Logo from www.Pokemongo.com
Over the summer of 2016, we saw the Niantic produced mobile game, Pokemon Go take the world by storm. People of all ages became enthralled with the concept of this game and its massive popularity resulted in it gaining the title of “Most first-week downloads in history”.¹ There is no arguing the fact that Pokemon Go was a truly groundbreaking and appealing concept for the mobile user base.
I decided to download the game to see what the fuss was about, and I found that even I had become hooked on the game, and found myself taking walks and bike rides specifically to play Pokemon Go. For around the first two weeks, its creative concept as an augmented reality game really pulled me in as it did with millions of other players, and I discovered that it must have been extremely profitable with its specifically Pokemon oriented micro transactions (e.g. 1$ for 50 Pokeballs). Furthermore, it created a sense of community within my neighborhood as well, as dozens of players gathered to play around the community parks and paths.
However, after the first few weeks of playing, as the hype as well as novelty of the app gradually diminished, the game and company’s flaws immediately became apparent to most users. In other words, after a few weeks of playing, most of the user base felt dissatisfied. My reasoning behind the app’s lack of long-term success is due to Niantic’s extremely lacking PR team. I have noticed in the past with many small indie game producers and start-up business, that these sprouting companies usually have excellent PR and customer relationships. This is because they usually have a small group of devoted fans, which makes it extremely easy for them to listen to feedback and communicate with their user base. However, with Niantic, due to the extreme boom in popularity with their app, it is understandable that the communication between the company and users would be strained. Nevertheless, this was not the case because as many people have pointed out: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2016/07/21/niantic-and-nintendos-lack-of-communication-about-pokemon-go-issues-is-inexcusable/#dc0ba8e2e832, Niantic didn’t even attempt to communicate with their fan base at all and instead just decided to roll out updates without even consulting the people. Furthermore, the people have complained for a long time about bugs such as the tracking and gym battles, but instead of Niantic fixing them, they just totally removed those features from the game all-together.
All in all, Niantic’s approach as a company towards the game as well as their user base resulted in a long-term failure of the app. In other words, Pokemon Go will soon die and never be brought up again. This is why I agree with Yash’s blog post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/yashroy/2016/10/02/nintendos-take-on-mobile-gaming/ as I believe Nintendo as a larger and more experienced company would be better suited to produce Pokemon Go and result in a longer-lasting success as a mobile game.
Citations:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/22/12258874/pokemon-go-apple-ios-app-store-record-most-downloads