What went wrong with Pokémon Go? Three lessons from its plummeting player numbers
Just a few months ago Pokémon Go was showing brands how to use geolocation and gamification to deliver huge results in profit and customer engagement. So what happened? Mark Humphery-Jenner discusses in this cross-posting from The Conversation.
Pokémon Go is in rapid decline. Since launching in July and soaring in popularity, it had lost at least a third of its daily users by the middle of August.
By mid-September, daily revenues had fallen from US$16m per day to US$2m (excluding the 30% app store fee) and daily downloads had declined from a peak of 27 million to 700,000.
Of course, many mobile games – especially ones that trigger a worldwide craze – suffer declines in usage over time. Pokémon Go still generates significant revenues, but its precipitous decline has seen it labelled a fad and nicknamed “Pokémon Gone”.
This raises the question of why usage has dropped so steeply, and what other game companies might do differently to retain users. In my opinion, Pokémon Go’s creators Niantic have made several significant missteps. Here are the lessons that other companies can learn.
Have a clear avenue to capitalise quickly
Pokémon Go launched with relatively little actual ‘game’, and by the end of July was still arguably missing a lot of features.
The launch version enabled players to collect Pokémon characters while out roaming in the real world. But it featured shallower gameplay than its siblings on Nintendo’s gaming platforms. For example, the mechanisms for battling Pokémon were relatively simplistic, with arbitrary-seeming controls. Furthermore, there was no way for people to interact in real time in the game. This is not a problem if the aim is to get as many players to sign up as possible, but it is an issue when trying to keep them interested.
The developers did not introduce new elements quickly enough to stop players getting bored. So far there has been little in the way of new gameplay aspects, with the most significant addition being in the form of hardware: a Pokémon Go wearable device released last month.
The developers have pledged to allow players to choose a “buddy Pokémon” to accompany them in-game, although it is not clear how this will change the game’s mechanics. Nevertheless, by waiting so long after the game’s launch, the developers have missed an opportunity to capitalise on their existing player base.
The obvious lesson for developers is to have a roadmap to enhance the game and keep players interested, especially when the core game itself is not very deep.
Do not remove popular features
Besides failing to introduce new features, Pokémon Go also removed popular ones. This is likely to alienate players, especially if done with little explanation – some commentators have branded the game ‘broken‘.
In Pokémon Go’s case, the feature in question was ‘Pokémon tracking’. A core aspect of the game is that it creates a virtual representation of the player’s real-world location, which is then populated with Pokémon characters for players to collect by walking around.
But to catch Pokémon, players need to know where they are – and without Pokémon tracking, players are left wandering aimlessly and relying on luck to find them.
Pokémon tracking was relatively rudimentary in the game itself, and arguably did not work at all. This led several third parties to create their own Pokémon tracking apps that became crucial to dedicated players. In other words, players accepted the original broken feature because third-party apps let them circumvent it.
However, the developer, Niantic, subsequently disabled these apps by cutting off their data access and sending them “cease and desist” orders. This effectively removed a feature that many players regarded as essential.
The developers have arguably repeated this gaffe by disabling the game for players with “rooted” android devices – a relatively common hack that lets phone users change their administrative settings or bypass restrictions imposed by telecommunications providers.
Pokémon Go has banned rooted devices so as to prevent ‘geo-spoofing’, whereby players cheat the game by using software to fake their location. But while the goal is valid, the implementation clearly has ramifications for many legitimate users.
The clear lesson is that a company should not remove features without first considering how essential they are to the user experience, and without offering an adequate replacement.
This lesson applies not just to gaming but to the wider consumer industry; companies should always know what their customers regard as essential, and should never undermine it without putting in place a clear workaround (or ideally, improvement).
Talk to your customers
Pokémon Go’s decline has been characterised by a consistent lack of communication. The catalyst was arguably the removal of Pokémon tracking. While far from ideal, this could have been managed with better communication, but instead some players were left so disillusioned that they requested refunds.
The developers did not forewarn of major (potentially negative) changes, and did not communicate afterwards, leading to the claim that ‘silence is killing Pokemon Go.
