The terrifying thing is how the games location of items can manipulate foot traffic and could show bias of one business over the other across the street in turn manipulating be economy by moving us and our eventual spending around like lemmings....but it's just Pokemon right?
Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
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Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#42The terrifying thing is how the games location of items can manipulate foot traffic and could show bias of one business over the other across the street in turn manipulating be economy by moving us and our eventual spending around like lemmings....but it's just Pokemon right?
Yeah - it's definitely "new age" advertising but why jump to a "terrifying" "moving us around like lemmings" conclusion? If a company wants to spend money to drop lures good for them. People can go there if they choose or just ignore it.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#43The 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…
It's bad because it can be. Mobile apps are easily updated, so they don't feel the need to do as much testing. There's no way an actual Pokemon release would be that buggy, because they couldn't fix bugs later.
This game has been in Beta for several months, with several long standing issues not being fixed. Plus the game is built off a 5+ year old engine. If that's not enough testing, I don't know what is.
Also the 3DS has patching/software updates. The Pokemon Company could release games as buggy as they want. They have the good sense not to do that, since it devalues their product.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#44The 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…
To be fair, mostly anybody would hit server issues hitting Twitter/tinder-like scales in 3 days. It's impressive that they're staying up as well as they are
It's not just the server issues, it's that the app logic is terrible. When you hit a Pokemon with your Pokeball, if there is a network error, the app just freezes. The ball drifts to the ground without blinking, and the loading indicator appears periodically, but it never progresses past that point. It just flat out cannot recover from dropping packets, no matter how long you wait. And it's not like the network is down; if you kill the app and reopen it, it is able to load the information it needs.
In many places, this happens with at least 50% probability on a mobile connection. It literally fails more often than not. The advice people are giving is to turn off LTE, which seems to help for some reason. But come on.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
It's too bad in a way, Pokemon Go is a way better idea, Ingress always felt like some cool ideas thrown together in search of a unifying theme. It is the only AR game with any real lasting appeal that I'm aware of, until perhaps Pokemon Go, but a lot of the choices made in building Ingress are less than ideal for Pokemon, and yet they form its foundation. I was never really clear what kept Niantic afloat, I always figured they were nothing more than a cost center at Google. Perhaps Pokemon will have enough success to prompt them to evolve the gameplay, and fix some of the common bugs with Ingress.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do hope they rebalance it a bit. The only way to get coins without paying money is to own a gym, which is difficult to do. And less you're willing to go farm a bunch of little Pokéstops then you probably have to buy potions. If there was something equivalent to the Pokécenter then things would be better. It be nice to be able to battle friends to train your Pokémon as well.
Niantic are either too busy or really don't care about social media. There's lots of people pointing out real problems with the game. I hope it's not like Ingress all over again, where the only way to get something fixed was to know someone at Google.
Since it has the Pokémon company's brand (and therefore Nintendo's) I really hope to be a great app. One of the things I love about Nintendo with how well they polish all their software.
Instead it's very clear to me that it's a Google app with Pokémon branding. Release fast, bugs are OK, we can fix them later. Don't worry about the fact that the iOS version feels like an Android app and is somewhat obnoxious to use.
I can't help but think that if this game had another two months of polish it would be amazing. Instead, it's in its current slightly crappy state with a serious server issue going on.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#47The 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 ins…
Yes, but there were also many uninstalls. These numbers are accounting for that.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#48Who cares about Tindr. Tindr is the poster boy for lowest common denominator both in the social and technological sense. Ok, maybe Ashley Madison.
>Tindr is the poster boy for lowest common denominator
Why yes, it does have very broad appeal.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#49The 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.
I can put up with a fair amount. There are some Z-buffering issues that don't really matter. I've seen occasional glitches with the way the background works in AR.
But how can you not remember if I've me that the sound? How can you not remember I logged in? With a handful of ultrabasic bugs it feels like they just didn't even try.
If they are network issues why do I get stuck in a try again later screen were the only thing I can do is force quit the app?
It's a lazy as hell and Nintendo should be ashamed that someone's dragging their name down like that.
Re: Pokémon GO: The Data Behind America’s Latest Obsession
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Ingress also had an invite-only launch, which meant that by the time lots of people got into the game, the portals were all super high level and playing the game was difficult.
Pokemon Go is already showing signs of the same problem at Gyms, where newer players are going to have to grind for days to take on a gym that their team doesn't already own.