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Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

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Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#121

Post by fencepost »

sevenless wrote: post #35

I don't have the game, but it sounds like GPS power drain is the big problem. Is there not some way to improve that? Maybe only turn on GPS intermittently and use accelerometers, wireless signals or the camera to track your position from the last known point and any landmarks?

Aside from the assorted obvious optimizations that people have discussed, it might be possible to "offload" the GPS to a separate battery-powered Bluetooth GPS receiver. I didn't see any results for this on a quick search, so I'm not sure whether it's been tested or not.

Of course, if you don't already have one a Bluetooth GPS receiver appears to cost at least 5x as much as a low-end external battery and 2-3x as much as a pretty substantial one.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#122

Post by Kluny »

ionwake wrote: post #5

hmmm is anyone else essentially finding the game unplayable due to server issues? Or is this perhaps a region specific issue?

The entire nation of Canada is playing with pirated copies right now, and hogging server resources. That might be part of it.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#123

Post by synaesthesisx »

Do people really spend an average of 22 minutes/day on Facebook? That's astounding....I find it hard to believe unless that's including Messenger or something (which not a lot of my colleagues even use since there are better, more secure chat alternatives)

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#124

Post by niftich »

goodplay wrote: post #12

I would be very happy if Niantec releases an in-depth write up on the how the backend was implemented and what measures they took to make it scale to handle this kind of traffic. I don't care much for the game, but details of why the servers weren't (aren't?) able to handle the traffic interests me immensely.

Someone posted a list of protobuf definitions [1] used in Pokemon Go a few days ago. At the time I didn't think the submission was very interesting on its own right, but it seems relevant to your question now -- you can examine the names of the definitions to guesstimate what logic is performed on the server.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12081447

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#125

Post by Fiahil »

goodplay wrote: post #12

I would be very happy if Niantec releases an in-depth write up on the how the backend was implemented and what measures they took to make it scale to handle this kind of traffic. I don't care much for the game, but details of why the servers weren't (aren't?) able to handle the traffic interests me immensely.

From my experience with the game, I believe their progression margin is quite large.

For example, they don't cache anything client side (even Pokestop assets), nor do they timeout/retry/prefetch after a network disconnect during a Pokemon capture (which is very annoying on spotty 3G networks). Last but not least, battery consumption is insane. Don't go out without a spare battery! Backend side, I also noticed a few cases of "blinking pokemon" in the nearby grid. Surely symptomatic of synchronisations issues between instances of distributed systems (dirty reads?).

I enjoy the game a lot, but regarding the number of issues, it's still a beta.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#126

Post by specialist »

tuna-piano wrote: post #62

A few thoughts: 1. I tried playing this game, but really don't enjoy it. It feels to me it's not about strategy as much as it's "the one who puts in the most hours of playing wins". Felt actually like work to me. 2. I don't see this game being a long term super success, as it is now. I'd imagine cohort analysis would show the first cohorts waning in usage in the next several weeks. I imagine as more people begin play…

Agreed. Half-life of this game is small.

Not having proximity based P2P battling tells me the implementors never played Pokemon. It's the other half of the game.

It's like directing a Batman movie without first reading the comics. It shows a complete distain for the culture, history, players of the Pokemon universe.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#127

Post by obj-g »

sliverstorm wrote: post #112
obj-g wrote: post #4

Seems obvious to me -- it's a game that takes time to play. Most people check Facebook for, like, 30 seconds at a time. It's like saying people spend more time playing Overwatch than checking their email? There's probably a better analogy. A bunch of interesting data in the article though.

The thing about Facebook is many people dwell on it, rather than checking it for 30 seconds. The timeline becomes a time sink for many people.

Some people, for sure. In my experience, I usually see people checking it for 30 seconds or so but many times daily. Even if you're right, it still seems like a no-brainer that the average Pokemon GO player would spend more time playing than the average Facebook user is on Facebook.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#128

Post by GFischer »

aerovistae wrote: post #109
jessaustin wrote: post #80

The success of Pokémon Go as the first breakout AR "belief circle" certainly seems like a victory for the Scooch-a-mouti. I wonder how the Librarians Militant will respond?

...what is Scooch-a-mouti ?

I had to Google it too. It's something out of a Vernor Vinge novel, Rainbow's End.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#129

Post by sliverstorm »

throwawayReply wrote: post #49
goodplay wrote: post #12

I would be very happy if Niantec releases an in-depth write up on the how the backend was implemented and what measures they took to make it scale to handle this kind of traffic. I don't care much for the game, but details of why the servers weren't (aren't?) able to handle the traffic interests me immensely.

I look forward to what they can further do to improve things. For instance they don't cache pokestop images, my phone keeps redownloading the same images from pokestops and gyms, if it just cached the top 10 most visited pokestops and gyms that would be a decent reduction in data use. Also it would help if they offloaded some of the work of the GPS onto the local phone steptracking/direction trackers it would help. I…

If the phone tracked more locally it could not poll GPS until it detects locally that it's moved enough, so if you weren't moving you wouldn't be updating your position very often.

That's how the Android Location service works, unless you intentionally bypass it. You ask the location service to update you when it determines the user has moved X feet.

Re: Users spend more minutes per day in Pokémon Go than Facebook

#130

Post by splonk »

sliverstorm wrote: post #111
tuna-piano wrote: post #62

A few thoughts: 1. I tried playing this game, but really don't enjoy it. It feels to me it's not about strategy as much as it's "the one who puts in the most hours of playing wins". Felt actually like work to me. 2. I don't see this game being a long term super success, as it is now. I'd imagine cohort analysis would show the first cohorts waning in usage in the next several weeks. I imagine as more people begin play…

I speculate, perhaps groundlessly, that they could be racing to add the other traditional elements of Pokemon, e.g. battles and trading. So long as they begin to deliver those before people forget about the game, they can get a second, probably much longer lasting, wind. I certainly couldn't see myself being a devotee even if they added those features, but kids the world over devoted countless hours to the gameboy ga…

You are correct about the trading part.

http://www.businessinsider.com/pokmon-go-will-get-pokmon-tra...

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