Pokemon GO
Twenty years after the series first exploded into pop culture, Pokemon briefly took the world by storm all over again when it found its way into the back pocket of every nostalgic millennial. More than just leveraging the familiarity of the franchise, Pokemon GO’s clever use of augmented reality created a video game that encouraged people to exercise and socialize. It was lauded as a new sort of gaming experience, and its accessibility as a mobile game gave it an unrivaled reach. There’s arguably no other time in gaming history when a mega popular, household name franchise has combined with a universally adopted platform to produce the same level of fever pitch success.
Yet, the strangest part of it all was that the game itself isn’t actually very good. For all the hype, the critical reception was hardly stellar, and once the realization of its limited scope became apparent, its user base wasn’t shy in vocalizing disdain.
Even if it is “just a free game”, Pokemon Go is woefully limited in design, missing key features one would have hoped for in a Pokemon mobile game. The major issues in this regard are the lack of trading and no player-versus-player battles. Not to mention, there was no in-app social capability of any kind. Niantic has promised to rectify these issues with an incoming patch, but the developer is taking its sweet time, with delays adding further frustrating.
But has any of this slowed Pokemon GO down? Well, sure, it lost a significant amount of its players since launch, but even factoring in those losses, it still commands a significant player base. Loathe as we might its (for the time being) wasted potential, the “gotta catch em’ all” grind in combination with its outward bound augmented reality gameplay is still an addictive loop that is apparently a super hard to put down.
