All this week, I’ve continually read reports from mainstream media about how Pokemon GO is dying, how the lightning in a bottle game is dead, how Niantic has failed.
And sure, numbers are dropping and the player base isn’t what it used to be. But dead?
It’s interesting because in a lot of ways, it shows how the traditional and business-focused press don’t entirely understand how games work. It’s natural for there to be a major drop off in the audience after a couple of weeks; very, very few titles retain massive player bases, whether its on mobile or elsewhere, for very long.
But rather than get into all of that, I thought I’d put the question to all of you.
Do you think Pokemon GO is “dead”? And what do you think makes a game “dead”? Is it when the active player base falls below a certain point? When revenues drop below, say, a few hundred thousand a day? Are those figures different for games on mobile versus PC and console?
And how are you finding Pokemon GO a few months on? Have you stopped playing? And if so, what would convince you to come back?
Comments
36 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Pokemon GO”
Or are those still playing the ones who really want to be the very best, like no one ever was?
No. Most of them are the same type of people addicted to playing Candy Crush, or hoarding.
What you got against hoarding?
Well, as a semi-reformed hoarder myself, I know its dangers. Collecting things that you’ll most likely never use and often things that have no real use other than to be possessed. I think the Pokemon from Pokemon GO pretty much fit that category 🙂
Fair cop. I was only posting in jest, but I’m a soft hoarder myself. I dont obtain stuff for the sake of obtaining it, but I do have some problems throwing stuff out.
I’ve actually been playing it a bit again recently, just got to level 21. I’ve only been catching Pokemon and spinning stops, I haven’t bothered with gyms because there’s nothing I could feasibly do at such a low level.
So it’s just a sort of cathartic grind for me, a way to kill a couple of minutes every now and again. I don’t take it seriously and it doesn’t even feel like a Pokemon game to me.
I don’t know if it’s dead or not, but the game has very, very little depth too it. I could certainly understand users getting bored and moving away at this point. I’m hoping updates will bring it back and hopefully more in line with the traditional form of Pokemon battling. I’m skeptical that they’ll be able to make it worth my while to keep playing.
I gave up on it in about 3 days.
I wasn’t really enjoying it much, but once I realised how much it relied on a data connection I gave up completely. That’s not a bigger bill I need in my life.
I still see people playing it on public transport, so it’s certainly not dead. I wonder how well the microtransactions are selling now.
I wish it got more people interested in the main series.
The mainline pokemon games surged massively in the wake of pokemon go’s release. The two year old ORAS games jumped into the NPD top 20, beating out a bunch of new multi platform releases that month.
Cool
A game is dead to me when I lose interest. I’m still finding & playing gems on long “dead” systems. I just got my first gaming PC & am taking full advantage of the old stuff that goes on special on Steam.
It’s different for online multiplayer I presume but I haven’t had a long-term interest in a multiplayer game since the N64.
I play it pretty hard and it doesn’t really use much data at all. Unless you have a really small plan, or are hitting very close to the limit already, you won’t notice it.
Very small plan, very strict budget.
Don’t need this kind of thing cutting into my game money.
Totally dropped out after not really progressing past the first fortnight. Just not my cup of tea, and don’t see the point of playing on an ongoing basis.
If Mainstream media call making millions above cost failing, then I’ll fail any time.
This Halloween event has got people playing again i have noticed. For the first time in a few months i actually saw people walking around with their phones out and the pokemon go music playing.
I started playing again just last week, the new updates to walking with a pokemon make getting some types really achievable now. Still a good excuse to get off my arse and clock up some kms.
Imagine if games media devoted half of the effort it made in covering Pokemon Go to any other Nintendo release over the last three years?
It’s true that ‘the mainstream’ media doesn’t necessarily understand how games work, but it does do something that the enthusiast press does not – which is it caters to all interests.
Not that this doesn’t mean spin or favouritism, you don’t have to look far enough to find that, but traditional news models seek to inform and enlighten you with stuff you didn’t know – not hang out in the same comfort zone. Games media becomes an echo chamber, instead of guiding force.
Wired called Splatoon an ‘evergreen’ title – ahead of that game’s first Christmas (it was released mid-2015). That’s not what evergreen means, but because the games media said it, it becomes true.
How many current/remaining players of Pokemon Go have traditional press to thank for informing them of its existence?
Pokemon Go has popular characters, often from a player’s childhood, in AR; it is on mobile phones; it is free; It works very well with social media, due to the amusing augmented photos it generates; it interacts with the real world in novel ways; it introduces brand new (albeit dull) ways of playing games.
All these things lead to a game that has wide appeal and, ultimately, grew beyond a game into a phenomenon.
Splatoon is evergreen, it is very good, but it is ultimately just a game. There are a lot of other games out there that it is competing with for coverage. I reckon it got its fair share of games media coverage.
Oh sure, I agree with all of that. Splatoon was a random example. I’m not expecting metro newspapers to put Forza Horizon 3 on the front page just because it’s set in Australia.
Although that’d be sweet.
Im still playing it every now and then but since im a casual player im only level 20 so I cant actually take part in gym battles because the opponents are generally 2000 CP higher than me.
Seems like Red owns every gym in my area and they all have ~3000cp dragonites guarding them.
