Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm ad executive producer with iHeart Radio and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech. And previously on tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I talked about the founding of the company Niantic, how
Speaker 1: it took its name from a ship that ended up
Speaker 1: being buried under San Francisco, and it went on to
Speaker 1: launch the phenomenally successful Pokemon Go. I covered a bit
Speaker 1: of how Niantic developed another game called Ingress before it
Speaker 1: jumped on Pokemon Go. So today we're going to continue
Speaker 1: our story. We're gonna talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: how Pokemon Go works and how it makes money, and
Speaker 1: also what else Niantic has been working on. So let's
Speaker 1: first talk about how Pokemon in general, not just Pokemon Go,
Speaker 1: but how Pokemon on in general works. From a very
Speaker 1: high level, the Pokemon are fictional critters. They are pocket monsters,
Speaker 1: if you will, though many of them are far too
Speaker 1: large to fit inside of a pocket. Players called trainers
Speaker 1: attempt to find and catch the various Pokemon and add
Speaker 1: them to their collection or Poka decks. By the way,
Speaker 1: get used to poke a being used a lot in
Speaker 1: this episode. Uh. You use poke balls to catch Pokemon,
Speaker 1: and trainers can even evolve Pokemon into more advanced forms. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the char Mander Pokemon will eventually evolve into
Speaker 1: a form called the char Million and then further evolve
Speaker 1: into the charas Art. Each evolution marks an increase in
Speaker 1: Pokemon power and some changes in their abilities. Trainers pit
Speaker 1: their Pokemon against other trainers into Pokemon battles, and that
Speaker 1: means in most Pokemon games you enter into a turn
Speaker 1: based combat sequence. In the standard Pokemon games, it's clear
Speaker 1: that some trainers are bad guys. They're working to create
Speaker 1: a sort of criminal organization that leans heavily on these
Speaker 1: Pokemon critters to do nefarious things, Team Rocket being a
Speaker 1: prime example. Each Pokemon belongs to a category or a type,
Speaker 1: and each type has strengths and weaknesses against some of
Speaker 1: the other types. And it's kind of like paper rock scissors,
Speaker 1: you know, because paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, scissors
Speaker 1: beats paper. In Pokemon, however, you don't have three types.
Speaker 1: You've got eighteen different types. Some types have no advantage
Speaker 1: or disadvantages against each other. Uh. Some Pokemon types like
Speaker 1: grass types are weak against many other types, and so
Speaker 1: knowing which types are effective against others helps a trainer
Speaker 1: win battles. And just because one Pokemon is naturally weak
Speaker 1: against another does not necessarily mean defeat is inevitable. There's
Speaker 1: an R and G element or random number generator to
Speaker 1: this too, so it is possible, but very unlikely, that
Speaker 1: a Pokemon that's weak against another will still win in
Speaker 1: a battle if it just happens to get really good
Speaker 1: random results and the other one gets really bad results.
Speaker 1: But obviously the odds are against you in that scenario.
Speaker 1: Oh and each Pokemon has a few different moves that
Speaker 1: you can play in this turn based system. Some moves
Speaker 1: are meant to reduce your opponent's defenses, some are meant
Speaker 1: to decrease the potency of their next attack, and some
Speaker 1: are just meant to inflict damage. When a Pokemon has
Speaker 1: taken all the damage it can take, in other words,
Speaker 1: all of its hit points are gone, it faints. There
Speaker 1: is no dying in Pokemon, which is something of a
Speaker 1: relief in most Pokemon games. If you're a creature faints,
Speaker 1: you can swap in another Pokemon from your collection and
Speaker 1: continue the battle. But if all of your Pokemon in
Speaker 1: your in your little group faint, you lose the battle
Speaker 1: plus some money, and you head off to a Pokemon
Speaker 1: center where you can have your poor little critters recover
Speaker 1: before heading back out to do it all over again.
Speaker 1: Now there are other aspects to the game as well.
Speaker 1: Most games allow players to buy various items which can
Speaker 1: help during Pokemon battles, like it can help restore hit points,
Speaker 1: for example. And then there's the poke ball, which is
Speaker 1: a small sphere that acts both like a net to
Speaker 1: catch Pokemon and also a storage space where your little
Speaker 1: pokemons live. It captures them and holds them wild Pokemon.
