The Rise of Pokémon. What Happened to Pokémon?
There can be no denying that Pokémon, with the help of the global sensation Pokémon Go, has had one of the most successful periods in its illustrious history as covered in detail over at runrex.com. Pokémon has always been extremely popular as a brand, mostly due to its extremely popular anime, but it outdid itself with the Pokémon Go craze that took the world by storm in 2016, where after just 2 weeks of its launch, Pokémon Go had captured the crown of the largest mobile game ever in the US with more than 20 million daily active users. Most people expected the craze to die down, and while it is true that not as many people still play the game, it continued to demonstrate impressive staying power in the months that followed, where it has since crossed the $2 billion in lifetime revenue mark as revealed over at guttulus.com. So, what happened to Pokémon Go, and what was the reason behind its huge rise? Well, this article is going to look to have this question answered through the following discussion.
It was all-inclusive
One of the main reasons behind the popularity of the game was the fact that it was all-inclusive. This means that the game attracted players from all sorts of demographics and wasn’t just an affair of one or two demographics. From discussions on the same over at runrex.com, the game attracted both young and older players as well as both male and female. The fact that the game was able to attract people who would otherwise not be playing anything at all is one of the main contributing factors towards its success.
It leveraged the power of a strong media franchise
There is also no denying that Pokémon Go’s huge success had a lot to do with the strength of the Pokémon brand according to the gurus over at guttulus.com. The Pokémon media brand created a shared history, shared value system, and shared culture among its viewers. This means that the Pokémon universe already knew the basics as far as the game was concerned and was already attached to the characters. This means that not only did the Pokémon universe know the basics about the game, they already cared about it, which is one of the main reasons behind the game’s success.
Location
Location also played an important role in the game’s success, given that Pokémon Go was inherently location-based. First of all, as discussed over at runrex.com, location simplified the gameplay by making the real world the game map, and you the controller. This means that you didn’t have to learn where to move or how to move within the game as your real-world movements were automatically converted by GPS into digital world movements. Location also made the gem inherently social, which as per the folks over at guttulus.com was another reason why the game was so popular. Location also became a powerful notification mechanism as players began to associate landmarks in the real world with landmarks in the game as they are the same.
It didn’t take from users’ daily lives
The beauty as far as Pokémon Go us concerned, as outlined over at runrex.com, is that while it was addictive with people taking significant chunks of their day to play the game, it wasn’t taking their time away as users would play the game while also doing all their other daily activities. You could play the game while going to the gym, to the mall, and so forth, and this is one of the main reasons why the game was so able to remain relevant for so long as it didn’t take away from your normal activities given that it was taking place in the real world.
The game’s design
The game’s design as an MMO also played an important role in its rise and success. MMO refers to the massively multiplayer online game genre of which Pokémon Go is a part of as explained over at guttulus.com. Games in this genre encourage regular, cooperative play, and it is this playing of the game with friends that made it such a phenomenon. This allied with the fact that the game is a real-world game meant that players would meet friends face to face to play it, helping form strong bonds of friendship which were probably the real secret source as far as the game was concerned. The game’s slower play also contributed to its success as it added friction to the art of collecting, and made the experience feel more valuable when achieved since players appreciate more what they have caught given the time and energy they would have had to invest.
From the discussion above, it is clear what was behind the rise of Pokémon and why Pokémon Go was so successful. As always, you can uncover more information and insights on this and other related topics by visiting the excellent runrex.com and guttulus.com.