1. It's the best thing Nintendo has released, ever (no, seriously)
After years (and years and years) of twiddling their thumbs and
ignoring the rise of the smartphone app marketplace, Nintendo got off
their butts and released Pokemon GO - an augmented reality game that
allows you to become a virtual Pokemon trainer and utilizes your real
world geography as your 'map' for hunting and battling Pokemon.
In
short, this is likely the closest thing we'll ever get to a Pokemon MMO
- with the key difference that it's EVEN BETTER THAN AN ACTUAL POKEMON
MMO COULD EVER HOPE TO BE.
To be clear - I'm not saying Pokemon GO is a revolutionary game. It's not.
It's pretty simplistic and passive - there's little-to-no depth to the
gameplay, it has many of the trappings of crummier mobile apps
(microtransactions, etc.), and if it weren't for the Pokemon license,
absolutely no one would be playing this thing. To back this statement
up, Niantic (the developers behind Pokemon GO) had previously created an
app called Ingress, that was essentially the same thing as Pokemon GO,
but without the Pokemon nostalgia factor (and actually with a lot more
features). To say it didn't reach the success of Pokemon GO would be the
understatement of the century.
But back to why Pokemon GO is better than any Pokemon MMO - it's not better in any imagined gameplay terms, but it's better AS AN EXPERIENCE.
As an experience, Pokemon GO refuses to be trapped by the same
constraints virtually every AAA videogame is stuck with - you play
alone, it costs $40+ just to begin playing, and there's a high barrier
to entry through overly complex, difficult-to-master gameplay
mechanics. Pokemon GO has none of that - it's casual gaming taken to the ideal ending point, where the goal is to have fun with others
moreso than for you to achieve personal glory through dozens of hours
of solitary repetitive work. And achieving something like this has been
Nintendo's stated goal for ages at this point - but they were only able
to get there by changing tactics and going to where the largest audience
already was (phones) instead of trying to draw them into Nintendo's own
hardware.
This game alone has caused the tables to turn in a VERY unexpected way...
2. It saved Nintendo
In the years leading up to last week, things had not been
going too well for Nintendo - Wii U sales were so lackluster that its
replacement is already being lined up a mere 4 years into its
development cycle, attempts to launch new IP have been shaky, the
company's relationship with the internet (mostly YouTube) has been
frosty, and they began posting annual losses for the first time in the
company's 100+ history in 2012. Nintendo needed a win, and they needed
it to be big.
Saying Pokemon GO is a win is putting it lightly -
Pokemon GO is a 1000 ft. grand slam that threatens to engulf the world. In less than a week, it's managed to send Nintendo's stock through the roof,
adding $7.5 billion
to the company's market value (and counting). And it hasn't even been
released worldwide yet - currently, it's only available in the US,
Australia, and New Zealand.
It should be mentioned that this isn't purely Nintendo's
success - while they own substantial stakes in both the Pokemon Company
and Niantic, they don't own them outright. Nintendo will only be
receiving about 30% of revenue driven by Pokemon GO - but still, that's
not too shabby, given Pokemon GO in the United States on iPhones only is
making about
$1.6 million per day.
Again, that's JUST iPhone and JUST the United States.
Factor in Android and different countries, and estimating the app pulls
in tens of millions per day might be lowballing it.
In short, Captain Toad's Treasure Tracker really dropped the f***ing ball in comparison.
3. This fun app that gets people outdoors is becoming enormously, insanely popular
Within two days of its release,
Pokemon GO overtook Tinder in daily active users on Android.
If it were a mere flash in the pan, that might not be a big deal - but
the userbase has only continued to grow, and now it's near surpassing
Twitter, one of the mainstays in social networking for the past several
years.
This is pretty huge - Twitter has invested hundreds of
millions of dollars and nearly a decade to build its userbase to its
current state, and Nintendo is managing to potentially beat that after a
week. That's INSANE. Firms would pay BILLIONS for even a sliver of that
kind of market power - and Nintendo's managed it with an app that
forces real life socialization and exercise, which seems more worthwhile
than apps dedicated to hooking up with strangers or livetweeting TV
shows.
4. It achieved the impossible: a nice gaming community
The only way to really summarize a game's "community" is
with anecdotal evidence - you need to get into personal stories and
details, in a way that charts and graphs and figures can't communicate.
As such, this is vulnerable to oversight or selective vision - but as
someone who spends A LOT of time on the internet and has been knee-deep
in Pokemon GO for the past week, I've noticed something pretty
astonishing: the community around the game is NICE.
