Comment by MrJagil | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MrJagil | Hacker News Reader

"We could never have expected it would become such a huge success. Our best engineers were unable to foresee the server capacity to support the players’ demand. Our biggest prediction was 50 times lower than what actually happened. We knew Pokémon was a powerful brand with 20 years of existence and over 200 million fans across the globe, but people told us this game was for kids, that it had no appeal, that people would need to get out of their homes to play. It wasn’t easy, it was a massive bet. Back then, people were already talking about augmented reality, but nobody knew when this technology would be accessible. And then what happened: within two minutes, you could access an augmented reality experience and catch Pokémon in the real world, free of charge. And this game blew up without the need to advertise it."

From an interesting interview with a Niantec Exec on the linked sub, stating they're adding PvP aswell: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/6e3qt2/legend...

> Back then, people were already talking about augmented reality, but nobody knew when this technology would be accessible.

I still don't get why people talk about Pokémon Go and AR. As if one had anything to do with the other.

Pokémon Go has zero actual AR; it's just overlaying a 3D animation on top of a camera feed, with no relation to reality other than readings from a shitty smartphone gyroscope. When playing, I would actually disable that feature anyway, because it made catching Pokémon harder (performance issues + no "AR" means no gyroscope input, which makes the game no longer care about you maintaining constant orientation).

The AR we've been promised for decades now was about overlaying computer data that's related to what you're looking at in the real world. At this point, even those "point camera at the printed tag, see a 3D model on your phone" have more AR in them than Pokémon Go.

Marketing.

Well, that's why I hate it. It destroys any meaning words have.

The map is real, the Pokemon and gyms that appear on it are not. Does that not count?

Not in a meaningful sense, no. Otherwise, Google Maps themselves would be AR (the locations are real - map markers are not).

Yeah but on Google Maps the markers represent a real place and in this game they represent a gym or Pokemon that is not.

The "real" AR might be the shared experience of location-based spawning of Pokemon, Pokecenters, arenas, etc. especially based on real landmarks.

Sure, but then that's not anything new. Any persistent-world multiplayer game would qualify, and if you want to focus on real-world locations, then there's at least Ingress.

Also, last time I checked, Pokémon spawning wasn't synchronized. There's close to zero shared world state between the player (only the static - spawn zones, Pokéstop locations, Gym location and status - and lure).

Anyway, to be clear: I'm not complaining about the game itself - just about abusing the term "AR" to describe it.

I might be mistaken about what you mean by "spawning wasn't synchronized" but if I see a Pokemon pop up, I know that whoever I'm playing with will see the same one in the same place. That's a huge part of the fun of the game.

I'm not sure if that is true now; it definitely wasn't true a few months ago when I played it. Spawn locations are shared - i.e. everyone sees the same probability distribution of finding a particular Pokémon in a given spot. But if you saw one spawn, your friend won't see the same one because this was not synchronized. It was entirely local to a player. So you couldn't e.g. steal a Pokémon from someone else trying to get it too.

I think ever since it came out Pokemon spawned in the same exact place for everyone (hense cheating tools came about like maps that showed where all the pokemon are), but yeah you couldn't "steal" pokemon, everyone can catch the same pokemon which makes for videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-XnTDcQZjY

Yeah, that's what I meant.

This thread reminded me of:

"Recently I went with my nephew to hunt Pokémon. We were walking down the street and a bunch of kids approached us. They were also hunting Pokemon. My nephew and these children got into a bit of a fight because they were trying to capture the same invisible creatures. It seemed strange to me. But these Pokémon were very real to the children.

And then it hit me: This is just like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! You have two sides fighting over something that I cannot see. I look at the stones of buildings in Jerusalem and I just see stones. But Christians, Jews, and Muslims who look at the same stones see a holy city. It’s their imagination, but they are willing to kill for it. That’s virtual reality, too."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/the-pos...

Doubly interesting given that, unless they were fighting for the ownership of a gym, there were no "same" invisible creatures - each player has their own Pokémon spawning, and that state is not shared between players.

Given that the author isn't that familiar with Pokemon Go, it seems plausible that he could have gotten some mechanics confused.

What a weak comparison. The Israelis and the Palestinians are fighting over a homeland. Humans have been fighting over land since the beginning of time.

AR is a bit easier on the tongue than computer-mediated reality. I wouldn't be too upset over it, they're on the right track.

> Pokémon Go has zero actual AR; it's just overlaying a 3D animation on top of a camera feed, with no relation to reality other than readings from a shitty smartphone gyroscope.

Isn't it also positioning the Pokémon based on the camera feed ? I was under the impression that it was detecting objects in the picture and was trying to position the Pokémon in a way that made sense, but I was never sure.

