I don’t know if polish is the best word to use, considering how unstable and buggy the game is. Ingress almost lost me in the first day because it was so cluttered but it never crashed on me, which means it was a lot less frustrating than Pokemon Go.

One thing I think Pokemon Go has going for it is how it rewards walking, even without a specific destination in mind. It’s exciting to walk around because you might encounter a pokemon, possibly even a very rare one. In Ingress, I only walk around to get from one portal to another or to collect energy, neither of which are very fun. I’m not sure how that lesson could be generalized into something applicable to most games like you did in your article, however.