Pokemon GO is the augmented reality game developed by the company Niantic and launched by Nintendo on July 6th that has made all people go crazy and has increased the market value of its company by a 200% in less than two weeks. Augmented reality is very closely related to gamification since the latter is based on including game concepts in non-game environments, and the first one includes the game in real life in a more or less direct way. Moreover, another similarity, as we will see, is that both approaches enhance competition, community, the feeling of being rewarded and boost the general experience making it deeper and more real for users.
In order to start talking about this game, we have to explain the antecedents. Pokemon is one of the most famous brands around the world, from kids until the 90’s generation. They have been making movies, tv cartoons, franchising the brand and launching a game almost every year with Nintendo. However, the main mechanic of the game (basically: explore the world and catch ’em all) was becoming repetitive after 15 editions of canonic games (excluding more than 30 “minor” games based on pinball, cards, puzzle…). It was evidently starting to get boring, especially for teenagers and adults.
To solve this issue and attract the attention of millennials, they had to move from the video game console to the smartphone. Moreover, they needed to include some aspects that would fulfil this generation’s necessities, as we are analyzing today.
1. SUCCESS FEATURES
1.1 Virality
In addition to the device used, some of the most important things are the virality of the augmented reality and the possibility of taking pictures while you are trying to catch a Pokemon. There is nothing that Millennials love more than sharing pictures on social media, and what can be better than joining this with the nostalgy of their childhood? Pictures of your friends with a Pikachu or of your grandma with a Jigglypuff are the perfect match to achieve an overwhelming amount of likes on Facebook or Instagram.
Virality also raises competition, since users train hard to catch better Pokemons than their friends and conquer the gyms in their city, and like to show their achievements.
1.2 Personalization
Another thing they like is to personalize everything they have, a trend adopted by many brands in their online shops and flagship stores. In this case, people can create their own avatar, and this way become Pokemon trainers. This personalization makes it easier to create links with the game, as users become a part of it, increasing engagement with the game and the feeling of actually living the game.
1.3 Price
As most of you will know, Pokemon GO is a free game that you can find in Apple Store or in Play Store. But this is no surprise for us if we look at the current tendency: most viral games, such as Candy Crush, are available for free in different devices. Thanks to this, the app has got more than 46 million downloads in less than one month, climbing straight up to the first position in the app stores. Nevertheless, users that want to progress faster have the option of purchasing coins in the marketplace that are used to buy some objects that will help them in their experience, so Nintendo can actually get money directly from users who want to pay.
1.4 Community feeling
Once the players enter level 5, they have to choose which of the three teams they want to join, which creates a feeling of community and a competitive sense that makes them play against the other two teams to get as many gyms as possible.
1.5 Addictive
The Pokedex is the most addictive thing: all users want to collect the whole variety of Pokemon, and after some time playing they feel the need to continue, because if they give up, they perceive all the time they spent catching Pokemon as a waste of time. In this way, the original idea of Pokemon still lives, and is more effective than ever, with users spending a lot of time to become the best trainer.
1.6 Gamification Process
The methodology of the game is quite simple: people only need to walk around and try to catch the Pokemon and fight with others. For many people, this could be boring, as nowadays people are not used to going out to walk. So there is a gamification process to make it more attractive to the users:
1.6.1 Guide
Since the start of the game, Professor Oak helps the users to move around the app, explain them the main things and tell them the main objectives of the game. When users below level 5 try to go into a gym, he is also the character who will tell them that they need to be at least in that level to fight there. Furthermore, you can interact with the Professor sending him some Pokemon that you do not want anymore, getting back some candy that will help you with the other Pokemon you have.
In this sense, Pokemon GO accomplishes one of the main values of gamification, which is guiding users with a coherent thread to understand and thus maximize the experience, since they feel they work for something they can focus on.
1.6.2 Motivate
As in the classic game, the most important objective of the game is to catch all Pokemon in the Pokedex, getting the full collection. Moreover, in this version, users can see in their profiles a list of badges, that will motivate the users to do the missions. One example of it would be visiting more than 100 Poke Spots. To make it longer, there are three levels of badges, getting copper, silver, and gold.
This way, interaction is boosted and users get immediate rewards for it, which makes them create a stronger link with the game a spend more time playing.
1.6.3 Surprise
To introduce some elements of surprise to the game, the users will never know where will they find some weird Pokemon, or which one will appear from their egg after walking 2 or 5 km, incubating. Another thing that changes as they progress in the game is that they will find different things in the Poke Spots, including stronger Pokemons.
1.6.4 Reward
The only prize they will get will be the badges we mentioned before, that they will receive during the whole progress, aiming them to continue, having short term goals. Anyway, it is not just about the rewards, it is more about self-realization and achievement of the respect of other friends.
In this sense, the real reward is to get new pokemons, and if the user catches them all he can always work to make them stronger. We must notice that this is the first version of Pokemon Go and there are 150 pokemons for the moment, but the developers will very likely include more of them (there is currently a list of more than 700) and also offer new mechanics such as fights against other users, official competitions, etc.
2.BENEFITS
2.1 Health
If people want to fight on the gyms or get some objects, they will have to walk to arrive at those locations. In less than a month, we saw how many children left their houses to walk around with their friends to catch Pokemon, what means that the game changed their habits. Instead of playing at home online with their friends, now they meet outdoors and walk encouraged by the mechanisms of the game, such as the eggs incubator (eggs contain pokemons, and they hatch when users walk 2, 5, 10 kms…).
This aspect of the game is being received as positive by experts, who find the game as an interesting device to avoid child obesity, which is one of the main problems in developed countries.
2.2 Socialization
Nowadays, some of the most famous game consoles allow users to play online with their friends, what causes that so many people play alone at their house. Pokemon GO changed this, encouraging people to meet with their friends and catch Pokemons together, or fight in the Gyms.
This offers a new interesting perspective that can be exploded by educators and parents, who can use the virtual world as a device to improve their children’s real world, as they visit their city and make new friends.
3.WEAK POINTS
As this is the first version the company launches into the market, we can see some things that they could improve to make it more interesting to the users, which they will likely do in the future:
3.1 Social media Sign Up
The only two options available to sign up into the game is with a Google account or with a Pokemon Trainer Club account, which makes interacting with friends a bit difficult. The option of signing up with Facebook, for example, would make it faster and easier to connect with all your contacts later.
3.2 Friends interaction
One of the weakest features is that you are not able to interact with other people, unknown or friends. A ranking of your Facebook friends would make it more competitive, as you would compare yourself with all of them.
Another thing that they could introduce is an internal message system to talk with other Pokemon trainers and to trade with them the ones you have repeated.
3.3 Unclear instructions
Even though you can find a tag of tips where they explain you the main points of the game, there should be a more specific way to explain to users how to interpret the map, how to fight, how to make your Pokemon stronger. etc.
4.BUSINESS USE OF GAMIFICATION
The gamification of real life using Pokemon Go has attracted the attention of many companies that want to get a Poke Spot or a Gym in the game of their business, what would increase the number of visitors, increasing in that way the amount of income.
This option opens a door for Niantic/Nintendo to close advertising or partnership agreements all around the world in an extremely profitable way for them, and opportunity that they will no doubt exploit.
We do not know how far will the game go, but we are sure this game is going to open the door of the augmented reality to our common life in different aspects, not just in games.
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