2016 will be remembered for the seemingly higher number of celebrity deaths, the election of Donald Trump, the popularization of the dab etc. It was some year... Another event it will be remembered for was the release of the mobile game Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go was a smash hit when it was released, amassing downloads like never seen before. Here in Toronto, it seemed that you could not walk down the street without bumping into someone hunched over their smart phone looking for Pokemon. There were Pokemon Go parties and users of the game congregated at Harbourfront. The Ferry Terminal was home to a number of Pokestops and became the go to place for Pokemon Go users. Hundreds of users gathered there dropping lures to a point that the Mayor requested Niantic to remove some of the Pokestops.
The game had hooked the imagination and the wallets of its users. However, Niantic failed to build on the initial success of the game. They squandered away much of their user's goodwill by taking too long to address many of the issues that plagued the game and ruined the experience for the user.
First and foremost, Pokemon Go was released as an incomplete game. There were several high priority defects that somehow found their way to the final version. Granted, some of these may be due to the unprecedented load on Niantic servers. For instance, the two most basic features of the game - tracking Pokemon and catching them often ran into problems. The tracking feature did not work at all. It simply displayed 3 paw prints next to the image of a Pokemon and this was very misleading. Intuitively, this would suggest that a Pokemon was nearby and one would expect the number of paw prints to go up or down accordingly. Unfortunately this was not the case; and a game that billed itself as a game to track Pokemon failed to get this feature done
But the most frustrating problem with Pokemon Go was not with the game itself; instead it was with Niantic. Niantic was deathly silent through the chaos of the servers crashing and all the defects with the game. Once the popularity of the game was established, perhaps it would have been prudent to throw a little money at the game and hire a PR team. Or even a PR person. Or intern. You get the idea. Just anyone to login to Facebook/Twitter and inform users about what was going on.
Over the next couple of months, Niantic was able to steady the ship. The tracking feature now works. Catching Pokemon works as expected. They have even released cool new features such as walking Pokemon to get candy. However, I can't help but wonder if the number of users would have been more if they had better handled the initial road bumps. Maybe waiting another month to fix the issues/get their servers sorted out may have mitigated some of these losses.
Pokemon Go was a smash hit when it was released, amassing downloads like never seen before. Here in Toronto, it seemed that you could not walk down the street without bumping into someone hunched over their smart phone looking for Pokemon. There were Pokemon Go parties and users of the game congregated at Harbourfront. The Ferry Terminal was home to a number of Pokestops and became the go to place for Pokemon Go users. Hundreds of users gathered there dropping lures to a point that the Mayor requested Niantic to remove some of the Pokestops.
The game had hooked the imagination and the wallets of its users. However, Niantic failed to build on the initial success of the game. They squandered away much of their user's goodwill by taking too long to address many of the issues that plagued the game and ruined the experience for the user.
First and foremost, Pokemon Go was released as an incomplete game. There were several high priority defects that somehow found their way to the final version. Granted, some of these may be due to the unprecedented load on Niantic servers. For instance, the two most basic features of the game - tracking Pokemon and catching them often ran into problems. The tracking feature did not work at all. It simply displayed 3 paw prints next to the image of a Pokemon and this was very misleading. Intuitively, this would suggest that a Pokemon was nearby and one would expect the number of paw prints to go up or down accordingly. Unfortunately this was not the case; and a game that billed itself as a game to track Pokemon failed to get this feature done
But the most frustrating problem with Pokemon Go was not with the game itself; instead it was with Niantic. Niantic was deathly silent through the chaos of the servers crashing and all the defects with the game. Once the popularity of the game was established, perhaps it would have been prudent to throw a little money at the game and hire a PR team. Or even a PR person. Or intern. You get the idea. Just anyone to login to Facebook/Twitter and inform users about what was going on.
Over the next couple of months, Niantic was able to steady the ship. The tracking feature now works. Catching Pokemon works as expected. They have even released cool new features such as walking Pokemon to get candy. However, I can't help but wonder if the number of users would have been more if they had better handled the initial road bumps. Maybe waiting another month to fix the issues/get their servers sorted out may have mitigated some of these losses.
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