Media Industry Mindset — Pokemon Go
By Gordon Chaffin | Edition 1 | 7/10/2016
It blows my mind that it took Nintendo so long to get into mobile gaming. A giant media company that created money trucks for decades from gaming hardware and software (and manga, anime, merchandise, and more) stayed invested in a dying ecosystem for too long. It had the raw materials for continued success: killer content franchises and tens of millions of loyal fans looking for something new from the Japanese company’s brilliant coders, creatives, and c-suite legends. I mean, we’re talking about multiple generations looking for fun from their favorite games presented on the mobile devices that in 2016 steal all of our time and extinguish every whiff of boredom. Few sit for hours in front of a console. DS is on a death sentence — why pay more for inferior experiences on bricks that can’t even connect to the internet? (It probably can do that now, but you get the point.)
I’m talking about Pokemon Go, of course — Nintendo’s foray into smartphone gaming that immerses players in the PokeWorld they dreamed of inhabiting since Pokemon dropped for the Gameboy back in the day. We all wanted a PokeDex. They made toy versions of it, but an obvious toy paled in comparison to the mobile device we wanted to badge ourselves with as we walked into each of the eight gyms and then took on the Elite Four. We grew out of that, recycled our Pokemon cards and put away the childish things. In the meantime, Steve Jobs gave us a real PokeDex. And now Nintendo’s given us the augmented reality Pokemon Master experience we always wanted. Damn if it wasn’t for our hipster beards, you could catch us on the street looking for a wild Pokemon and confuse us for the kids we once were, on the lookout for Team Rocket.
This is the Media Industry Mindset, a weekly newsletter about the media industry written by Gordon Chaffin. Follow our Medium publication to get future editions, connect with me on Twitter, and send comments, questions, and suggestions via email to galexanderchaffin@gmail.com.
If your Twitter timeline is like mine, and it looks like everyone is already addicted to Pokemon Go, then there’s all the reason in the world for Nintendo to breathe a sigh of relief. We made it! We pivoted! When their champagne hangovers wear off, they’ll start working on that good stuff — that your drug dealer’s friend’s cousin stuff: in-app payments. It’s not all sunshine and roses on their balance sheet, but Ben Bernanke would call this a green shoot. While we’re in the garden, let’s finally bury that console mindset and get to the top of the screen hierarchy of a captive consumer these days: mobile devices.
Nintendo is hardly remarkable when it comes to media companies that got caught off guard by the mobile revolution. We could field a new Dow Jones Industrial Index with that list, maybe even a FORTUNE 500. And to be fair, mobile games have been hit-or-miss business propositions. Companies that helped us slice fruit with fury and run that temple have gone viral, grown 10x, gone public, and are now fizzling out. Let’s not confuse the app stores with democratically-governed economic markets, either. Recall the respective monopolies of Apple and Google over their operating systems approved apps. As Facebook holds the testes of traffic-dependent publishers, the two tech titans hold authoritarian grip over market entry, fair practices, and content. This isn’t exactly Alexander Hamilton and marginal cost equal to marginal revenue over the long run. This is mobster take a cut and dump you in the river after the check clears, Soviet-style planning stuff.
Mobile games aren’t my thing, but I get it. I read think pieces while others swipe on Tinder and stack jewels in pattern hoping to God they’re successfully imposing movement on the minute hand. This media industry game is hard, and Nintendo is playing it better this inning than last. But, they got shelled last inning. Their bullpen really better come through or it’s lights out. And every day brings a new bartman to the Cubbies hustling for some decent social media engagement, solid analytics, and stronger numbers from new-but-actually-really-old business models. Onto that infield I trot, hands clumsily searching for a pocket in these damn uniforms.
Links
“How Pokémon Helped Nintendo Crack the Mobile-Game Market” by Jacky Wong (WSJ)
“How IBT’s reporting is driving a controversy over a major healthcare merger in Connecticut” by Trudy Lieberman (Columbia Journalism Review)
“Sling TV Makes Big Expansion, Adding NBC, Bravo, USA Networks and More” by Rob Toledo (Exstreamist)
“Don’t believe Facebook: The demise of the written word is very far off” by Michael Hitzik (LAT)
“Reorienting our discussion of city growth” by Yonah Freemark (The Transport Politic)
I’m Gordon Chaffin and, for the better part of a decade, I’ve spent my time working in the media industry. I’ve done PR, speechwriting, strategic communications, social media, multimedia production, and honest-to-goodness journalism. I’m 27, but everyone between 17 and 77 is fumbling around in this darkness of exponential change. The technology, the #teens, the torture of setting sights on reasonable goals then having the uprights shifted, if not angled, and the turf set on fire. We’re all trying to get into the right mindset — our media industry mindset.