To keep it simple, I don't think I've EVER really found a
truly "nice" gaming community. At best, I've found communities that
aren't as actively toxic and hateful as others, but pretty much every
gaming community you'll find has issues with elitism amongst the
players, nitpicking, insults (to others in their community and those
outside of it), and all other manner of unpleasantness. But Pokemon GO has largely been positive - kind, encouraging, and supportive. It's unreal.
Not that there's a TOTAL lack of vitriol, racism, and
general meanness - that's definitely there if you look for it, but it's
in such small amounts, it's drowned out by the positive forces that
overwhelm message boards and subgroups.
Part of this may be because it's such a broadly appealing
game - there are young kids playing, senior citizens, parents, teens,
20-somethings, middle-aged adults, and everything in-between. And,
perhaps best of all, the game never really puts you in direct
competition with anyone else. You can fight for control of gyms from
others, but you never are fighting them directly - and
even then, your victory or loss is only temporary, as gyms continue to
change allegiances by the hour (so no real hurt feelings when you
"lose").
But mostly, I see stuff like this every day and my heart explodes like a lure was just dropped on it.
5. The game WANTS you to be social - and it achieves it.
A lot has been written and spoken about the positive
aspects of Pokemon GO - it gets you outside, it gets you exercising,
etc. - but the main positive thing around Pokemon GO is the social
aspect - it's bringing people together in a way videogames simply never
do. People are gathering together thanks to gyms and lures, and simply
recognizing others playing the game while walking around their towns.
Sydney's made the news for having around
2000 players flock to the same spot
around the Sydney Opera House to catch Pokemon and meet up with fellow
trainers - and everywhere you look, you'll find similar (although
smaller scale) stories of meet-ups and groups forming all thanks to the
game.
There are bar crawls being formed around Pokemon GO, block
parties, and parks everywhere are being filled with trainers who are
inadvertently being made to socialize with others in nature.
6. The net effect of Pokemon GO is better mental health
All of these things combined - better socializing, making
people go outdoors and travel, and the non-competitive nature of the
game - have worked together to bring a probably unexpected benefit to
Pokemon GO: improving mental health and well-being of lots and lots of people.
Again, it's the early days of the game, so there are no
studies or formal data to draw from - but seeing posts online and
speaking to people in real life will lead anyone to the same conclusion:
Nintendo has done something truly great (intentional or not) with
Pokemon GO. The game forces people outside of their comfort zone (albeit
in a gentle way), and that's exactly what so many people really NEED
these days.
7. All of society is getting in on the game
Maybe the most beautiful part about Pokemon GO is how
broadly appealing it is - it's not closed off to a select group of
hardcore fans, it's being appreciated by people from every walk of life.
And in times fraught with division and in-fighting, it's a thing that
seems to be beaming with positivity and inclusiveness. Whether it's
friendly jostling about team allegiances, friendly reminders from local
authorities, or kids setting up lemonade stands at PokeStops, it's something that's becoming universally-recognized as common ground.
8. It's not perfect, and that's why it's great
None of this is to say that Pokemon GO is a perfect thing - it's not. The game itself is
buggy and has suffered from server crashes, there's a lot of
deep and important concerns over privacy settings with Google sign-in,
and the game can be distracting to dangerous degrees (with people
attempting to play the game while driving or crossing the street).
It has a lot of issues -
it's a semi-complete app that's still finding its footing.
And if this is how great and uniting the game is when it's this buggy,
once the server and privacy issues are smoothed out, imagine how much
better things could get in the future.
Of course, all the issues could also be signs that it's
just a passing fad - it's temporary, it's of the moment, and the heat
will die down once the novelty of the game is worn out by the issues
plaguing it. And if that's the case, it's kind of wonderful - Nintendo
created this brief thing that, out of nowhere, brought together millions
of strangers and gave us a few weeks of really fun goofiness. It shows
that that's something that's possible - before Pokemon GO was released,
most people would have been enormously (and rightfully) skeptical that
there would be thousands of people gathering at the Sydney Opera House
to catch Dratinis on their phone. And if the Pokemon GO flame burns out
fast, we'll all remember this weird moment in the year where everything
was fun and new and exciting - and it'll serve as a reminder that it can
happen again.
The Mayor even caught a Machop (Fun fact: its Korean name translates to 'Muscle Monster') in this adorable Facebook Live interview with The Huffington Post in Korea