Speaker 1: If you encounter one in the wild within these games,
Speaker 1: you have a chance to try and capture them and
Speaker 1: add them to your collection, but they have a chance
Speaker 1: to escape capture. Battling wild Pokemon with one of your
Speaker 1: own can weaken the wild ones enough so that when
Speaker 1: you grab them, they don't have the strength to escape. Charming, right,
Speaker 1: all right? So in pokem Mon Go, some of these
Speaker 1: elements made it into play early on, but not all
Speaker 1: of them did. There were some limitations on things like
Speaker 1: whom you could actually battle. You couldn't go head to
Speaker 1: head against another player for example. But Pokemon Go also
Speaker 1: introduced some elements that are not in the standard console games.
Speaker 1: For one, the types of Pokemon you encounter depend heavily
Speaker 1: on where in the world you really physically are. Some
Speaker 1: Pokemon are unique to specific continents, meaning you could wander
Speaker 1: all over uh, well, let's say North America, and if
Speaker 1: you did, you would never see a Mr. Mine, which
Speaker 1: frankly might be a blessing. But that's because Mr. Mime
Speaker 1: is exclusive to Europe. You would have to travel to
Speaker 1: Europe to have a chance of finding one in the wild.
Speaker 1: And also the time of day matters too. You will
Speaker 1: see a different distribution of Pokemon monsters in the morning
Speaker 1: versus the evening, for example. Now for another thing, The
Speaker 1: act of catching a Pokemon in Pokemon involves a gesture
Speaker 1: control mechanic. So you've got your little poke bowl on
Speaker 1: your screen. Then you can also see your Pokemon that
Speaker 1: you're trying to capture on your screen. If you're playing
Speaker 1: an augmented reality mode, the Pokemon actually appears as an
Speaker 1: overlay of a camera view of your environment. So you'd
Speaker 1: be holding up your camera. Maybe you're looking at like,
Speaker 1: say a park bench, and you notice that the little
Speaker 1: Pokemon is apparently standing on top of the park bench.
Speaker 1: It's cute, but a lot of folks actually switch this
Speaker 1: mode off because it does also suck up battery life
Speaker 1: really quickly. Well, then you use a vertical swipe motion
Speaker 1: to virtually toss your poke ball at the Pokemon. If
Speaker 1: you first swing the poke ball around a bit like
Speaker 1: you swirl your finger around in a circle, you charge
Speaker 1: up the poke ball, which increases your chances of catching
Speaker 1: the Pokemon. It also makes a little more challenging to
Speaker 1: aim the poke ball before you throw it, which means
Speaker 1: you might miss wildly. But even if you hit the
Speaker 1: Pokemon smack dab and it's poke a face pa Poco face,
Speaker 1: you aren't guaranteed to catch it. Some Pokemon are rare
Speaker 1: and powerful, and the odds of a successful capture are
Speaker 1: decreased unless you're using a more powerful version of the
Speaker 1: poke ball, which leads us to the next really big
Speaker 1: element of Pokemon Go. Most importantly for Niantic, Pokemon Go
Speaker 1: created lots of opportunities for micro transactions. Now in the
Speaker 1: world of games, micro transactions have become the big money
Speaker 1: maker for certain types of games. They also can be
Speaker 1: a real pain point for players, and depending upon the implementation,
Speaker 1: players could just see it as a small price to
Speaker 1: pay in order to play a game that they really
Speaker 1: love playing, or they might see it as being really predatory. Now,
Speaker 1: let's explain the emergence of micro transactions in the old days.
