The Death of Pokemon GO: Why Do Game Trends End?

The Death of Pokemon GO: Why do Game Trends End?

To say Pokemon Go was an overnight success is a massive understatement. Within a week of its release, it managed to double Nintendo’s stock value, and within a month, multiple countries began implementing regulations on when and where people are allowed to play the augmented reality game.

Two months later however, the wave seems to have peaked, and the Twittersphere no longer buzzes on the topics the way it used to. So is everyone over the hype? What gives?

How does it all begin?

So what about Pokemon GO drew people toward it in the first place? A trend needs to have some innate quality that plays on its target audience. The original Pokemon Red and Green (Japanese release; international releases were Red and Blue) were successful because the idea of raising fantastical monsters just strikes a chord in little children. Red and Green featured 151 different creatures, ensuring at least one of them appealed to someone.

In Pokemon GO’s case, Nintendo was counting on one thing: nostalgia. Pokemon GO doubles down on the memories of Red and Green, giving old fans the chance to actually be Pokemon trainers. All the while, it attracts younger and newer fans by remaining true to its origins: being a game about raising weird and wonderful creatures.

How do trends peak?

Have you ever said something aloud in a large group of friends and had everyone give their two cents back? That is the mechanism of a peaking trend in its most basic form. Not everyone who voices out their opinion actually has an opinion that matters.

Let’s translate this to Pokemon GO… and every other gaming trend, if you think about it. On day one, people download the game (or buy the game, in the case of bigger titles). These people play the game, and if the game is interesting enough in itself (which Pokemon GO is), people around the original consumer give it a shot or at the very least, give an opinion based on what they see. News in general spreads like this, and boy does it spread like wildfire. Pretty soon, you have an entire population Googling it, downloading it, and yes… writing about it. The strangest part? Only about half of these people are actually interested in it.

In memory of a trend…

Pokemon GO cashed in on massive reserves of nostalgia, went viral, and two months later, the player base was gutted to about a third of what it was at its peak. The numbers definitely suggest the Poke-craze 2.0 was just another month-long fad. In fact, this graph shows a staggering 87% popularity drop between its peak on July 16 to September 13.

For one thing, everyone in the group feels they’ve given their opinion on the topic, and have now left the table. Everyone’s Googled it. Everyone’s downloaded it. Those who didn’t like it deleted it. What more is there to talk about? That’s not the only factor however. Despite the improving gameplay, Pokemon GO is currently plagued by several issues.

Pokemon (Reasons to) GO:

• Cheaters: It gets depressing when half the gym trainers you fight in are all cheaters, and you, the honest player, get beaten 9 times out of 10. Pokemon GO’s battle system is meant to be competitive, and there is very little motivation when you know you’ll lose to people who exert zero effort to get to where they are.

That in itself culls the player base. Add to that the fact that Nintendo and the rest of The Pokemon Company are manually hunting down and banning cheaters’ Google accounts from the game, and you have to ask yourself: if honest players quit and cheaters are banned, who is left behind?

• Walking: Instead of competing head on with Microsoft and Sony for better graphics and higher performance, Nintendo has always met success by thinking with new angles. Pokemon GO is the latest product of this line of thinking. “If you’re going to play video games, do it in a healthy way!”

The problem is that if you’re lazy — and let’s face it, most gamers are — it’s only a matter of time before you realize you could do without the “healthy” part of the gameplay. At the moment, Pokemon GO is crowded with players who use false GPS apps in order to play their favorite game from the comfort of their couch. What does Nintendo do to these people? Ban them.

• Overexposure: The other problem with banking on nostalgia alone is: what do you do when the players have had their fill? Sadly, the answer is “not much.” Throwbacks are fun because reminiscing about them makes them feel all the more precious. It’s just really easy to burn that feeling of nostalgia out. It doesn’t help the app that the sudden rise in popularity led some people to get annoyed at the mere mention of it either.

Here’s an example to demonstrate: I love the Beatles, but if you’re my neighbor who plays a mix CD of Come Together in between Justin Bieber’s Girlfriend and Flo Rida’s Get Low very day for a month before changing playlists, you really can’t blame me if my love for my second favorite Beatles’ track might be diminished somewhat.

Is Pokemon GO dead?

At the end of the day? No. Pokemon GO is an app. It rises in popularity, attracts a massive amount of attention, and it becomes infamous. People talk, things get dirty, ratings fluctuate. And then when the dust settles, the REAL player base remains. These are not the people who downloaded and cheated, or just checked the app out. These are the people who downloaded, loved it, and legitimately exerted effort, continuing to play without a care of whether or not it remained. Every game ever developed has these people. Despite the fact it is no longer as popular a search term as it once was, these numbers from App Institute show a rate of at least 5,000 downloads per minute (at the time of writing), an an average of over 23 million active users per day.