This has not been an isolated incident; the developers communicated only intermittently about server outages, offering very little information about why they had happened, how long the disruption was expected to last, or whether it was the work of hackers.
The final lesson is here is that communicating with your customers is paramount, particularly when things go wrong. Otherwise, you risk losing their confidence that you care about them and know how to fix the problem.
If you have to make unpopular decisions, at least communicate the reason for those decisions and present a plan to assuage consumers’ concerns.
Where to from here for Pokémon Go?
This all begs the question: how might Pokémon Go attempt to bounce back? This might be challenging, as Pokémon Go would both need to implement new features and make lapsed (and new) users aware of them.
One potential option is to increase social events, perhaps involving rare Pokémon placed in a given area. This might also generate more positive word of mouth, increase user engagement, and drive interest.
Pokémon Go could also expand into other markets, potentially rectifying the aforementioned issues when doing so. This includes a possible expansion into China and India. This would be most effective if additional in-game features, such as in game battling, were implemented.
In this case, the game could start from a fresh base in new markets, while improving the game in existing markets.
This article was published originally at The Conversation
Mark Humphery-Jenner is an Associate Professor of Finance at UNSW Australia
This is a great assessment.
Pokemon Go was setup to keep people interested for a week or two. It never had any indication of getting better. The gap between new players and strongly held gyms created an even greater barrier for new players.
I would love to have known what their end game was. Just make hay, then accept a decline?
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You’re over thinking it mate. Tell me a mainstream game that hasn’t gone through this cycle.
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Nintendo themselves released a statement just after the game’s release to say the earnings it generated would be immaterial to their financial results.
Kinda says all you need to know about their plans and end-game I would have thought.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....SKCN10504G
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Due to the business structure around Pokemon Go, Nintendo was never getting the significant share of revenue out of the title – that went to Niantic (owned by Google) and The Pokemon Company (only part-owned by Nintendo).
Some clear signs about how Pokemon Go would be treated can be seen in Niantic’s previous title Ingress – something with a strong launch but withering once people got past the initial interest. There was no long-term hook and Niantic seemed to treat Ingress more like a proof of concept rather than something available to the public.
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I’m not sure the author has played Pokemon Go. I agree they left the recent changes too late but two crucial elements have helped make it more interesting. First the buddy Pokemon. Often the frustration for the game is that a player is missing one or two Candy to power-up hard to find Pokemon (such as a Snorlax), especially when they have jumped up a level. Second, sometimes it can be hard to find the final few Pokemon to achieve an evolve and a buddy can help those final few Candy.
In the earlier iterations of the game there was no incentive to “train” in gym as you could only put one Pokemon in. Now you can put 6 through a gym to train which makes it much easier to increase the level of the gyms. We are now seeing far more level 10 gyms which also makes it more challenging to bring down a gym and change team.
This makes it easier to aggregate points and collect coins.
The improvements are making the game better but still there are some issues that make it hard once you reach the higher levels – for instance, the jump from reaching level 30 and 31 is from 350,000 to 500,000 points which is huge.
It may be shrinking but still there is a large and loyal user base that I have observed across Southern Europe, the UK and North and Southern Africa.
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Definitely all valid points. A decline was inevitable – it peaked so damn quick with so many people downloading it simply to see what the fad was about, but crikey, they mortally messed up with the lack of communication in the beginning.
How slow they are to fix bugs, and re-implement tracking (if it ever is coming back at all) is only continuing to ruin it.
I’m sure it’s not too late for Niantic to sort it out and win some fans back. The game has a ton of potential, but the longer they are silent about what’s coming, the harder it will be.
One note though – there already is a buddy Pokemon system implemented, and has been there for quite a few weeks now.
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You have to worry about the state of the English language when even an associate professor misuses a term such as “begs the question”.
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You have to worry about the state of the English language when even an associate professor misuses a term like “begs the question”…
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Also, Pokemon Go had almost no Network Effects.
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I was just about to settle down and read this story. Then I came across the term “actionable take aways” and, well, as a matter of moral principle, I felt I should stop.
Perhaps the next story can distinctively harness some exceptional innovation while collaboratively morphing inter-mandated interfaces and appropriately enable some dynamic core competencies?
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