Speaker 1: Back in like the eighties, buying a computer game meant
Speaker 1: you plunked down your harder cheddar and you purchased a
Speaker 1: copy of Zork and you headed on home to play
Speaker 1: it as much as you like. You just put that
Speaker 1: five and a quarter inch floppy disc into your disk drive,
Speaker 1: loaded it up, and started playing, and you can play
Speaker 1: as much as you wanted. You owned that copy of
Speaker 1: the game, and everything associated with that game was on
Speaker 1: the game's floppy disk. Everything that was that version of
Speaker 1: Zork was right there, forever and ever the point of
Speaker 1: purchase mark the one and only transaction involving you and
Speaker 1: that Zork game. But let's skip ahead. Games get much
Speaker 1: more sophisticated than complicated. Now. You can still buy a
Speaker 1: full game, but now developers start creating additional material based
Speaker 1: on that game build and they offer it as a
Speaker 1: separate purchase. These could be sequels to a title, They
Speaker 1: could be side adventures, or extra levels for certain games,
Speaker 1: and typically these expansions would be built upon the same
Speaker 1: game engine, using the same graphics resources, and featuring the
Speaker 1: same gameplay elements, but with more content. So let's give
Speaker 1: an example. Let's say you really loved Ultimate seven The
Speaker 1: Black Gate, a computer RPG from back in the day. Well,
Speaker 1: you play the game, you love it, and you wish
Speaker 1: that there was more of it. Then you find out, hey, Origin,
Speaker 1: the company behind it, has just made an expansion. They've
Speaker 1: created a game called Ultimate seven The Forge of Virtue
Speaker 1: that has more content within that game world, same graphics,
Speaker 1: same game engine. You can keep the party going, and
Speaker 1: if that weren't enough, you could go even further with
Speaker 1: Ultimate seven Part two Serpent Aisle, which was really more
Speaker 1: like an expansion pack. If that's still weren't enough, you
Speaker 1: could also get Ultimate seven Part to the Silver Seed,
Speaker 1: even more content built on that foundation. So this was
Speaker 1: a way where you could keep players engaged. The players
Speaker 1: who really loved a title could continue buying content that
Speaker 1: tied into that title. And when massively multiplayer or online
Speaker 1: role playing games where m m O RPGs became a thing,
Speaker 1: then we saw this idea expand further. You would have
Speaker 1: eager players who would soak up all the content of
Speaker 1: an M m O RPG, and then naturally they wanted more.
Speaker 1: They had just you know, really explored this whole environment,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to have even more experiences. The way
Speaker 1: the typical M m O RPGs made money, at least
Speaker 1: back then, was twofold. First, the developer would sell a
Speaker 1: copy of the game, just like any other computer game.
Speaker 1: You would you know, buy a game for like thirty
Speaker 1: forty sixty bucks whatever it might be. But then you
Speaker 1: also had a monthly subscription fee that would kick in
Speaker 1: at some point. That was a monthly charge to continue
Speaker 1: to play the game online, which was the only way
Speaker 1: the game existed. So, in other words, players had to
Speaker 1: keep paying to play the game. Now, with that kind
Speaker 1: of revenue model, you obviously need to keep supplying content
Speaker 1: to your customers or else you're gonna lose them. If
Speaker 1: someone feels like they've done everything there is to do,
Speaker 1: then they're like, well, why am I going to pay
Speaker 1: you know, ten bucks a month to keep playing this game.
Speaker 1: So m m O RPGs like World of Warcraft would
Speaker 1: introduce new expansions that would, as the name implies, expand
Speaker 1: the scope of the game, while also typically increasing the
Speaker 1: maximum character level cap so that players could continue to
Speaker 1: progress the characters they had already created when they bought
Speaker 1: the original version and kept them invested in the game.
Speaker 1: This process would repeat many, many times, with lots of
Speaker 1: expansions for the really successful games like World of Warcraft.
Speaker 1: But on top of that, these games would eventually promote
Speaker 1: a different type of transaction, sometimes not on purpose. There
Speaker 1: became a market for in game items, stuff like weapons
Speaker 1: or armor or potions or other things of perceived value
Speaker 1: within within the game. You know. Sometimes these were things
Speaker 1: that legit gave your character extra abilities. Originally, the idea
Speaker 1: was that players would be allowed to trade for this stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, using in game transactions between each other. So
Speaker 1: let's say you and I are both playing this game,
Speaker 1: and I offer you gold that I have acquired within
Speaker 1: the game, and you need some gold, so in exchange,
Speaker 1: you're offering me a sort of butt kicking or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be. But before long, people started offering real
Speaker 1: world money for in game items, or more likely, people
Speaker 1: started soliciting for real world money in order to sell
Speaker 1: an in game item. Initially, the reaction to this from
Speaker 1: the company side was to try and get a lock
Speaker 1: on it. Uh. Some players would be shelling out money
Speaker 1: to deck their characters out and stuff that they didn't
Speaker 1: find themselves, and other players saw it as almost like
Speaker 1: a pay to win kind of scenario, and it created
Speaker 1: an unbalanced environment. I'm sure I would feel a lot
Speaker 1: of resentment if I were playing, you know, the game
Speaker 1: as intended. And then meanwhile, Richie rich is kidding himself
Speaker 1: out in magic armor and weapons that he just bought
Speaker 1: from someone else and never actually bothered to, you know,
Speaker 1: put in any work to trying to earn them himself.
