and play together, it can drive a lot more positive, serendipitous connections in the world - a rebuttal to those who think that smartphones will necessarily make us more introverted and asocial.
I don't fault Niantic at all for the bugs, crashes, or capacity issues. Most apps have bugs and issues on their first release. Almost never do they surpass Twitter's DAU within their first week of launch. They should be lauded for such a great success and for keeping the lights on with so much usage.
Items like the 'attractor' that brings pokemon to an area for everyone attracts people as well as pokemon.
I hope there are more ways to be social with it in the future, because that's it's strength.
Our little team have been able to do monocular SLAM 6DOF with 1/50th of the funding, so it's confusing why they didn't go that route.
Even still, it appears that the users really don't care, which is even more interesting to me actually - especially given the complaints that people have leveled at mobile based AR technologies to date.
Cause they don't have the experience?
I usually turn off the AR so i don't have to wave my phone around like an idiot.
I'd be surprised if this was true - being a part of Google and all for quite some time.
I'd be really interested to know what percentage of users have AR turned off.
This "game" had so much potential, but they removed all the gameplay!
Frank Lantz is a really positive guy overall, so again, I think his negativity overstates how he actually feels. His company Area/Code was not acquired for its location based games, and Area/Code never made a game where you look through a camera and see a thing superimposed in it. Suggesting Area/Code 'got there first,' as Ian does, is a bit of a stretch. Honestly, it's doubtful anyone at Niantic has actually played a single thing Area/Code has made, not even Drop7. Nobody would put a screenshot of Plundr in their pitch deck and say, "We're going to make the next big version of this." Besides, Plundr was never released as a public game anyway, so it would be absurd to compare this actual thing Pokemon Go to what is basically a design fiction.
But even if you allow that all these advertisement game footnotes are genuinely cited/used in Pokemon Go, you're forgetting that none of that really matters in gaming as an art form. The only person's opinion that really matters is the consumer's (and to a limited extend the Google Play Store editors and App Store editors). Players are less interested in who invented what concept. If you're going to reference the past, reference familiar control schemes (like nearly every console shooter references Halo) or properties (like, well, Pokemon). It's surprising that professors of games-as-art like Ian and Frank would seem to get this wrong.
People on this forum are probably most critical of the bugs, but again, none of that really matters. Other commenters have said it more succinctly: if you have something great, people will deal with its problems. Forget DeNA games (like one commenter noted); have you ever tried to play Minecraft on an iPhone? You're moving around your FPS head with your finger and using a virtual joystick, which is literally the most horrible control scheme for touch possible. Kids still deal with it, they really don't care.
Why are there people looking to assassinate Pokémon? I think the Niantic team was given multiple opportunities to do something unconventional, which basically never happens, especially never in any of the jobs of people on these forums. They're kind of rubbing in all your faces that you really don't have to be making elegant hierarchies and making the world a better place all day, if only someone trusted you to do something weird.