Pokemon GO

[Don]

So this is one of those augmented reality games where you're supposed to use your GPS to travel to places in real life to catch Pokémon. It's making a lot of money which is hardly surprising, but I'm surprised that nobody has died yet from playing this game. I'm hearing people saying like they'd be driving and suddenly stop because they went past a spot that has a rare Pokémon, or just into someone's backyard because there was a Pokémon there. Or maybe you'll travel to some gang territory because there's a gym there or whatever. The concept just seems like an accident waiting to happen. I'm sure the gameplay is actually fun, but using your phone tied to a GPS that functions as a fictional map to catch Pokémon is just asking for problems.

If anything, this should be a VR game like you just hook up your VR machine and pretend to be traveling all over the world. Maybe you can run on a treadmill while it's doing that since you need to walk like 2-5 KM to hatch a Pokémon egg.

[Julius Seeker]

Capitalism. Nintendo makes a game, a game casual game, and it turns out to be the most potentially dangerous videogame made to date due to how it effects player behaviour, and their stock shoots up around 15% in value, translating to about $4 billion.

This guy, while hunting for Pokemon, came across something he didn't expect: http://screenrant.com/pokemon-go-player-dead-body/

[Shrinweck]

[Shellie]

It's Ingress with a Pokemon skin. Pass.

[Shrinweck]

Yeah tbh I have no interest in it either. Some funny/interesting stuff coming from it existing though.

[Eric]

Nintendo's stock grew 33%. Embrace the mobile future!

[Julius Seeker]

It's gaining on Twitter as the most used social media program in the world.
It's making millions of dollars a day.

And Nintendo's stock took an even bigger jump over the weekend in anticipation of the Japanese launch of the game: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/10/nintendo ... -game.html

Not just an April Fools joke at all:

[Don]

I'm pretty sure any regular Pokémon game on mobile would still sell like hotcakes. That's probably Nintendo's strong point anyway.

[ManaMan]

Some guys in Missouri in suburban St. Louis (hometown pride!) were arrested for robbing people at popular "PokeStops" looking for Pokemon: http://gizmodo.com/armed-robbers-used-p ... 1783416898

Also gamers complaining on Twitter about accidental exercise while playing the game: http://gizmodo.com/sore-legs-become-pan ... 1783402931

[ManaMan]

Seeker mentioned capitalism. Here's a good one from Vox: Pokémon Go is everything that is wrong with late capitalism.

[Eric]

This is a really garbage game, but it's exactly the kind of garbage game that thrives on mobile and probably couldn't be replicated on a dedicated handheld in the modern market due to install base.

I don't know how long it'll hold people's attention, but at the very least it's a smart cash grab on Nintendo's part to reskin Ingress with Pokemon.

[Julius Seeker]

On the flip side, people may feel guilty and buy a meal at the restaurant they caught their Pikachus in.

[Don]

Given there was a similar game made by the same company that amounted to absolutely nothing I'm assuming it's the Pokémon name that's carrying the game as opposed to the actual concept which means the AR aspect really isn't all that important to the success. It's obviously a successful cash grab but I'd think they'd lose all their money if people start dying from playing this game because it's going to be pretty hard to argue that people did not in fact die from playing this game given what has already happened. Usually when you hear people about people getting run over from playing games it's because it's a distraction and you can argue it's not your fault the driver or the user was distracted, but here you're talking about a game that pretty much requires you to actually be around somewhere where looking at your alternate reality map can lead to some serious consequences but it's the only way to progress in the game.

[Shellie]

Sine and I used to play Ingress a lot. Don't worry, the fad will die, quickly. It sounds like they used all the same hotspots for Pokemon Go.

[ManaMan]

Sine? Who's that? I vaguely remember someone by that name...

[Shellie]

He's currently in his office bitchin at people while playing Overwatch

[Zeus]

Sine and I used to play Ingress a lot. Don't worry, the fad will die, quickly. It sounds like they used all the same hotspots for Pokemon Go.

Yeah, the $14B increase in market capitalization in a week is certainly trending in that direction :-)

Don't forget, this game hasn't been released outside of the US, Australia, and New Zealand. It ain't my cup of tea (and for someone too cheap to pay for data, I can't play it anyways) but the success has been astounding. Imagine what happens when it gets released in Korea (it's partially active there with transportation tickets to the active areas selling out) and Japan (they're gonna need a national week of holidays; I wonder if Nintendo will wait 'til Golden Week to release it at the behest of the government?). Even up here, because the apk is so easy to get for people who like to actually have control over their phones (yes, a not-so-veiled dig at the Apple Sheeple), there's people all over the place playing it and regular scouting parties getting together after work.

What this is is an absolutely brilliant marriage between a brand so many people grew up with over the last 20 years (just look at the sales numbers and ridiculous staying power of the games and shows) and an AR game (Ingress) that fits the brand absolutely perfectly. I mean, c'mon, the whole point of the freakin' game (and TV show; my kids know Pokémon well and they've never played a single game) is to go and find Pokémon and catch them all. The fact you can do this in your neighbourhood or places you're visiting is an absolutely brilliant idea and a natural marriage and extension of the Pokémon brand.

Not being a traditional "game" is what's gonna draw the non-gaming mobile crowd to it. With Pokémon being a 20 year old brand with huge reach among the 18-40 year old demographic, the same group that's married to their damned cells, and couple that with the social media-like aspect (but with actual meeting up in real life) and I don't know if this is gonna be a quick decline in popularity. I personally think it's just the beginning of the fad and it's gonna get much, much worse in terms of exposure and use once the rest of the world gets their hands on it (you know, those people who make up the other 96% of the population). Remember, in 1999 and 2000 they said Pokémon games and the brand in general was a fad and, based on the fact the games still sell like crazy, the card game is going stronger than people notice, and the TV show is somehow on its millionth episode, I'd say they've been proven wrong.

