Pokemon GO on the Decline?
Knowing from statistics that games don’t really last forever and players eventually move on to the next great stuff, is Pokemon GO gonna go out that soon?
Pokemon GO is becoming one of the world’s biggest mobile game of all time. And although gamers are flocking out the streets to catch some Pokemon, it’s seeing a very bleak decline in the end.
Pokémon Go’s success
Pokémon Go has enjoyed a boost in its initial success in part because the players themselves have been far more visible as it plays out in public. This has led to large gatherings of thousands of players sharing the gaming experience. In the initial days of playing when the novelty is at its height and going through the lower levels is straightforward, the rewards of playing are such that people are highly motivated to get out and play.
How players may give up Pokemon Go
The trend of having a typical fast loss of users followed by a slower, more gradual decline. The fast initial loss of users comes from those who downloaded the game and because it hasn’t cost them anything, give it up just as easily. In the case of Pokémon Go, these users may simply be those who have downloaded the game because of the publicity but aren’t gamers or aren’t captivated by the game.
The slower decline comes from users who do persist and get to a point in the game where the difficulty requires either skill and perseverance, or paying for features that accelerate progress.
Ego Depletion Phenomenon
This is a theory that suggests that we have a limited amount of self-control and that this pool is reduced every time we exert it. Basically, things that we are not highly motivated to do become very much harder if we have already exerted self-control doing other things. The physical activity element of Pokémon Go whilst being an initial draw card for the game, becomes another hurdle to overcome once ego-depletion kicks exceeds the intrinsic benefits.
Ego-depletion and the decline of users in games are invariants. There are very few ways to avoid the dynamics of people giving up doing something which has no sunk cost and no life-altering benefits. Pokémon has started off from a higher base of users than any other game, but its decline will follow the same course, and over the same relative path as other games.
Peak Pokémon?
Compounding the normal attrition of users is the reaching of the “Peak Pokémon” point at which the media loses interest and stop reporting stories on the “phenomenon” including the bizarre things people are doing not paying attention whilst walking. Google Trends illustrates the peak in searches for the game occurring last week.
Future improvements can help slow decline
Niantic, the makers of the game will undoubtedly make a great deal of money out of the users who do stick around and of course creating new versions which will kick off the whole process again. Given that the current version of the game is a far cry from what was promised in the promotional videos, there is bound to be more enhancements to come. It seems less likely that subsequent versions will enjoy quite the same degree of public and media interest however, but even if they do, their eventual course will be the same.