Speaker 1: But that experience also illustrated how lucrative it could be
Speaker 1: to offer in game items for real world cash, and
Speaker 1: we started to see some games begin to experiment with
Speaker 1: this in different ways. Mobile games do this a lot,
Speaker 1: and in fact tend to build in limiting factors within
Speaker 1: the game that keep players from progressing unless they pay
Speaker 1: a small amount to get more playtime or an extra
Speaker 1: item or an extra life or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: And computer and console games began to implement it in
Speaker 1: the form of lute crates. So these are boxes that
Speaker 1: contain some in game you know, asset inside of them.
Speaker 1: It might be something common, you know, which means it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be of great value to the player. It might
Speaker 1: be useful but not particularly valuable, or it could be
Speaker 1: something really rare, something that's really sought after. And some
Speaker 1: games only allow these items to enter the game through
Speaker 1: loot crates. In other words, you won't be able to
Speaker 1: find them through regular play unless you happen across a
Speaker 1: loot crate and you open it up and you luckily
Speaker 1: get that item. The odds of getting something rare reflect
Speaker 1: how rare it is. Because this is a video game,
Speaker 1: scarcity doesn't really exist, right. The number of Ultimate powerful
Speaker 1: swords is limitless, despite the fact that the word ultimate
Speaker 1: would suggest that you could only have one. No, you
Speaker 1: could have limitless versions of this, so the supply is
Speaker 1: completely controlled by the developer. So if say you wanted
Speaker 1: a fancy costume for your character, like a very specific outfit,
Speaker 1: you might have less than a one percent chance of
Speaker 1: finding it in any given loot crate situation. And of course,
Speaker 1: games began to introduce different tiers of loot crates, so
Speaker 1: a basic loot crate would rarely have anything special in it.
Speaker 1: More expensive, higher tier loot crates had a better chance
Speaker 1: of holding something you wanted, but there was no guarantee,
Speaker 1: and you were encouraged to buy these loot crates for
Speaker 1: real money. A lot most games allow you to earn
Speaker 1: loot crates through play, but it's at a very controlled,
Speaker 1: slow pace, and the goal is to convince players to
Speaker 1: hand over real world money to buy more of these
Speaker 1: loot crates rather than just pouring extra hours, especially if
Speaker 1: you've just played a game for hours, you finally opened
Speaker 1: up the loot crates you've earned and you don't get
Speaker 1: the thing you wanted, and you still have that desire
Speaker 1: to have that thing. Now, let me be clear, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of games out there that have loot crates,
Speaker 1: and some of them don't require you to purchase the
Speaker 1: crates with real world money. You just earned them within
Speaker 1: the game by playing the games. But a lot of
Speaker 1: them also do offer up that option to purchase additional
Speaker 1: loot crates for cash, and the more you spend, the
Speaker 1: more you get. Most of these games will offer discounts
Speaker 1: if you buy in larger numbers. So let's say that
Speaker 1: a single loot crate might set you back a dollar,
Speaker 1: but if you spend five dollars, you get seven loot crates,
Speaker 1: so it's less than a dollar each. Right, ten bucks
Speaker 1: might get you fifteen loot crates. A hundred dollars might
Speaker 1: get you two hundred loot crates. You get the idea.
Speaker 1: Now here's the brilliant thing. From the revenue standpoint, Like
Speaker 1: I said, there's no real scarcity in the real world.
Speaker 1: Buying in bulk means that the merchant who's selling the
Speaker 1: stuff is offloading real merchandise in the process. So if
Speaker 1: I'm selling oranges and you decide you want to buy
Speaker 1: five hundred oranges from me, I'm likely going to cut
Speaker 1: you a big deal because there's a real risk I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be able to sell all of my
Speaker 1: oranges before they start to go bad, which means I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have waste. I'll make no money from those spoiled oranges.
Speaker 1: So even though I might charge customers for each individual orange,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, fifty cents, if I'm selling the
Speaker 1: in bulk to you, it's probably gonna be closer to
Speaker 1: like twenty cents each, less than half, because it's still
Speaker 1: guaranteed money for me, and otherwise I could end up
Speaker 1: with a lot of waste and very little revenue. Right,
Speaker 1: if I don't think I'm gonna sell those five hundred oranges,
Speaker 1: then I'm not gonna make any money from them, So
Speaker 1: of course I'm going to start cutting deals for selling
Speaker 1: in bulk. However, once I do sell you those five
Speaker 1: hundred oranges, clearly I no longer have those five hundred
Speaker 1: oranges anymore. They don't belong to me, they belong to you.
