
The Tragedy of Pokémon Go: What it takes for good ideas to attract money - oska
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/07/the-tragedy-of-pokemon-go/490793/?single_page=true
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laretluval
Looks like this is the core argument for why Pokemon Go is a tragedy:

"""Even Google couldn’t make Ingress work without reskinning it as Pokémon.
And while Pokémon is popular and basically harmless, the alternating reality
it offers is still that of a branded, licensed, kiddie cock-fighting
fantasy."""

I think the real tragedy is that the author of this thing can't lighten up and
enjoy something that is making all kinds of people happy.

Edit: He even links to this example of why it is a wonderful thing!
[https://imgur.com/KAwwxFp](https://imgur.com/KAwwxFp) But no, it's a tragedy
because it's corporate-branded and juvenile. OK.

~~~
andyjdavis
Personally I have no problem with stuff being corporate branded and/or
juvenile but I am surprised that the cock-fighting element isn't mentioned
more often in relation to Pokemon. Maybe it is because I have seen a little
real life cock-fighting (and its horrifying) but I find that aspect quite
repellent.

~~~
NamTaf
So is gunning down other people. Fortunately, many people can separate games
from reality and this lets all types of games, from Counter-Strike to Pokemon
to the Total War series, to succeed.

I'm utterly convinced the average 13 year old can separate the concepts of
fake monsters that disappear back inside their little round homes from the
reality of two animals trapped in a small area fighting to the death.

------
manachar
I'm not sure this a fair analysis. Yes, Pokémon certainly added a nice built
in fanbase, but I don't think that alone would have made it the social
phenomenon it currently is.

As the article mentions, the gameplay is significantly easier than Ingress.
Also, the theme is much more family friendly and less paranoid. It's got cute
pocket monsters you can collect throughout the day. Additionally, the camera
aspect makes it built-in social sharing material, especially since it's a
palatable theme.

I'm not going to share Ingress photos with anyone else, but a humorous picture
of Magickarp flopped on the beach is fun to share.

I'm seeing a lot of people who are completely ignorant of Pokémon playing this
game. I see parents downloading it to go on walks with their kids. It's fun,
easy, and fits in nicely with people's aspirations (more exercise).

None of that was really in place with any of the previous iterations. They
were all too "serious", dark, and/or niche audience.

I suspected Niantic expected this to be a moderate hit with Ingress players
and Pokémon fans - both were a niche audience. It's the gameplay and family-
friendly theme that has made this as popular as it is.

~~~
erroneousfunk
Agreed. Ingress had gameplay that was not only niche, but it was abstract and
difficult to explain -- and THEN explain why it was fun. Pokemon is, not only
a completely different game with different rules and objectives, but the
gameplay is super accessible. I enjoyed Ingress, but I completely disagree
that it's a "tragedy" that it (or other, often similarly convoluted games)
didn't take off with a broader community like Pokemon has.

While I appreciate that the article exists, and think that its message (the
apparent necessity of corporate branding to drive VR) is a good one to
consider, their logic may have some holes. Pokemon is not just re-skinned
Ingress.

------
Animats
_Majestic_ was a great concept, but unfortunately, it launched a few weeks
before 9/11\. Here's the trailer[1] and press kit[2]. You can see why this was
a problem after 9/11\. It's still a problem - before 9/11, there was no
government department looking for vaguely suspicious activity, and the police
were not as militarized.

Majestic's slogan was "it plays you". It played on its schedule, not yours.
The pressure made it more compelling, but limited the potential audience. It
was like having to be on line for a raid in WoW, or LARPing.

Pokémon Go is a casual augmented reality game. It's not even multiplayer.
Simple wins in casual gaming. (Angry Birds, anyone?)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcTDMYq3xCw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcTDMYq3xCw)
[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG0oY8obuGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG0oY8obuGU)

------
russellbeattie
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 yoyo, which despite its
unprecedented success should never have happened more than once.

Second the app on iOS crashes every few minutes - I've never seen a more buggy
app. Using Unity no less. It's not due to some weird edge case, it's
constant... log the damn errors and make sure it doesn't happen again. It's
Monday, I should have had an update from the App Store by now, but nope.

Third, there's apparently no caching (which might explain their server
problems). Every time the app starts (or more likely crashes and restarts), it
hits the server to download all the local POI info again from scratch. God
help you if you're in a spot with bad connectivity.

Fourth, what is it doing do drain the battery so badly?? I've driven for a
couple hours with maps apps running without killing my device. It must have
zero logic in the app to manage power drain because it'll kill my iPhone in an
hour easily.

This game owes its success 100% to the popularity of Pokemon and nothing else,
the app would never had any success if it had to stand on its own merits. As
it is, Niantic is doing its utmost to kill the franchise with their
ineptitude.