Apart from the walker still not working for me, i still enjoy it as a time waster kind of game.
I wish it was still winter, pokemon go made my phone the best pocket heater
played the beta and played when they brought it out of beta. It was just as fun in beta, as it was out.
No interest to ever play it again.
I still use it nearly daily, but only in short bursts like if I go for a walk during my lunch break or walking to and from the station to/from work. Since the gym at my local station still changes hands on a daily basis I assume it’s still fairly active in my area.
That said, I’ve also spent zero money on the game and don’t plan for that to change, so I’m not exactly contributing to their success unless they put forced advertisement views in.
Niantic have failed massively.
The game certainly isn’t what it could be. With no working tracker, terrible communication and absolutely trivial updates (egg colours? Hooray!) it seems like Google sent Niantic to market to sell their prize cow and Niantic came home with a pouch of beans. I know people say “But it made so much money!”, but the truth is, it could have made so much more.
Niantic turned Pokemon Go from a game that people went outside to play, into a game that people sometimes played when they were outside. Read the comments in this thread and you’ll see that’s the common theme.
Level 27 managed to get 142/142 (all currently available excluding regional pokemon)
The buddy system got me back into and I racked up a lot of exercise grinding out a Charizard, then went cold turkey
The Halloween bonuses were so much fun yesterday but now I have six Gengars and it is so boring again
Dead No! Dead in the heart of a majority of people who played it YES!!! In danger of being killed off by the Alphabet CFO… YES!!!
Niantic was perfectly happy running its small fan base Ingress, and will keep running Pokemon Go… the early release of the game that failed to anticipate and capitalise on the popularity and icome to keep it going is going to be a matter they will have to answer to the Alphabet board. This was a multi billion dollar game that lost a majority of its players in less than three months… millions of players have uninstalled it.
Pokemon Go went from a huge success to nothing so quickly and is a result of Googles development practices of throwing things out to the public and then slowly adding to them over time GMail Beta anyone… which is NOT how you should develop games.
When your marketing manager didnt know you were releasing the game THE WEEK BEFORE to the failure to ramp up development it was internally a huge failure at every stage… while the game itself was a success (snd still is profitable), but the failure to capitalise on success is the fastest track to failure.
Ummm, Niantic is a completely separate company to Alphabet now.
I haven’t been able to play it because I’m one of the three people in the country with a Microsoft Phone. But most of the people in my life who were enthusiastically playing Pokémon Go when it came out are still enthusiastically playing it.
I think the game had the kind of popularity where lots of people downloaded it because they love Pokémon, and then a bunch more downloaded it because they’d heard about it via the media and wanted to see what the fuss was about. I suspect the second group is where most of the drop off in play is.
There were a whole bunch of for lack of a better word casuals who jumped on when it got so big. My female cousin who never touches games came out playing with us one night. These are the people that jumped off. And the people who rage quit because the game was not what they expected. Those are the ones that come out at every article to state “it hasn’t got this, it’s a massive fail”.
Then you’ve got the people who are still playing and enjoying it. Ingress evolved over the years and I’m excited to see where this game goes. They said that it’s only 10% of their original vision in it’s current form so there is a lot to come still. I’m glad it’s out already though so we can jump in. Having a lot of fun with it still. I often play with 1-3 friends and it’s a good social catch up time and makes it easier to smash/train u gyms in a group too.
Never played it. Never will
I still play almost daily. It is a good time waster on the way in to work. I have about a 1km walk to get into the office so just use that to slowly hatch eggs and catch whatever comes my way.
I fit the game around my life rather than my life around the game. I have never gone specifically to a location to find pokemon, I don’t go out for the purposes of catching them. Bu if I am out, or somewhere new I’ll play.
Still gives me an extra motivation to get out of the office for a quick walk.
I was surprised when my sister said she started playing it. I have fallen off the bandwagon though. I played it pretty hard then just got bored with it. Nothing really to do, and in most cases I just left my phone in my pocket and looked at the scenery as I walked so was never really ‘glued’ to my phone until I felt it vibrate.
Im over it, more interested in Moon/Sun when they are released in a few weeks.
At first I played a couple hours a day as an excuse to get outside. It was great seeing myself get fitter and healthier while playing a game. Eventually walking became a habit but Pokémon Go did not. Now I go for a walk and don’t even open it.
The player numbers went down dramatically mid August because the school kids returned to school, I know, I have some…. they went from addicts to not at all in Pokemon Go.
Does no one correlate this?
That’s what happened, they may be back come Christmas break
Me and a few guys at college still actively play everyday. It’s still a lot of fun for us and I think this game is awesome. It has some problems that people nit pick at, and it’s ready to imagine what a perfect version if the game could be, buy it’s still fun in its current and evolving form.
All the negative attention is just s bunch of whiners and nay sayers. I’m sure if you could see the actual numbers we’d realize it still has a very active base of core players. Sure the casuals who’ve never played Pokemon before have stopped playing, but not us.
I stopped playing at level 19 because they stopped letting me. Scumbag update V0.37 kicked rooted phone users off of the app. I would gladly come back.
Trading with friends, battling with friends, new pokemon, that will bring player back.