I Thought Niantic Had Done It Again But I Was Disappointed

Just two days into playing Peridot, I’ve uninstalled Niantic’s latest game.

I’ve sung Niantic’s praises many times through the years.

Nearly seven years ago, I wrote a piece titled: Three Reasons I Love Pokémon GO (Possibly More Than My Kids Do), in which I listed the reasons I was all for the brand new game craze that was taking over the summer of 2016.

In 2017, I wrote about how, after a bit of a slump, we were looking forward to playing Pokémon GO on the Road. And, after our 17-day road trip, I followed up with sharing how PoGO On The Road Did Not Disappoint.

The next summer, I wrote a piece titled: Pokémon GO-ing Strong for Two Years. In that essay, I said:

Again, this summer, I find myself inspired to write about this game.

Just the fact that all five of us are still playing after two years is impressive. Sure, we were all Pokémon fans to start, but the reason we are still playing this Pokémon game is that Niantic has continued to improve the game, adding new content and features to keep us engaged. And most importantly, they have not turned the game into one big streaming ad platform nor made microtransactions a necessity to play. We can still play all the game’s features for free and there are no ads to wade through.

In 2019, I was giving kudos to Niantic for a completely different game. In my essay…