They say success is being the last one standing.
No, wait. They say success is being in the right place at the right time. Shit, no. They say success is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Or is it 99% valuation? Whatever, I digress. A lot of people have asked for my thoughts regarding the Pokémon news, so here they are; many and varied, some professional, some emotional.
Nearly 4 years ago, Alex Liu stood on stage at the second-ever Startup Weekend Pittsburgh event and decided to fundamentally change the lives of dozens of people. Though, given his meek demeanor, I’m sure he had no idea of it at the time.
In 1 minute or less, Alex pitched the concept of being able to play Pokémon on his phone, in the real world. If you’re reading this, chances are you already know about MegaBits. MegaBits would go on to involve dozens of people at every level: from website contractors to pixel artists; from freelance writers to venture capitalists. It quickly became a local darling in Pittsburgh and built a community of hundreds of fans.
It also became the foundation of our careers. Almost everyone involved cut their entrepreneurial teeth on MegaBits. For a first venture, we made a hell of a splash before running out of money in early 2015. C’est la guerre.
Several months later, I woke up to the inevitable flurry of news surrounding anything Pokémon related. The Verge had announced a joint venture between newly-independent Niantic and The Pokémon Company. The tagline?
Discover Pokémon in the Real World
It’s truly bizarre to see the mantra you’ve repeated to yourself 18 hours a day for 3 years in a promo video by Nintendo. There’s an absolutely simultaneous exaltation and exhaustion, defeat and defiance. It’s impossible to capture the range of reactions I had within minutes of learning about Pokémon GO, but I’ll stick to the 4 points which I consider the most key.
1. I am more proud of the community MegaBits built than anything else to date.
Despite being the source through which MegaBits made most of its hires and deals, the community of fans and followers MegaBits constructed was so strong that, even 6 months after its end of business, they met the Pokémon GO announcement with a certain sadness.
The community was why we built MegaBits, and it’s beyond touching to see that it still affects people, and the way they see the world, in some small way.
2. Pokémon GO is unbelievably validating.
The MegaBits team was working on an idea that Satoru Iwata himself had spent 2 years working on. I can’t say much other than this literally brought a tear to my eye.
I greatly admired Mr. Iwata, and to have confirmed that, beyond any doubt, we shared a vision, is a strong affirmation of what drove me to create MegaBits, and what drives me every day to create.
Pokémon GO also provides a much-needed sense of closure from a product perspective. It’s not often that, when a large company moves into a space being explored by a startup, they do so in a way that is 100% inline with the vision of that startup. Even the associated Pokémon Snap influence being brought to the table by Mr. Miyamoto is something that mirrors early MegaBits conversations.
3. Making a video game company takes years of failure.
Despite having a similar vision to the penultimate leadership of Nintendo, ideas are cheap. What matters is work, money, and years and years of failure. Over the last 2 centuries, Nintendo has established itself as the single most prolific and effective game studio, and they did so through years of repeated failures. 20 years ago, they released the original Pokémon games, which would define video games for an entire generation, myself included. 20 years later, Nintendo is now worth more than $15 billion.
It has always been naïve on my part to think that a game like MegaBits could be successful without that background. It’s only reasonable that the company we attempted to homage be the ones to bring this vision to the world at large.
4. Pokémon GO could be… an opportunity?
Over 3 years of work on MegaBits resulted in a body of intellectual property designed for an AR gaming experience.
Monsters and evolutions created with location, weather, and geography in mind make up the corpus of MegaBits’ work, and could translate very well as Pokémon GO exclusive content. As individuals, many members of the MegaBits team are uniquely well-versed in real-world monster training games, and could perhaps be a welcome addition to development teams.
Our experience with MegaBits changed the course of our lives, and I know those changes will continue to shape our lives for the better. But the vision has moved beyond us. In the next few days, I’ll be thinking more about how I can take the best pieces of MegaBits and help them live on in the greater world that is Pokémon GO.
And I’d love your input. As I said, the community which surrounded MegaBits remains our most profound achievement, and your thoughts and opinions are gold. Email me at pcperini@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter: @pcperini.
