Pokémon Go: One Year On

What were your fondest memories?

My fondest memory of Pokémon GO is not one specific moment, but rather a repeated occurrence. It is all the times I've met strangers and cooperated to beat Gyms, walked around in search of rare Pokémon, and chatted about Pokémon in general. It is generally easy to spot a Pokémon GO player, one who walks around with their smartphone in hand, usually without headphones, but rarely looking at the screen. They are often scouting for PokeStops too, trying to recognize the little landmark from the picture on the screen (which isn't always easy—for instance, at my university campus, somebody made a temporary art installation a PokeStop, and nowadays there's nothing there but an empty stretch of lawn). It's easy to start a conversation once you see what the other person is up to; maybe you can even make new friends, or at least have an interesting conversation. The recently introduced Raid Battle mechanic is particularly good in this regard, because unlike the old Gym battles, where a single, determined player could whittle down the Gym on their own, Raids require the cooperation of many players, which even have to initiate the battle at roughly the same time. Just this afternoon, a group of strangers came together around a fountain near my office to beat a level 4 Raid Boss. We were only three at first, but we figured we had to be at least six or seven to have a chance to beat the boss, a Tyranitar. So we hung around for ten minutes, scouting for determined-looking people making a beeline for the fountain with a smartphone in hand. Once enough people had met up, we decided to initiate the battle, and we all cheered whenever somebody managed to catch the boss. Such a nice little experience for strangers to share!

Do you think Pokémon GO was a failure?

It's only natural that phenomena come and go. Games like Pokémon GO can experience a huge surge in popularity, be downloaded and played by everybody and their grandmother, and receive a lot of media coverage (at one point last summer, our national media had written more articles about Pokémon GO than about the American presidential election), but people will go tired eventually. I think that no matter what Niantic had done, the game would drop massively in popularity after a few weeks. It experienced a classic bubble and attracted way more people than would conceivably be interested to keep playing over longer periods of time. Especially as summer holidays ended over the northern hemisphere and autumn set in (making it too cold and/or wet to walk around with your phone all day, if you even had the time to set aside), many people called it quits.

However, that's not to say Niantic did not make mistakes; in particular, they did little to hold on to what fans they had. One of the foremost issues I had with Pokémon GO was the apparent hopelessness of getting anywhere. Not only would you run quickly out of Poké Balls unless you lived close to a decently sized cluster of PokeStops, but some Pokémon were also really tedious to find and catch, and the variety was severely lacking (once again exacerbated in rural/suburban areas). Training Pokémon was also out of the question entirely, since in Pokémon GO you play a Pokémon feeder rather than a trainer. It was as if the designers made the game based on a single video of Pokémon Blue gameplay, which happened to be one on the MissingNo. glitch: "Catch Weedle, go to the one specific spot where you may encounter a single rare Pokémon, feed your Pokémon with candy". Sounds surprisingly like the majority of Pokémon GO gameplay, doesn't it?

Pokémon battles were hardly implemented at all; there was only some battling in Gyms, and you had to be at level 20 or above not to be smashed hopelessly into the dust within seconds. Local Gyms were dominated by the most serious local players, and you had to be at their level (or close to it) to even stand a chance of ever getting as much as a single coin to spend in the store. The way the game was set up until recently made battles a thing reserved for the top 1% of players—not a very good representation of what is arguably the most important facet of the franchise. Most of the gameplay boiled down to catching and releasing Pokémon until you found one worth keeping, then grinding for candy so you could evolve it. The fact that Pokémon moves were determined by a dice throw you had no say in did not make matters better either. Pokémon GO might have been fun if you were at the top of the game, but getting there was a boring slog involving way too many Pidgey to bother with in the long run.

If I ever got a chance to improve the game, I would implement a training and battling system similar to the core series games. In addition to catching wild Pokémon, you should be able to battle them for experience. Being a Pokémon trainer is not about catching and releasing as many Pokémon as possible, it's about bonding with the Pokémon you choose as your adventure companions (okay, the Fisherman trainer class might object, but it's true for the rest of us). I know the game's "economy" is dependent on consumable items (Poké Balls) that players need to explore to find more of, but with a lot of battles, you'd eventually need as many Potions and Revives as you currently need Balls. I'd let players use their Pokémon in battle, share experiences, and watch them grow. Occasionally catch new Pokémon you encounter, but not every single one that crosses your path. And I'd also let players tune their Pokémon's movesets (four moves) to suit their playstyle, instead of just mashing the screen to spam the one single attack granted to them by the roulette. Pokémon battles are supposed to be about much more than tapping a screen as quickly as you can in order to attack as fast as possible.