Initial Thoughts on Pokémon GO

So a few days ago, I managed to get my hands on the new Pokémon mobile game. I wasn’t surprised when it was plagued with server overload issues.

The game is simple enough (though its onboarding process and tutorials are nonexistent for the most part). Go outside and collect Pokémon. There are gym battles to be had where you can battle or send one of your own Pokémon to defend the gym to gain rep for the team you choose to join. I was hoping for a more traditional battle system akin to the series, but was presented with an active battle type system. Not a dealbreaker for me. I’m currently more interested in collecting the various kinds of Pokémon and evolving them in an attempt to complete my Pokédex (catalog of Pokémon).

It’s an augmented reality kind of game so catching Pokémon overlays the creature over your current locale. It’s not close to perfect by any means, but it helps establish a more emotional connection with the Pokémon themselves in my opinion. The map you see your avatar walk around is a stylized real world map.

It has a lot of potential, and I hope Niantic does well when they consider updating it in the future. To be honest, Nintendo might as well call it their successful attempt to enter the health arena, which they have expressed interest in the past.

Likes

• Simple
• Encourages to venture outside
• As a runner, the egg hatching system is nice (when you receive an egg, it requires traveling a certain amount of distance before it hatches)
• It doesn’t seem like you can simply “buy” yourself a completely overpowered Pokémon through microtransactions. Even with the buff to attract more Pokémon, one still has to put in the time to get a strong one.

Dislikes

• Busy servers (and having to re-open the app and re-enter credentials)
• Lack of onboarding/tutorial though I ended up figuring it out myself

Suggestions

• For a version like this, having a heavier emphasis on collecting and real world exploring would be great
• Not sure if it’s programmed this way or not, but having various Pokémon appear only during certain weather conditions and seasons would help lengthen the time it takes to collect them all (as well as the other obvious factors such as day/night, ocean, lake, mountain, etc.). So this may mean only making Gyrados (for example) available out in the wild if you’re by an ocean. This would also apply to certain Pokémon that have different colors based on region (e.g. Vivillon). Approaching the game with this kind of granularity would help progress the first suggestion that was made
• No worldwide trading. If someone wants to trade, then it should be done at the local level. Though to be honest, I would be fine if there was no trading at all
• It would be pretty cool if the game tracked of all the GPS locations of where Pokémon are caught by everyone (you can see information of where you caught a Pokémon) and then produce a mega-map showing where Pokémon are in a country
• I can anticipate the gym system getting out of hand pretty quickly if there isn’t any consideration on its mechanics (e.g. is it simply based on winning thus mostly based on CP?)
• Since you have to have the app open, it’d be nice to have some similar features akin to what’s seen in the Nintendo DS’ StreetPass
• For the US, a partnership between the National Park System and Pokémon GO would be pretty cool. That is, only certain Pokémon can be discovered in the wild within various national parks.
• Events that require teamwork by everybody regardless of team. An example would be thwarting Team Rockets takeover of all the Pokéstops. It can be done in the way that makes it feel like everyone contributes with secondary rewards for the team that helped out the most.