~~~
jimmywanger
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 of time for the
update to be approved before appearing on the App Store?

No caching? How would you cache game state when at any time the board state
can change without warning, due to the actions of another player? And cached
game state would invalidate your game actions, which would cause
inconsistencies.

With draining battery, it needs location services as well as constant internet
connectivity. If you're looking for directions, you can make educated guesses
when you're going to have to pull location again. Whereas now, you have to
constantly be polling, because you yourself don't know where you're headed.

And re: Nianitic's "ineptitude", you don't have any ideas what problems
they're trying to solve.

~~~
Fajita_Mane
> 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? How would you cache game state when at any time the board state
can change without warning, due to the actions of another player? And cached
game state would invalidate your game actions, which would cause
inconsistencies. The app could at least cache some of the info of your pokemon
as well as the locations of nearby stops and gyms. Then only the status of
those gyms and nearby pokemon would need to be synchronized when you reopen
it.

~~~
jimmywanger
> 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.

That's like saying "they have Google engineers, therefore they must have
Google funding and they should be able to smart things out." AFAIK, Ingress
was built on app engine, and had huge scaling issues.

> The app could at least cache some of the info of your pokemon as well as the
> locations of nearby stops and gyms. Then only the status of those gyms and
> nearby pokemon would need to be synchronized when you reopen it.

It's not clear how much faster that would be. The majority of the RPC time is
probably due to network latency issues, not the amount of data being fetched.
That said, without slapping a profiler on it, you can't tell either way.

------
cogware
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.

------
Joof
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.

------
AndrewKemendo
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.

~~~
therobot24
>> 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.

Cause they don't have the experience?

I usually turn off the AR so i don't have to wave my phone around like an
idiot.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Cause they don 't have the experience?_

I'd be surprised if this was true - being a part of Google and all for quite
some time.

I'd be really interested to know what percentage of users have AR turned off.

------
gthtjtkt
The real tragedy of Pokemon Go is that it's essentially a glorified Cow
Clicker. The core gameplay (battling and leveling to strengthen your team,
then using them to collect ever-stronger Pokemon) has been replaced with
mindless swiping. Toss Pokeballs until one works, then move to a new spot and
repeat ad infinitum.

This "game" had so much potential, but they removed all the gameplay!

~~~
flycaliguy
Isn't the core game walking around? It's great, I did it before it was part of
a game just to feel good.

------
doctorpangloss
Ian Bogost is a professional critic, so I think he'll exaggerate how he
actually feels. He probably really likes the game and still thinks it's super
cool.

Frank Lantz is a really positive guy overall, so again, I think his negativity
overstates how he actually feels. His company Area/Code was not acquired for
its location based games, and Area/Code never made a game where you look
through a camera and see a thing superimposed in it. Suggesting Area/Code 'got
there first,' as Ian does, is a bit of a stretch. Honestly, it's doubtful
anyone at Niantic has actually played a single thing Area/Code has made, not
even Drop7. Nobody would put a screenshot of Plundr in their pitch deck and
say, "We're going to make the next big version of this." Besides, Plundr was
never released as a public game anyway, so it would be absurd to compare this
actual thing Pokemon Go to what is basically a design fiction.

But even if you allow that all these advertisement game footnotes are
genuinely cited/used in Pokemon Go, you're forgetting that none of that really
matters in gaming as an art form. The only person's opinion that really
matters is the consumer's (and to a limited extend the Google Play Store
editors and App Store editors). Players are less interested in who invented
what concept. If you're going to reference the past, reference familiar
control schemes (like nearly every console shooter references Halo) or
properties (like, well, Pokemon). It's surprising that professors of games-as-
art like Ian and Frank would seem to get this wrong.

People on this forum are probably most critical of the bugs, but again, none
of that really matters. Other commenters have said it more succinctly: if you
have something great, people will deal with its problems. Forget DeNA games
(like one commenter noted); have you ever tried to play Minecraft on an
iPhone? You're moving around your FPS head with your finger and using a
virtual joystick, which is literally the most horrible control scheme for
touch possible. Kids still deal with it, they really don't care.

Why are there people looking to assassinate Pokémon? I think the Niantic team
was given multiple opportunities to do something unconventional, which
basically never happens, especially never in any of the jobs of people on
these forums. They're kind of rubbing in all your faces that you really don't
have to be making elegant hierarchies and making the world a better place all
day, if only someone trusted you to do something weird.

------
pascal1usa
The poster uses the word traffic a lot but doesn't explain enough why he
thinks it's tragic.