Whether Ingress was good or not ain't the point: Pokémon has taken the concept to a whole other level of mass market penetration. One that we don't even know the extent of. I'm scared to think what the craze will be like when it hits the oriental countries. Imagine they get approval from the Chinese government to crack that market? I'm sure they're working on it. It'll be interesting to see if it cracks India as well, those 1.2B people ain't exactly chump change either

[Julius Seeker]

Surpassed a market cap of 33 billion. That's over 17 billion up from mid June.

[Don]

I don't see how the AR part is a positive. This isn't the first game with this kind of idea and I'd argue its success is largely because of the Pokémon brand as opposed to AR being the next greatest thing. It's perhaps more baffling that it took this long for a successful Pokémon title to come out on mobile. It's going to be successful unless people dying derails the whole thing, which is pretty much the only thing that can derail this in the first place, so I don't see why they went this path. Two guys fell off a cliff from playing Pokémon Go (but somehow didn't die) most recently. It seems like it's just a matter of time before something bad happens and given that the police have warned people about the danger of playing the game it'd be pretty hard to go with your usual 'it's not our fault people died playing this game', not to mention usually when someone die from playing a game it's something along the lines of deep-vein thrombosis which you can say it's not our problem as opposed to directly walked off a cliff because your game wants someone to look at a map all the time.

[Julius Seeker]

An AR game with a virtual map is an insanely good use of the Pokemon IP. That's why it's a huge hit right now.

Effectively, people are living out the sort of thing they fantasized about before.

[Shellie]

Yeah, the $14B increase in market capitalization in a week is certainly trending in that direction :-)

Probably more of a hope than a prediction

If it gets people moving around, exploring their cities, great. There's a lot of complaining here though, people tearing up graveyards. I never thought they should have been portal locations in Ingress, and it looks like PG uses the same places. It did feel kind of shitty sometimes pulling into a church or business parking lot, sitting there and driving back off again. Police didn't like it either, got stopped 3 times while playing lol

[Julius Seeker]

It's apparently doing very well with user retention.

It broke Candy Crush's 2013 DAU record, making it the largest game in mobile history.
Broke both iOS (less than 1 day) and Android (less than 4 days) records from launch date to first place on app stores.

It is also crushing social app after social app. It has also doubled Twitter's DAU ijust a few days after surpassing it.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/business/i ... game-ever/

This is New York hit with the Pokedemic

[kali o.]

I don't understand the world anymore.

[Eric]

I don't understand the world anymore.

[Julius Seeker]

Nintendo stocks up another 11.2% today They're now valued at 35.7 billion. Just 2 billion behind the Sony corporation.

[Replay]

Dozens of people are all over every public space in town playing, as with most of the world. It's great. I would like to see someone do this with a franchise I'd actually play - Final Fantasy or Magic or another one of the legendaria I identify with more than Pokemon.

I went out playing with a friend I have who plays it, last week - dozens of gamers out exercising, meeting new people, happily patronizing the local businesses - it's honestly one of the bright spots of 2016 for me, and I don't even play myself.

[Don]

Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa banning Pokémon Go because there's evolution in it (you evolve your Pokemons to become more powerful) and that it has symbols from other religions.

[Julius Seeker]

Hahaha. Pokemon evolution is actually metamorphosis of sorts.
What other religions does Pokemon represent? Shamanistic North American?

If they really wanted to get true to their religion, they could say Pokemon fandom is Idolatry, kind of like money... And you know how much the Saudi government hates idolatry of money, and bans that too.

[Don]

The fatwa says it has Shinto elements, which is probably not surprising given the origin. Apparently Pokémon was always banned for the same reasons but people are asking again due to the recent popularity of Pokémon Go.

The type of evolution in most mobile games basically says if you take enough crystals or drugs or whatever you become more powerful, which is actually not how evolution works anyway.

[Zeus]

Yeah, the $14B increase in market capitalization in a week is certainly trending in that direction :-)

Probably more of a hope than a prediction

If it gets people moving around, exploring their cities, great. There's a lot of complaining here though, people tearing up graveyards. I never thought they should have been portal locations in Ingress, and it looks like PG uses the same places. It did feel kind of shitty sometimes pulling into a church or business parking lot, sitting there and driving back off again. Police didn't like it either, got stopped 3 times while playing lol

Don't blame the game developers or publishers for the lack of basic respect and etiquette of the cellphone generation. That's a whole different social issue that's not caused by Pokemon Go only revealed by it.

There has to be some sort of correction in way the game chooses hotspots, no doubt. And I'm sure Niantic is working on it. The fact it's even an issue points to the popularity of the product, particularly when you hear it on the news on a daily basis. It's an ongoing thing, they'll figure it out. Always happens with new technology as society struggles to adapt.

[Replay]

The game is raising issues about the use of public spaces that I think it's very valid to discuss. Augmented reality isn't going anywhere, and if not addressed now a lot of these issues will just get worse with future AR titles and experiences.

Hotspotting needs to be made easier for commercial venues that want to support it and easier to disable entirely for "public" spaces that aren't entirely comfortable with the notion or private locations too near a hotspot, since many public buildings and facilities really aren't appropriate for a Pokemon hunt as the flaks over the Holocaust museum and gravesites and players who trespass on private homes near a hotspot/rare spawn show.

That being said, I was so happy to see dozens of people out near the capitol here around release time. Most of the time the beautiful grounds just sit there unused by anyone but politicians and lawyers and clerks and security guards.

It felt like a public awakening, and there was power there of a kind; I found myself thinking, "Why can't this happen more often for things other than just Pokemon"?