Unless you have been living under a rock, you have probably heard of Pokemon Go. The meteoric rise and possible fall of this location-based augmented reality game can be best represented by Nintendo’s stock price (FYI, Nintendo is the creators of Pokemon).
Source: Bloomberg, 2016
Pokemon Go’s Decline?
As widely reported in the media, Nintendo’s stock price fell after the company said that the financial benefits from Pokemon Go “will be limited” – Nintendo is estimated to have just 13% economic stake in the gaming app. (Niantic, a US-based developer is the developer and publisher of the game). Source: Bloomberg
Pokemon Go’s possible fall from grace is also reflected in its slump in popularity. For instance it was reported that the app has fell from #1 position to #4 position amongst the highest-grossing apps for Apple devices in Japan.
How did it all go so wrong for a gaming app that had so much hype surrounding it at launch?
Problem #1 – Pokemon Go Botters
It goes without saying, for a social game like Pokemon Go, bragging rights amongst friends is part of the appeal of the game – especially amongst the more die-hard player base. Possessing the ‘strongest’ pokemon will grant the social status they crave amongst their friends, and there is no better way to flaunt your strongest pokemon than defeating and taking over the nearest gym.
Photo Credit: IBTimes UK
Imagine this – Pokemon Go has finally launched in your country and you have been power-leveling to level 5 (the minimum trainer level to challenge a ‘gym’). You dash to the nearest gym only to find that a level 30 trainer with a ridiculously-high combat point (CP) pokemon is currently holding the gym. How is this possible? The game was just launched a couple of hours ago! There is no way you can catch up to level 30 in the next few hours, as the process of leveling up gets exponentially harder. Suddenly you’ve lost the drive to continue leveling and playing the game.
It is likely you have encountered your first Pokemon Go botter – A Pokemon Go player who is playing the game in a manner unintended by Niantic.
Botting: With the launch of Pokemon Go, free Pokemon Go bots have sprung up all over the Internet, available for anyone to download. Using a bot grants the user the following unfair advantages:
- Automated and Expedited Leveling – Pokemon Go bots are able to ‘travel’ at inhuman speeds (think 60 km/h), drastically increasing the number of wild pokemon and pokestop encounters you can have within a fixed period of time – both of which grant experience points needed to level up. The higher level your trainer is, the higher the potential combat points your pokemons can achieve.
- Optimization of Catching Pokemon – Ask anyone who has played Pokemon Go manually beyond level 20 and they would tell you pokeballs are a scarcity as it becomes increasingly hard to catch the pokemon you run into (as they tend to be of higher CP, and you require more pokeballs to attempt to catch a pokemon). Bots never miss when it comes to throwing pokeballs, and they are able to compute the optimal options when it comes to maximizing your chances of success (e.g. use the right type of pokeballs, berries where necessary).
- Never Sleeps – Bots require no rest whilst trainers in real life will probably be exhausted after a whole day of walking around on foot farming pokemon.
If you think the above Pokemon Go bots sounds complicated to set-up, you are mistaken. A quick google search will yield multiple pages with step-by-step instructions on installing a text-based bot on your PC. I shall refrain from linking to any of such pages, but you could get a sense of how it works in a screenshot below:
Niantic’s Mistake: Niantic clearly has the capabilities to detect botters. We know this from the simple fact that they are able to track how fast your character is moving in game. After all, this is the mechanism they use to dermine the distance travelled for your Pokemon Go eggs before they hatch. For instance, if you are travelling on a car at 60km/h, your eggs will not be clocking any distance due to the fast speed you are moving at (if I am not mistaken, the cap is 10km/h – any higher and the distance stops registering in game). Niantic could certainly handout permanent bans to such users, at least deterring botters from traveling and level up in-game at unfair speeds. However, no actions have been taken in response to the rampant botting going on in Pokemon Go.
Problem #2 – GPS Spoofers
Any end-game Pokemon Go player would know that there’s certain types of rare pokemon that have a much higher cap on their CP, versus the common pokemons you come across (e.g. Pidgey). For instance, pokemons like Dragonite and Snorlax are commonly known to be pokemons that are rare to obtain, and are often the star players of your lineup.
These pokemons are extremely hard to obtain, simply because they are rare spawns that are hard to hunt down. However, GPS spoofing circumvents this issue granting abusers an unfair advantage.
