July 13, 2016. Pokémon Go‘ arrives on our cell phones and turns everything upside down. Overnight, we’re all out hunting for creatures in our city despite the mechanics being overly simple and the possibilities rather rickety. Yet there we are, alerting us with messages like “A Gyarados has appeared in Plaza de Castilla”. The media started talking about how ‘Pokémon Go’ was making people invade private spaces and even die from looking at the screen so much. And seven years later, what?
Gotta catch ’em none
Niantic, the company behind ‘Pokémon Go’, was very happy. At last ‘Ingress’, that game based on geolocation that had failed a few years earlier, was making sense thanks to someone else’s saga. Everyone was making money hand over fist and it seemed that the moment of joy would never end. Until, in 2023, it is rare to find trainers on the streets: the app is at a low ebb but, at the same time, it is the only thing that makes them money. Get them all, big trouble.
Niantic became adept at ‘virtual reality gaming’ on mobile. ‘Harry Potter: Wizards Unite’ was basically a magical ‘Pokémon Go‘ that lasted a year and a half before shutting down. It was just the first of a few. ‘Catan: World Explorers’, based on the world’s most famous modern board game, barely lasted another year because, frankly, it was impossible to port ‘Catan’ to the MMO, let alone localization-based.
Ass I see, ass I want, everyone wanted their own game based on geolocation, without realizing that not even Harry Potter could work its magic to succeed. ‘Transformers’, ‘Pikmin’, NBA, Marvel… Niantic got lucky with one game (what’s the point of making a basketball ‘Pokémon Go’?) and since then everything has been simple repetition.
So much so that they have just fired 230 employees from their Los Angeles studio with the excuse that expenses are growing faster than profits. Although they want to make ‘Pokémon Go’ a game that lasts forever, the truth is that this is only the beginning of the end. As much as it is the only thing that makes them money, the figure is getting smaller and smaller, and a company cannot live all its life on the profits of a single game.
World of Warcraft’ was doing well for Blizzard, but next to it were ‘Overwatch’, ‘Diablo‘ or ‘Starcraft’. To close the doors and focus all efforts on a title whose time of glory has passed is to sign a contract for disaster. And is that the company’s own leaders have stated that they have a lot of work to do in terms of retention and benefits. Come on, I wouldn’t be too fond of your Pikachu and the gyms where you are eternal leaders. They may not last forever.
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