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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

#331

Post by kalleboo »

Nullabillity wrote: post #317
nemo44x wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In Pokemon Go i haven't found them worth it yet, but that may come later. It's not a requirement but I highly recommend to people to buy some "Lucky Eggs (2X XP for 30 minutes) and extra "Incense" (attract more Pokemon for 30 minutes) and use them together in the early game. The reason why is that you get 2X the experience for discovering a new Pokemon which you will do a lot of early on. By doubling that further y…

Why bother playing the game at all if you're paying to skip it?

The delays in these games are designed to make you pay to skip them. If it wasn't a free-to-play game, the delays wouldn't have been there in the first place. They're just there to make the game worse.

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

#332

Post by kalleboo »

dilap wrote: post #242
merb wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never buy any in App Coin, but I have a lot of consoles + games from nintendo. Even the 'New 3DS'.

why? do you also refuse to put quarters in arcade machines?

Didn't arcades pretty much die out once powerful game machines people could play as long as they wanted to for free became affordable?

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

#333

Post by dilap »

croon wrote: post #298
dilap wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why? do you also refuse to put quarters in arcade machines?

Not parent, but for me: Yes, I do. Arcade machines led to terribly designed games then, and running a game on purchases leads to terribly designed games now. This is not to say that there can't be good free-to-play games with IAP, but the vast majority of the payment models is terrible in game quality (not talking about success). I honestly have a hard time coming up with a good example of an app, but in the PC space…

maybe my childhood has given me an overly rosy view of arcades? :)

agreed theres plenty of bad implementations of iap, but i think with time people are figuring out how to do it well.

i must confess im not much of a gamer in adulthood, but eg i think space team and clash royale are both excellent apps w/ iap.

(as a side-note, most online advertising is much more aggravating to me than purchases!)

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

#334

Post by Nullabillity »

kalleboo wrote: post #331
Nullabillity wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother playing the game at all if you're paying to skip it?

The delays in these games are designed to make you pay to skip them. If it wasn't a free-to-play game, the delays wouldn't have been there in the first place. They're just there to make the game worse.

Exactly. So play games that don't use these abusive tactics, instead of rewarding them...

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

#335

Post by padobson »

serge2k wrote: post #321
padobson wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's their hardware, but their platform that they've been clinging to. Owning the platform gives gives them a lot of control over the gameplay experience. I don't think they need to give up their platform-owner (or first party in game industry parlance) status in order to take advantage of the mobile space. Just an adjustment in strategy. Nintendo has always relied on ancillary hardware to make their co…

Except now it's not available on iOS. oh and playing Zelda, Mario, hell even a real pokemon game, on a touchscreen sounds awful.

>oh and playing Zelda, Mario, hell even a real pokemon game, on a touchscreen sounds awful

I completely agree with this. But it's easily solvable - just make a controller. You buy the app on the platform, play a limited selection of games with the touch screen, and when you're ready to upgrade, you go buy a controller at your preferred retailer.

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

#336

Post by jhanschoo »

trvz wrote: post #221
rout39574 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caveat? ;) I mean, those readers can be scary, but...

Cave is the singular imperative form. Cave lector therefore makes sense, meaning "beware, reader", while caveat means "warning".

Either should be fine; caveat is the jussive subjunctive, and so the meaning is similar.

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

#337

Post by nemo44x »

Nullabillity wrote: post #334
kalleboo wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delays in these games are designed to make you pay to skip them. If it wasn't a free-to-play game, the delays wouldn't have been there in the first place. They're just there to make the game worse.

Exactly. So play games that don't use these abusive tactics, instead of rewarding them...

You don't have to buy anything and the experience is just fine. There is nor requirement to buy anything - the game leaves plenty to do. It's just the option is there if you want to go faster.

Also, it's a free game. If they charged $60, then I'd get your point. But the game is based on a "Freemium" model like tons of other software.

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

#338

Post by Nullabillity »

nemo44x wrote: post #337
Nullabillity wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. So play games that don't use these abusive tactics, instead of rewarding them...

You don't have to buy anything and the experience is just fine. There is nor requirement to buy anything - the game leaves plenty to do. It's just the option is there if you want to go faster. Also, it's a free game. If they charged $60, then I'd get your point. But the game is based on a "Freemium" model like tons of other software.

> You don't have to buy anything and the experience is just fine.

As implied by the earlier commenters, that's obviously not the case.

> It's just the option is there if you want to go faster.

It's only an "option" because they crippled the game in the first place.

> Also, it's a free game. If they charged $60, then I'd get your point. But the game is based on a "Freemium" model like tons of other software.

And thus, freemium is inherently abusive. But even then, there are more acceptable ways to do it.

For example, look at how Smite does this: free to download, you can pick between grinding/microtransactions to unlock each character individually, or pay $30 to unlock everything in one go and effectively go back to what the game should have been from the start. Cosmetics are still paywalled, but at least there are no more microtransactions that have any effect on gameplay.

I'm not against paying for games. I'm against constantly being hounded to pay for the same thing over and over again.

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

#339

Post by jolux »

distantsounds wrote: post #325
jolux wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if Ingress were anywhere near as popular their servers would have been down constantly and we would have heard about it being so popular...

I take it you've never played Ingress before? Because they've had outages before, particularly during some of the larger events. Just because something doesn't get widespread news doesn't mean it's unpopular. Sure, Go is massively popular in its own right and to scale beats out Ingress but it's not like Ingress was some 2-bit game that nobody played. Half the mechanics of Go came from there, if Ingress sucked and was…

Look I'm not shitting on it. It's not orthogonal that you both saw large numbers of people playing it and that it wasn't as popular as Pokémon Go. I'm not saying it's a technological failure, I'm saying it didn't capture as many people's attention in the same way that Go did.

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

#340

Post by croon »

dilap wrote: post #333
croon wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent, but for me: Yes, I do. Arcade machines led to terribly designed games then, and running a game on purchases leads to terribly designed games now. This is not to say that there can't be good free-to-play games with IAP, but the vast majority of the payment models is terrible in game quality (not talking about success). I honestly have a hard time coming up with a good example of an app, but in the PC space…

maybe my childhood has given me an overly rosy view of arcades? :) agreed theres plenty of bad implementations of iap, but i think with time people are figuring out how to do it well. i must confess im not much of a gamer in adulthood, but eg i think space team and clash royale are both excellent apps w/ iap. (as a side-note, most online advertising is much more aggravating to me than purchases!)

Funny you should mention it, but I've played a fair amount of Clash Royale as well (level 8 at upper arena 5). I still have a hard time recommending it though. It's such a great game in there, but I feel the IAP and the structure around it is what plagues it.

Pacing it to gouge money to unlock chests, no max levels on cards (especially in tournaments), selling epics and chests etc.

I wish there was or I could come up with better ways to monetize it other than hats, but the game could be SO much better, and I would feel good about sinking money into it. The only thing that would happen, were I to put money into it, is that I would maybe bump up an arena or two earlier than otherwise, but then I would be in the exact same spot there instead. There's no end to the gouging, where gouging != possibility to put in more money.

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