Not in my experience. I believe the placement is random (in particular, that the distance from you to the Pokémon was simply randomized). It does "feel" like they're placed "in a way that makes sense", because the image is an overlay on top of camera feed - which guarantees it is on top of everything in the camera feed, and the brain will play tricks to make sense of the picture. It works especially well if you don't have the feel for how big the Pokémon should be compared to the environment (most of us don't). See also, "perspective optical illusions" as a search keyphrase.

Also, again from what I remember when playing ~6 months ago, the Pokémon placement in AR mode locks orientation and distance. So walking forward is literally the same as standing still - only the background camera feed changes, but Pokémon and its animation isn't affected in any way. This again supports the theory that placement is random and totally unrelated to "real world".

See, the thing is, I think that's all it was. Hype at the start. Things aren't looking so well now.

I've heard that the developers are continuously adding things, but it looks like the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on it.[1]

[1]:https://redd.it/6dn5kp

The link you posted, did you read past the top comment? There are a lot of people still playing and many of those that are are still heavily involved. I can't say I've ever played every day or every time I get my phone out, but I know enough people that play often that I still keep it around and play once in a while especially if there is an event.

Of course there was a spike at first release, like every other game. Less press after a year is hardly indicative of the game being only hype. If you can name a game that didn't get less press a year after release I'd love to hear it.

> but it looks like the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on it

I'd love to hear why you think this is true other than someone mentioning it with no explanation in the top comment of that link. The only thing I can think of is a slight hit to pokeball drop rates which - while annoying - only affects those in rural areas who don't have access to many pokestops. This game (like Ingress) has always been geared toward urban areas and ignored rural players. This was an issue day 1 and it hasn't changed unfortunately, but this is not a recent development.

Honestly, the game is pretty hollow and is hardly something I'd recommend everyone pick up, but to say that it was only hype and things aren't looking good now is uninformed.

>If you can name a game that didn't get less press a year after release I'd love to hear it.

Major nitpick, i know, but you said game not app so i guess Minecraft[1] got pretty much a stable news coverage throughout the years

[1]https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=minecraft

I did read past the first comment. That's why I posted the link to the whole thread and not just that comment.

I didn't say the game flopped. It didn't, but the excitement the parent comment to mine talked about was just because of hype, and it is not holding up. That's was my observation.

If you look at the current numbers, I bet they aren't having problems with anticipating server capacity now.

Pokemon was a big parts of multiple generations, so the initial outburst of players; because of nostalgia. The retention rate is very low I would imagine.

There are still plenty of people who regularly play in a casual way. I regularly play and have a number of friends who do.

The people who played and quit with the hype weren't the people paying money in the first place. The people who were throwing money at the game are still playing and still paying money. And they now have corporate sponsorships rolling now as well. For example, I just saw an event this past weekend that clearly paid to have lures up at all stops in the area.

I don't think that things "aren't looking so well" yet. It doesn't have the peak playerbase anymore, but its certainly still making good money.

If not looking so well is still being number 25 in the top grossing charts on iOS months after release, I want to be not looking so well.

Yes, it is no where near what it was at launch, but that is because the launch stats were astronomical.

Could also be because its not a good game. It could be so much more and dominating the charts instead of hanging in them.

I agree it is a huge success, but it could have been much more.

It would be interesting to know their current churn rate. Every time there is a new update to the app, they force you to download it before allowing you access. From a practical standpoint I've always assumed this lobs off large portions of their audience (it's a big download and isn't trivial).

But if they are still gaining new users, perhaps that doesn't matter. Be interesting to know what that gain/loss math looks like.

It's doing really well. Not as well as the hype train at the start but it's EXTREMELY popular with kids and high-schoolers.

The adult contingent has dropped off a lot but I bet once they add PvP it'll pick up.

It's still a cute game, but there is little depth atm.

> I bet once they add PvP it'll pick up.

At this point I honestly lost hope that they'll ever add it.

Niantic aren't exactly speedy, it's true.

If the game had been playable at launch, it would have retained a lot more of its initial userbase. The constant crashes and long outages turned a lot of people off.

In general, "the game has become a lot more harder to play without spending money on it" doesn't mean that the game is doing poorly - it's a sign that they have gotten the user growth/initial advertisement that they wanted, and are working on the revenue part.

After all, for such games, if you're not going to spend money, then you're not a customer - the only reason for allowing you to play is to use you to advertise the game to potential customers; making it harder to play freely might be the only way to turn you from an user to a customer.

Huh, apparently Nintendo's chronic inability to judge a market extends to companies they work with.

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