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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

#81

Post by ap3 »

spike021 wrote: post #62
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…

I've had issues where I definitely successfully capture a pokemon, but either lose connection due to being underground on transit or the servers 'crashing', so I wind up not having the pokemon saved to my record. Makes me think they aren't doing much, or any, local caching.

It's happened a few times that after catching a pokemon the pokeball just lays there and I can't click on it to register

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

#82

Post by kriro »

Release in Germany is delayed due to server issues. You can download the APK and play the game if you want to. I'm sticking with Ingress until the final release.

It's pretty bad that Google can't scale this. It's not like the mass of users is unexpected. They have Ingress data to go on and there's the Pokemon factor. Makes me not want to use the Google cloud for my next project.

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

#83

Post by jomamaxx »

astrange wrote: post #69
jomamaxx wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do porn, gambling, and films like 'Transformers' that literally have no plot.

That's pretty harsh for an app that just shows you people's European vacation photos and lets you talk to them.

Aside from some basic benefits, it mostly encourages people to make judgements about important things ('human relationships') based on the most absolutely material, fleeting and trivial physical elements. Especially given the magnitude of 'choice', it commoditizes people. Even worse, it normalizes this behaviour. Far from connecting us, it actually disconnects us.

Talking recently to a female friend recently who is on Tindr ... it was pretty astonishing how numb she'd become to the profiles... absolute objectification. Even as she was fairly self-aware about it.

It's about as healthy as nicotine.

Admittedly, it's an absolutely brilliant business model, tapping into primal forces, but it's not a step forward. It's a step sideways, at best, and maybe even a little step back.

When VC meets creativity meets technology, it will induce a lot of dollars in this direction irrespective of long term positive economic or social outcomes, often taking attention away from 'better' causes. Absent reasonably enlightened consideration (and I mean just 'basic' consideration, not some holier-than-though ideology), there is no moving forward - just moving in random directions, pulled by the arbitrary forces of hyper-populist memes and trends. Some will make a lot of $$$ as the money sloshes around in a zero-sum game, but surely, but that really isn't the point. In the long run, the Valley and tech scene will lose authenticity and be about as credible as politicians, homeopaths, or Amway.

I'll bet $100 that anyone working in tech or any other industry for more than 5-8 years, will start to understand that it's not about 'a job' or 'making bling', or 'being startup famous' and that they work they do has impact across cultures and communities, and that they are ultimately responsible for whatever it is they are working on. Given that there are 10 000 projects around to chose from, it's hot hard to climb higher on the ladder than Tindr, by almost any measure, even $$$.

I don't really care about Tindr that much, I have about as much 'against it' as I do a ridiculous Transformers film (which is nothing), but it's not worth any attention either.

I'm looking forward to Pokemon :)

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

#84

Post by syngrog66 »

georgeecollins wrote: post #39
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.

your comment is gold

to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer -- speaking in broad strokes, knowingly, and if you'll indulge me charitably. Because the difference between the commodity "let's ship something!" programmer/engineer and the one who truly knows his/her stuff, and who truly thinks about and knows about and cares about the edge cases, the big picture, the total system, all possible states in the state machine space, is what justifies those differences in (ostensible) upfront cost.

If you only want "the user is in location X and so icon Y should be rendered on their screen at point P" then you can get that pretty cheap, at globalization-plus-crowdsourced-plus-cloud-reduced prices

But if you want that above but also, with good performance, correctness, stability, scale, all edge cases handled reasonably and gracefully, and in v1.0, and well documented, and with good English, and maturity, curtesy, legality, i18n, etc... well, then you're going to pay. Or you should expect to pay. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Ever. If you think you have a free lunch, or a reduced cost lunch, then all it means is that somebody else off-stage is paying for that difference. And that difference may come back to bite you.

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

kdamken wrote: post #6

I think people will look back on this game as important, as something special. I've been playing video games for over twenty years, and I can't remember the last time something felt quite as exciting as this. Each time I've gone out, I've seen other people walking around playing, and everyone gets the same goofy smile when you ask them if they're playing Pokemon too. It shows the potential for AR games, and I think i…

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by joshschreuder »

fphhotchips wrote: post #50
MaxLeiter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I can see that. It would be good to be able to build your own gym up, so you could place a gym at your house after acquiring some kind of resource, and people could try and take you down.

It would help to add to the density of the map in less populated areas, though that might make the trespassing issue a lot worse.

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

#87

Post by voltagex_ »

joshschreuder wrote: post #86
fphhotchips wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah I can see that. It would be good to be able to build your own gym up, so you could place a gym at your house after acquiring some kind of resource, and people could try and take you down. It would help to add to the density of the map in less populated areas, though that might make the trespassing issue a lot worse.

Please submit this as a support request - this seems to be the only way to get Niantic to see anything as they don't seem to use Twitter, Facebook or HackerNews.

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

#88

Post by NamTaf »

If Google had any sense, they would be throwing a tonne more at this. It may be Ingress with less features and a Pokemon skin but that latter part is exactly the mainstream appeal they need to make AR big. This is their big chance to create a new market. If they sort out the bugginess and roll out decent features in the next couple of months to keep retention, they're onto something big.

At near-on midnight on Saturday, there were 150-200 people sitting in a 70m stretch of the main public park area here in Brisbane CBD (Southbank). During Sunday when I walked through, that was closer to 250-300. This is purely because there's 3 or 4 points of interest in close proximity so people congregate there to interact with it. It's truly a sight to behold.

This game has captured the imagination of non-gamers better than anything I can think of in recent history. It's nearing WoW / CoD levels of ubiquity.

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

#89

Post by voltagex_ »

kriro wrote: post #82

Release in Germany is delayed due to server issues. You can download the APK and play the game if you want to. I'm sticking with Ingress until the final release. It's pretty bad that Google can't scale this. It's not like the mass of users is unexpected. They have Ingress data to go on and there's the Pokemon factor. Makes me not want to use the Google cloud for my next project.

Google / Alphabet != Niantic. [1]

I'd be pretty embarrassed at not predicting the load that a game like this would put on servers. I wonder if they got a good deal from GCE?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niantic,_Inc.

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

#90

Post by pferde »

avree wrote: post #61
ben_jones wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at Imgur for example you'll see two observations by users: 1) It's amazing and 2) They have server issues. Notice that #2 is incredibly vague and almost hand-waved as a joke. We as developers see the minor flaws but most people just seem to see the good of it. EDIT: I'm not talking about Imgur. I'm talking about Imgur's posts about Pokemon Go. My bad for the ambiguity.

When I think of Imgur, I think of 1) first 'decent' image host in a dark time, 2) terrible policies/management.

You mean "decent" as in "can't even show a plain image file without javascript"? Puh-lease.
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