How far does the Pokémon brand have to carry Pokémon Go?

That’s a huge question that’s circulating now that the game has immediately popped to the top of the App Store and has cemented itself as one of the most successful game launches of all time.


The mechanics ofthe game are fundamentally sound, and it has an extensive library of nostalgic content and a unique real-world experience that spans multiple demographics that should for the time being continue actively bringing in new players.

But can it keep that up? Dan Porter, the former head of OMGPOP and one of my favorite game managers out there, lays out a good argument for why Pokémon Gocould be a bang-and-fizzle.

Already Pokémon Go has the makings of a cultural zeitgeist, tapping into nearly a decade of pent-up demand for a smartphone version of Pokémon. But it may lack some of the core elements — like strong user-generated content and a sharp difficulty curve after the initial ramp — that can sustain the game’s playability beyond just rapidly progressing through early content.

I think pegging Pokémon Go as a potential bang-and-fizzle game right away might not be giving the game (or its developers) enough credit. I think if the game’s existing mechanics can’t sustain an extended player life already, then it has so much overhead that its brand can very easily carry it until future, more traditional user-generated content features come out.

I’d also argue there are early elements of user-generated content already built into the game. There’s a challenge of avoiding feature-creeping the game to death, but it seems like the team has shown it has the developmental chops to build a really good game.This feels a bit like a too-soon question. We haven’t seen where the game’s development and iteration is going to go. That being said, Dan has a lot of great points in his post.

I have a few I’d like to add here for the general argument on the internet happening:I think the Minecraft analogue between user-generated gameplay (UGP) and user-generated content (UGC) here is the difference between jumping into a session and building versus encountering something new that’s already built or with an existing structured community. Minecraft does a really good job of both of these, which is what I’d argue is its biggest contributor to its staying power.

Good UGC is a precursor to good UGP. In order to create a fun, unique playing session, the creator of the game has to have good tools for producing UGC that leads to good UGP, or create the content themselves that can facilitate a good UGP experience. Each playing session is a unique experience, giving players a reason to come back over and over again — even if it’s for the same level.

Candy Crush Saga, meanwhile, doesn’t have UGC. Its core, reliable mechanic is fresh UGP, which is something that can carry a game for a verylong time as long as there’s good content. But in the case of Candy Crush Saga, that can also turn into a race against time to create enough content that keeps players engaged. I’d argue what Candy Crush Saga (and also Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,which we’ll get to later) excelled at was building a strong casual user base that progressed through the game at a more leisurely pace.

The argument that there is no strong UGC in Pokémon Go I think is not giving the game enough credit. It’s the personality and quirks of a new player in the real world. Are they an ass? Are they nice enough to point out where a Pokémon ishiding? This has an opportunity to not only establish new social connections, but enhance existing ones (in the case of a 22,000-strong Pokémon Go crawl scheduled for this week). That’s all dependent on the user, and isn’t content that’s created by Niantic, though the company gave players the tools to do that.

The amount of UGC for Pokémon Go in this case is a product of the number of users and the density of those users in a geographic area. This works for and against Niantic and Pokémon Go. It means the game is going to be a very good and sticky experience in high-density locations like cities, but in remote areas or less dense metropolitan areas there’s simply going to be less UGC for now.

Niantic is going to have to figure out how to build in some elements of UGC for The Rest Of Us or end up in a content race to keep that player base engaged like Candy Crush Saga or Kim Kardashian: Hollywood.

Pokémon Go seems to do a really good job of adding an element of randomness to the capture experience that should keep the player opening the app and not feeling like they have to go on a difficult three-mile hunt for a Charizard. For example, one of my colleagues (who will remain nameless for now) was walking to Caltrain and a rare Pokémon randomly popped up, much to the delight of other players around him.

The gym component is still a question mark, and it’s on Niantic to make that a lightweight experience that keeps players from becoming too powerful, too quickly.

Locking out end-game content is a classic problem for massive progression-based games. The notion in a lot of MMOs is that new end-game content for games like World of Warcraft and Destiny is built for hardcoreusers. Then the rest of the end-game content gradually becomes easier and more accessible.

Pokémon Go is a different situation — it has to continue catering to the broadest audience if it wants to be something big and sustainable like Minecraft.

What often goes overlooked is that Candy Crush Saga did a phenomenal job of building a strong, satisfying difficulty and progression curve by producing levels with differential difficulty. This is called “sawtooth tuning”: You would encounter easy levels, then increasingly hard ones, which would then be followed by easier levels. It’s the satisfaction of solving a really difficult puzzle, and then bringing the adrenaline down and letting the player relax a bit and ramp up again. Pokémon Go does this somewhat by varying the difficulty of capturing Pokémon and gym battles — for now.

Despite Pokémon Go being already very highly polished from a mechanical standpoint, the game still actually feels a little half-baked (or, at least, three-quarter baked). It’s missing many elements of the core Pokémon experience, like trading.

While that, for example, has the potential of cannibalizing the walking experience to gather new Pokémon (a strongelement of UGP in the game), it also offers a unique opportunity for players to build a stronger social graph that piggybacks on other communication channels (real world, WhatsApp, Facebook, Craigslist,etc).

That social graph doesn’t necessarily have to exist within a game if the UGC and UGP of the game is strong enough.