By Jacob Neff

Pokémon Go Today

The popular app clocks in at an ancient five years old. It has led to its own players being hit by cars.¹ It even caused a pair of police officers to be fired for playing it on active duty in 2017.² Despite all that, “Pokémon Go” continues to be one of the most successful mobile games of all time. You may remember the creature-catching sensation the company Niantic released in summer of 2016, where you couldn’t throw a Poké ball without hitting another trainer trying to catch a wild Pikachu. The unreal response seems to have died just as quickly as it begun, but you’d be surprised to know that in the year 2020 “Pokémon Go” still boasted 166 million users (see figure 2) and $1.23 billion of revenue, roughly 1.5 times the revenue it made in its year of release (see figure 1).³

A major factor enabling this game not only to survive but to set records in a year when so many other companies struggled is its developers’ exceptional responses to player feedback, especially using social media, ratings, and in-game data.

Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are incredibly powerful tools for getting a picture of what consumers want. In fact, referring to social media, Slovak Professor Karol Čarnogurský said, “If marketers want their marketing strategies to be as effective as possible, they must endeavor to meet customer requirements.”⁴

“Pokémon Go” is exemplary in harnessing social media. Take, for example, an instance in early 2021. If you’re unfamiliar, the game tracks your real-world location and moves your character in the game to match, enabling you to find Pokémon to catch, gyms to battle in, and other exciting features. Naturally then, when the pandemic confined everyone to their homes in early 2020, Niantic had to adapt, and increased the area around players in which they could interact with game elements so they could play from the safety of their houses.

Then, on August 1, 2021, the developers reverted those COVID-related bonuses back to their original states with lockdown restrictions lessening. In so doing, they unintentionally invited a tempest of backlash from the entire player community—many players felt like Niantic wasn’t taking their safety seriously, flooding social media with requests to add the bonuses back in, and prominent players announced they were quitting.⁵

After a couple of weeks of unrest, Niantic quickly analyzed the situation and on August 25 announced that it not only decided to make the increased interaction area the new default for the game, but also published a formal letter apologizing for upsetting players, as well as posted a penitent tweet saying, “We’ve heard you and understand.”⁶

This is not the first time Niantic has had to respond to player dissatisfaction, and it won’t be the last, but it is a fantastic example of fast and honest reaction—fans of the game have never felt more included or valued. It is likely that the team at Niantic ran a statistical analysis of its social media feeds to determine the general feeling, as that is the most common form of customer feedback analysis for a company as large as Niantic.⁷

Ratings

Social media is a resource available to all businesses, but game developers have another unique, built-in way to collect player feedback: ratings. Game hosting platforms like Steam and the App Store feature integrated user reviews on each game’s page, and websites like IGN, Gamespot, and a large chunk of Metacritic exist solely to host video game reviews. Leaving a rating is easy for players, and most platforms that offer ratings also provide an easy way to analyze them and get a general feel for the game, making these platforms a powerful way to gather feedback.

Niantic would have been checking its ratings when it reverted from the COVID bonuses in 2021, and it would have been able to quickly and easily determine how players were reacting to changes without having to parse thousands of social media posts. Other games use their ratings as a kind of “pulse” for player feedback as well—Deconstructeam made several changes to its game “Gods Will Be Watching” within two weeks of release because of critical ratings. Because it listened so intently and responded, the game’s ratings shot from 20% positive to 70% positive over a few months.⁸

In-game Data

As helpful as they are, both social media opinions and game ratings are subjective. These forms of response are a “direct survey of customer expectations and needs with his/her active participation.” But only people who have a very high or low opinion of a game will typically be motivated to leave a review or make a post on social media.⁹ In some cases, this situation makes it seem like a vocal minority is how all players everywhere feel.

Fortunately, researcher Pavol Križo describes another method of gathering customer feedback called “quality attributes development.”¹⁰ This method doesn’t require customer engagement, instead relying on logic and observations—something especially game development makes easy. It would be difficult to accuratbusinesses, customer feedback, social media, pokemon go, pokémon, video gamesely track how many times each week a customer

uses a broom or know how many minutes they spent inside your store, but video games can measure statistics like this to exactness.

The team at Niantic was able to collect data directly through its game to know precisely how many players were active in the game at any given time, and in the case of its attempt to remove pandemic bonuses, it would have been able to know to with exactness how many players stopped playing the game in response to changes. Niantic isn’t the only one to passively collect player feedback either. The developers of hit game “Half-Life 2” saw, “based on the statistics gathered from people playing,” that an inordinate number of players were getting stuck at a certain point and subsequently made it easier to progress there.¹¹ Because those developers automatically collected data in the game and interpreted it wisely, they fulfilled their players’ desires before they could even voice complaints.

Go for It!

“Pokémon Go” is still alive and well, and game developers everywhere can learn much from its effective collection of player feedback. Take five minutes after reading this to gather some feedback on your own game—search its name on social media to find common complaints, review negative ratings on whatever platform you use, or think of a place in the game where you could collect data directly. Responding quickly to feedback and telling players what steps you are taking has only added to the popularity of “Pokémon Go,” and by following their lead, your game too can GO for the gold.

Notes

1. 1. Faccio, Mara, and John J. McConnell. “Death by Pokémon Go: The Economic and Human Cost of Using Apps While Driving.” Journal of Risk and Insurance 87, no. 3 (2019): 815–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/jori.12301.
   2. Desk, Trends. “California Court Upholds Firing of 2 Cops Who Played Pokemon Go during Robbery.” The Indian Express, January 12, 2022. https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/california-court-upholds-firing-of-2-cops-who-played-pokemon-go-7718925.
   3. Iqbal, Mansoor. “Pokémon Go Revenue and Usage Statistics (2022).” Business of Apps, January 11, 2022. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/pokemon-go-statistics/.
   4. Čarnogurský, Karol, Anna Diačiková, Anna Chocholáková, and Anton Lisnik. “Sales promotion and using social media in the Slovak internet book market.” IDIMT (2017): 181-188.
   5. Silberling, Amanda. “Pokémon Go Influencers Threaten a Boycott after Niantic Removes Covid Safety Measures.” TechCrunch. TechCrunch, August 2, 2021. https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/02/pokemon-go-influencers-threaten-a-boycott-after-niantic-removes-covid-safety-measures/.
   6. Go, Pokémon. Twitter post. August 25, 2021, 3:33 p.m. https://twitter.com/PokemonGoApp/status/1430644453551878146
   7. Križo, Pavol, Peter Madzík, Zuzana Vilgová, and Mária Sirotiaková. “Evaluation of the Most Frequented Forms of Customer Feedback Acquisition and Analysis.” Communications in Computer and Information Science, July 11, 2018, 562–73. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95204-8_47.
   8. Twitter post. April 24, 2020, 7:02 a.m. https://twitter.com/Deconstructeam/status/1253670726370037760
   9. Križo, Madzík, Vilgová, and Sirotiaková. “Evaluation”
   10. Križo, Madzík, Vilgová, and Sirotiaková. “Evaluation”
   11. Ruymen, Jason. “Half-Life 2: Episode One Update Released.” Steam – News, July 7, 2006. http://web.archive.org/web/20080306061112/http:/steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=news&id=681.