Design lessons from Pokemon Go

It has in-game purchases? I hadn't heard that before. What are they buying? Self-respect?

As for the derivative question, the whole thing is just a reworked Ingress, more or less. I don't think Ninantic has even tried to claim otherwise.

 

I'm still mad no people mention foursquare (2009) yet
http://www.gameffective.com/what-foursquares-evolution-can-teach-us-about-enterprise-gamification/

 

The game allows the purchase of items, such as more balls and more lures. The items can then help you catch more Pokemon.

Spending money isn't really needed to play the game. It doesn't really give you an advantage over other players. It doesn't even provide a better cosmetic appearance. Every item that can be purchased can also be obtained by simply walking to a PokeStop.

As I understand it the main purchasers so far have been businesses trying to lure Pokemon to their establishments to attract more customers. And that's a monetisation strategy that I can whole heatedly support.

 

Lesson from the latest update:
Why bother fixing some issue when you can remove the entire feature altogether?
This must be a typical Niantic meeting:




Seriously what's next? Remove catching pokemon cause they can't find the root of the frozen pokeball bug?

 

LMAO, maybe bubble's one and three should be switched around, maybe that's why the footprints were removed, lol.

 

Well, I personally dislike the idea of designing a game in a way which may put the players in danger, even if ever so slightly. And having a lot of people walking about concentrating on their phones isn't quite what I feel is responsible design. At least in the past we had people zombified in place using their phones, but now those zombies walkabout in droves... which reminds me about the central park vaporeon thing, some people even parked their cars in a hurry to go get the thing...

 

That's almost like the teaser trailer's "defeat mewtwo" sequence, lol. What was so good about Vaporeon that HALF OF AMERICA was after it?! (I know pre-patch Vaporeon was OP, but still...)

That, and admittedly, the anime does often show Ash and Friends running into trouble while searching for specific Pokémon... that happens now in Pokémon GO, lol

 

Vaporeon. Kind of sums up the whole game doesn't it?

 

...

What about Gyarados?

 

Well that changes everything ...

 

With all the fascination, I loaded it and started putting together thoughts for a similar game. I am in a VERY rural area in Ohio (US) farm country. I've caught five times more Pokemon sitting in my house on an acre of land surrounded by woods than I did the same amount of time house sitting in our state's capitol city. In four days total, I've caught 28 different pokemon and a total of 120. Only a handful of those were caught in the city. The rest were caught at my house out in the country.

The downfalls are like you imagined as far as the gyms and Pokestops. Not sure where there are any of either down here, but having less people may be contributing to more overall catches because not really any competition for the catches?

 

The same Pokemon can be caught by multiple people. So competition is not an issue.

 

Straight from the source:

 

Ooh nice, I'll watch that later. I also play Ingress.

I also found I think the reason the game (PoGO) needs 2GB RAM minimum to run properly; I've found the lag spikes on my phone get worse (or before, they got worse, I modified the system after that to use less RAM) if the GPS had a lock, and the map tiles were loading.

That really begs the question; what the fudge would Niantic need 600+ MBs of RAM for to generate a MAP?!