The Potential Future of Pokemon Go
Pokemon Go was one of the top engrossing mobile games upon release with 550 million installs within the first 80 days of the app being available. However, there was a quick deterioration of interest from users, and by 30 days after release, the app had already lost 1/3 of its users.
This Brings Up The Question:
How Can Pokemon Go Better Retain Users?
While it has been proven that Pokemon Go has strong sensory, spatial, and social immersion, it lacks tactical, strategic, and narrative immersion which is very important when predicting a player’s continuance intention (Liu et al., 2017). Additionally, Pokemon Go has failed to effectively communicate how to play the game, which was a lot of feedback from players who lost interest. Thus, Pokemon Go lost many potential long-term players simply because they did not understand the complexities of the game, due to the fact it does not follow a typical Pokemon Game structure.
However, a huge reason that Pokemon Go attracts a wide variety of ages is because of its user-friendly interface and cooperative gaming with the community (Lin et al., 2020). This format allows the elderly and children to both enjoy the game due to the simple mechanics of catching Pokemon and batting in gyms.
Therefore, PikaPlayground believes it would be best for Pokemon Go to keep the game strategically simple for the elderly and children, and instead focus on enhancing the narrative while better-incorporating instructions on how to play the game. We think it is best to give the users tools to dive into the complex strategies of the game, while keeping the mechanics and required tasks simple, so individuals who just enjoy the simplicity of the game will still be interested.
What Might This Look Like?
Meat of
The Game
The issue with the Pokemon Go narrative is that it quickly gets lost in the sea of miscellaneous special research tasks and becomes null to users. With no clear end game, Pokemon Go does not capitalize on an important tool to keep users engaged.
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Currently, how the narrative works is they have “Research Tasks” that have no time restraint to complete, and trainers often skip through the storyline regardless. The issue with this is that because you do not need to complete the task to level up in the game, users often forget about and in fact, some do not even know they exist.
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You can get to level 50 simply by catching millions of Pokemon without learning anything about the actual strategy of the game which is why users who don’t research on their own often get bored easily.
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The best way Pokemon Go can combat these issues is by incorporating a vital plotline that teaches users how to plan the game and is essential to complete to level up throughout the game. Additionally, hitting Level 30 will allow users to “beat the game” creating additional incentive to complete tasks.
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Rather than leveling up through XP, they can restructure the game so that they level up by completing tasks that simultaneously teach them how to play the game. This version gives users tools to understand strategy so that they do not have to do outside research like how the game is structured now.
Gaining knowledge is essential to winning the game, but users not not have to use these learned skills if they do not wish. This will keep the elderly and children involved, but also, users who want to understand the game on a deeper level will now have the tools.
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Finally, this game structure integrates the trainers as important mentors in the game rather than optional side quests, like they are now. This will help push the narrative immersion that is essentially to keep players interested and invested in the game.
Intro
The current Pokemon Go game has a strong narrative flow in the initial opening scenes of the game. For this reason, we believe that the game designers should keep the same premise.
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It follows the typical Pokemon franchise format of choosing your starting Pokemon (fire, water, or grass type), and picking your team (Valor - Red, Mystic - Blue, or Instinct - Yellow) which determines who you will be battling with versus against.
How this is formatted is not only extremely nostalgic of the old games structure but also seamlessly introduces the community building and team aspect. This introduction places you on your team almost immediately and gives the players mentors who will guide them throughout the game. For example, if you are on team valor your mentor will be Candela and she will help assist you through the rest of your journey.
Potential Example:
Your team leader could explain to you how to evolve a Pokemon and potential strategies for evolving, such as using a lucky egg and evolving all your Pokemon at once to gain XP rapidly OR waiting to catch a three-star Pokemon so that it is highly effective in battle.
The Leaders will explain this verbally while the screen will show users how to actually use physical items/complete tasks that the team leader is describing.
After the explanation, The team leader will ask you to do this task yourself, and when you have completed a certain amount of these tasks you will level up.
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The difference between this and the special research tasks is that the special research tasks are not knowledge-based. Since users are not learning how to play the game properly, they miss many fun and important features of the game. Along with this, these tasks are not optional to advance in the game.
Resolution
The game would be beaten when the trainer reaches Level 30. Similar to the current game, the reward will be getting to catch a legendary Pokemon. However, the pushed importance of hitting Level 30 and the build-up from the team leaders will motivate users to get there faster and actually complete the game.
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This reward is effective because it gives the users a tangible goal to hit, which they must advance their knowledge to reach. Most users quit after a month, so making the end goal of reaching level 30 will hopefully keep them active and invested for longer.
Additionally, once they hit level 30, the game won’t end. they can continue leveling up forever. It just means that the leaders have taught them everything that they need to know for their success.
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After that, they can play for fun with the objective of filling up the Pokedex and completing the special research tasks that come out every month.