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The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

theatlantic.com

21–30 of 57 posts

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#21
It's effectively a way to meet other people and explore new places. Being pokemon themed gives people something to bond over and connect with each other.

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.

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#22

Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…

Something I'd add is that many people who actually play (buy) the real Pokemon games realize the state of this game as well. Most of my friends who play Go are people who know Pokemon from the 90s, not people who have contributed to the franchise economically for the past 20 years.

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.

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a reskinned Ingress, with simpler game mechanics. 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…

> Have you written software? That is the most simplistic advice in the world. I think the above poster was using hyperbolic language to make their point. Niantic was founded by engineers from Google. It seems a bit ridiculous that with all the expertise and funding they have, they couldn't even provide a stable backend architecture. It's not that difficult to scale an api using Google's app engine or aws. >No caching…

It's plausible that the gyms are cached, as well as your mileage tracker - both of these take a few minutes to update (but from a user perspective they just seem broken)

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By your thoughts, all software should have been updated in a few days to be bug free. 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.

Not arguing with the bugginess or not bugginess. 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.

I think most plumbers wouldn't have much problem with that request, either hearing it or complying with it. After all plumbing is what they do. Hell I'm not even a plumber and I've found and fixed several plumbing leaks already this year.

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#25
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GO has teams (Red, Blue, Yellow). You need to get to level 5 to join a team. Once you join a team you can battle at and take over gyms.

Well that answers it. If I can get the app to work long enough to reach level 5 I'll try that. 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.

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!

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#26

Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…

For such an awful app, you certainly seem to use it a lot.

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#27
TLDR for the article: The nascent field of AR games has not, heretofore, produced compelling experiences. There now is one wildly successful AR game, but it is successful because it taps into a massive, well-loved cultural phenomenon. This is "tragic".

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.

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#28

Well, from what I've seen, there would have been no other way for this app to be successful without piggybacking on the success of another company's obsessive fans. No other customer would put up with a game that is so badly made. From a developer's perspective, this app is a true disaster, with an amazing level of incompetence that permeates the entire launch. First, the servers have been going up and down like a yo…

This is a reskinned Ingress, with simpler game mechanics. 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…

Don't be condescending, I wouldn't have ranted or cared if I didn't have a clue. Others are commenting on game mechanics, lack of features or use of AR, but I'm not a game dev so I don't care.

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.

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their Onboarding is horrendous. It took me awhile to figure out how to actually capture a Pokemon.

The onboarding is surprisingly bad, so bad, I wonder if it was intentional. It sort of forces you to get social to compare notes on how to make things work. Most of what I've learned so far has come from either trial & error or from social sources (in meatspace and cyberspace).

Minecraft in the early days was similar, but it's also what I enjoyed about it. Having to have the Minecraft wiki open on another screen just to figure out how to actually build anything.. :-D

Re: The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money

#30
The saddest part to me is that the AR experience is still sub-optimal, which given the state of monocular SLAM isn't necessary. Niantic, with the funding they have and google connections, could have given the AR function 6DOF had they tried a little harder.

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.

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