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Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

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Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#31

Post by bpicolo »

MBCook wrote: post #20
gre wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engagement is crazy right now. I drove home at 3am last night and stopped by a PokeStop, and as I was leaving the parking lot, another car pulled in just to play... Same at the church by my place 15 minutes later. Different car. What will really be telling is how many people still play after a week or two.

I feel that if they don't get the server issues under control soon (I saw they delayed the European lunch) then it doesn't matter what WOULD have happened the game is going to lose players in the social/network effects won't be there.

I think more of an issue will be people hitting "completion" relatively soon. Certainly, the most interesting part right now is just catching new Pokemon, but there aren't so many that you can't burn through most of that enjoyment fairly quickly.

The gym battles are terribly boring.

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#32

Post by Washuu »

ro_sharp wrote: post #2

I'm in Australia, and I've never seen an irl viral phenomenon on the streets like this. In the inner city of Brisbane, every second person I see is staring at their phone, swiping up to catch Pokemon. Mobs of 100+ people chasing 'lures' are being moved on from parks in the middle of the night. And there was a pub crawl: https://www.facebook.com/events/267390546965461/

I caught one of the local, younger, farmers stopping his tractor to catch a Pokemon.

Which is a really great way to do it since playing this game in a rural area basically requires walking significantly further than in a city.

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#33

Post by Fej »

I expect this to go quite a bit like Miitomo. Quick uptake, followed by most of the userbase getting bored and forgetting about it.

This game is pretty superficial. There isn't much to do. It unfortunately perpetuates the notion that mobile games cannot have depth or good, lasting gameplay.

Last phone game I really enjoyed was Tiny Wings. That was a while ago. Since then, anything I play on my phone has been in an emulator with a GameKlip and a DualShock 3.

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#34

Post by girvo »

ro_sharp wrote: post #2

I'm in Australia, and I've never seen an irl viral phenomenon on the streets like this. In the inner city of Brisbane, every second person I see is staring at their phone, swiping up to catch Pokemon. Mobs of 100+ people chasing 'lures' are being moved on from parks in the middle of the night. And there was a pub crawl: https://www.facebook.com/events/267390546965461/

I live in the Valley, and ended up hanging out with some of the people from the pub crawl. It's amazing to watch :)

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#35

Post by diziet »

The data and methodology is pretty suspect here -- Google for Pokémon Go reports 5m-10m installs while Tinder is reported to have 50m to 100m installs. This is an order of magnitude more worldwide installs. I think the 'current data' is being heavily weighted and producing a too sensational of an article.

For Tinder, about 25% of it's installs came from the US on Android. That still puts it at 12.5m - 25m Android installs range.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tinder

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nianticlab...

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#37

Post by rspeer »

MBCook wrote: post #26
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ingress was as exciting as this. And it was a lot of fun running into other players (friendly and enemy) and spotting them from a few dozen yards away. I still regularly talk to people I met on the Ingress scene, including one enemy player who was, at the time, my "archnemesis" of sorts. I did meetups with other local players to takeover large areas as a group and stuff as well. But yeah, version 2 is cool too, I gue…

I'm only vaguely familiar with ingress, did it have a collecting mechanic like Pokémon? How did you get stronger to take over points on the map?

It definitely didn't have a "catch them all" mechanic, and that alone lets Pokémon Go have much more of a feeling of personal progress.

In Ingress, everything is about taking over portals for your team. You get items with weird names that you use for taking over portals. The maximum strength of the items you get is determined by your experience level, up to 8. After level 8 all players are equal.

What Ingress has that Pokemon Go doesn't have is "linking", where you form straight lines between portals your team owns that you've visited, and if you form a triangle of links in your color, you form a "field" that claims the area within it for your team.

That was cool, but I have made enough links and fields for a lifetime. Eventually there isn't much more to do, unless you're teaming up and making elaborate plans to form crazy huge fields, for which the reward is that you get to screenshot it and gloat about it on Reddit for a few hours before someone undoes your field, possibly by cheating.

I hope that Pokemon battles become as compelling as linking, or more. (I have only had one Pokemon battle that didn't crash or glitch out so far.)

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#38

Post by chrischen »

MBCook wrote: post #12

The amazing thing to me is that, at least on iOS, the game is pretty objectively bad. Of course that hasn't stopped me from sinking a lot of time into it this weekend. I've spent $10 on it, which is easily a record for free to play game for me. The server issues are one thing, but the game doesn't even get lots of basic things right. If the server goes away, or sometimes if I'm just out of the app too long, I have to…

You know it's bad because the previous incarnation, Ingress, had no where near as many players.

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#39

Post by georgeecollins »

MBCook wrote: post #12

The amazing thing to me is that, at least on iOS, the game is pretty objectively bad. Of course that hasn't stopped me from sinking a lot of time into it this weekend. I've spent $10 on it, which is easily a record for free to play game for me. The server issues are one thing, but the game doesn't even get lots of basic things right. If the server goes away, or sometimes if I'm just out of the app too long, I have to…

Speaking as someone who has helped develop two extremely successful mobile games "objective" goodness is pretty meaningless. People have more patience than you expect for a game that captures their imagination and will put up with buggyness. In the long run, if a game isn't polished it will lose because of retention. But pure technical polish is often overrated.

Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession

#40

Post by MaxLeiter »

chrischen wrote: post #38
MBCook wrote: post #12

The amazing thing to me is that, at least on iOS, the game is pretty objectively bad. Of course that hasn't stopped me from sinking a lot of time into it this weekend. I've spent $10 on it, which is easily a record for free to play game for me. The server issues are one thing, but the game doesn't even get lots of basic things right. If the server goes away, or sometimes if I'm just out of the app too long, I have to…

You know it's bad because the previous incarnation, Ingress, had no where near as many players.

Ingress ultimately hard more complicated gameplay and less brand appeal
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