GPS Spoofing: In essence, by ‘spoofing’ your GPS location on your device or on the PC (i.e. tricking your device to think your geolocation is somewhere else), you instantly teleport your in-game trainer to the exact coordinate you defined. One moment you could be in New York Central Park farming pokestops, the next moment you could teleport to a Dratini spawn nest in Australia farming Dratini candies for your Dragonite evolution.
Users have found several ways to abuse this exploit. A quick google for “PokeSniper” and you will find various sites advocating the use of an application which would teleport you to any global coordinates you input in the program – in addition, it would automatically home in on the specific pokemon you are looking to catch, and even tosses out pokeballs on your behalf (without you having to lift a finger). It would be a great way to complete your entire Pokedex without breaking a sweat.
Ever wondered how certain users have managed to have numerous Snorlaxes and Dragonites in their lineup? Well, there are many resources on the web out there (for instance, see screenshot below) that highlights to a trainer when a rare pokemon spawns – all you need to do is just teleport to the coordinates before it despawns.
Niantic’s Mistake: Similar to the issue of botters, Niantic certainly has the ability to detect GPS spoofers. This is evident from the fact that they do hand out ‘soft bans’ to users who have been teleporting from country to country in a matter of seconds. These ‘soft bans’ merely results in you having all pokemons always escaping your attempts to catch them, and last for a couple of hours before things goes back to normal. However, users online have also found a quick way to lift the ‘soft bans’, by simply visiting a pokestop and continously ‘spinning’ the stop for a couple minutes. Unless exploiters feel like their account might face the risk of a permanent ban, it is unlikely the ‘soft bans’ will deter them from GPS spoofing.
Problem #3 – Niantic’s Lack of Communication
A lot has been said about Niantic’s lack of communication with the community, ask any AAA game developer and they would tell you that a community manager is critical in keeping the fans happy. There’s 3 areas where Niantic could have done alot better in terms of communicating with Pokemon Go fans.
- 3 Step Bug: For the longest time, the ‘3 step bug’ was something the community complained about. This was a feature where the app displayed all the nearby Pokemon to the player’s location – there was never an explanation on how this feature worked, and users were frustrated about how erroneous it could be. Suddenly out of the blue, players realized the feature was removed from the game – and there were no clear lines of communication about this either.
- Shutting Down Pokevision: Since Niantic is unable to deliver a nearby pokemon tracker that is functional, the community took matters into its own hands, eventually creating a platform known as Pokevision which could accurately show all the nearby pokemons of a certain geo-coordinate. In fact, it took it one step further and even displayed how long the pokemon will last before it despawns. Shortly after the release of Pokemon Go’s patch 0.31, PokeVision went down following a tweet from the PokeVision team that they are ‘respecting Niantic and Nintendo’s wishes’. It wasn’t until many days later did Niantic clarify how platforms like PokeVision took a toll on its servers and slowed down the progress of launches in new countries. Why Niantic failed to communicate this from the start is anyone’s guess.
- Launch Dates: When the game was first launched in US there was intense hype in the other countries where the game have yet to launch. Niantic’s social medial account was spammed by comments asking for details on possible timelines, launch dates, and countries next on the list for launch. Radio silence is all we got, and the first few launches in developed markets were done out of the blue. Whilst I fully understand Niantic would like to avoid overpromising and giving unrealistic timelines, they could have at least let the community know the progress they are making (e.g. whether they have paused launches globally to stabilize servers).
Potential to be an Amazing Game
I honestly think Pokemon Go has the potential to continue being a smash hit for many years to come. There is just so much more room for new features to be added to keep the game fresh – adding subsequent generation of new Pokemons, enabling trading of pokemon and even challenging nearby trainers.The game has definitely got off to an explosive start thanks to the popularity of the Pokemon franchise. If you replaced the pokemons in game with random critters, one might argue Niantic would not have such a popular app under its belt.
However, just relying on the appeal of Pokemon will not prove to be sufficient in the long run. In order for Pokemon Go to not to be a short-term fad, Niantic really needs to take a harder look at the issues highlighted above to ensure longevity of their game. It would be interesting to see how and when Niantic addresses the issues plaguing the game as they slowly roll out the game on a global scale – the last thing they want is to see the decline of Pokemon go due to players being jaded of rampant cheating in game and the lack of communication from the game’s developers.