Speaker 1: They're gone from my inventory. So I have whatever is left,
Speaker 1: and maybe I keep selling those for a fifty cents apiece,
Speaker 1: or maybe less if someone else's trying to buy them
Speaker 1: in bulk. But when it comes to stuff like loot crates,
Speaker 1: there is no scarcity. The merchant that is the game
Speaker 1: doesn't run out of loot crates. There's no limitation on
Speaker 1: how many loot crates can be sold. The scarcity of
Speaker 1: the items inside the loot crates are determined not because
Speaker 1: there's a physical limit to how many can exist at
Speaker 1: any given time, but because the percentage of likelihood that
Speaker 1: they will be generated by any loot crate is just
Speaker 1: really small. So if a merchant sells one thousand loot
Speaker 1: crates to someone, that doesn't mean the merchant now has
Speaker 1: one thousand fewer loot crates because they're just digital items.
Speaker 1: The merchant can sell a limitless number to customers, so
Speaker 1: the supply and demand mechanics don't really apply here because
Speaker 1: there's an infinite supply. The merchant can run specials this weekend,
Speaker 1: all loot crates are fifty off, and the merchant isn't
Speaker 1: losing any money in the process because loot crate production
Speaker 1: is effectively free. I mean, yeah, they're the cost of
Speaker 1: doing business. There's the cost of running the computers and
Speaker 1: paying the people who are running the game. Those costs
Speaker 1: exist whether you're doing a promotion or not. But the
Speaker 1: actual generation of loot crates, it's not like that requires
Speaker 1: extra effort or or energy. The off weekend isn't really
Speaker 1: a mark down in the traditional sense. It's an effort
Speaker 1: to convince people who might not otherwise spend money on
Speaker 1: in game stuff to go ahead and do it. And
Speaker 1: once you convince them once, you might be able to
Speaker 1: do it again. These micro transactions within games can be
Speaker 1: incredibly lucrative, and they're not always so micro. There are
Speaker 1: games that include in game purchases that can be in
Speaker 1: the one hundred dollar range, which means you'd be spending
Speaker 1: more money for in game items than you would typically
Speaker 1: spend to purchase a triple A title video game period
Speaker 1: those running the sixty to seventy dollar range. That's for
Speaker 1: a full game. So let's just remember that, like there
Speaker 1: are one in game purchases, which means you'd be spending
Speaker 1: more within a game than you would to buy your
Speaker 1: average game. Now, an important component of this dynamic is
Speaker 1: the psychological rewards. All of these games to some extent,
Speaker 1: depend upon creating a sort of dependency, and I promise
Speaker 1: that will be coming back to Pokemon Go in a
Speaker 1: little bit. But in order to understand revenue models and
Speaker 1: how Niantic went from a scrappy company with around forty
Speaker 1: employees to a multi billion dollar success, we need to
Speaker 1: learn about how our ding dang brains work, because trust me,
Speaker 1: game developers are all over it. But first, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Okay, so I've covered the basics of
Speaker 1: micro transactions and how they work from an operational side,
Speaker 1: but we also need to look at why they work.
Speaker 1: I mean, sure, I might play a game that offers
Speaker 1: me to the chance to, you know, purchase an item
Speaker 1: within game, or maybe just the chance to find an item,
Speaker 1: But why would I actually follow through with that? What
Speaker 1: is compelling me to spend real world money on a game? Well,
Speaker 1: maybe I just like the game and I want to
Speaker 1: reward the developers. I have actually done this before. I
Speaker 1: have a game on my smartphone that was free to download,
Speaker 1: it was free to install, it's free to play, and
Speaker 1: I've played it for about a year without ever making
Speaker 1: any in game purchases. There's no advertising in this game either,
Speaker 1: and I thought, you know, I've had hours of enjoyment
Speaker 1: with this game. I enjoy playing it. I should at
Speaker 1: least fork over some money to the developers. That to
Speaker 1: me seems fair. So I made a twenty dollar in
Speaker 1: game purchase, and every year or so I do the
Speaker 1: same because I'm still playing that game and I'm still
Speaker 1: getting enjoyment out of it. The developers keep adding content
Speaker 1: to it. So without any other stream of revenue from
Speaker 1: that game, I feel like, you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: owe it to pay some money since I'm enjoying the
Speaker 1: fruits of their labor. And I feel that's a pretty
Speaker 1: fair approach because that's the way I'm viewing it. That's
Speaker 1: the perspective I'm taking. But that's not how games, even
Speaker 1: including the one I'm vaguely referring to, really make lots
Speaker 1: of cash. They depend upon a different sequence. See. Games
Speaker 1: like these really establish a reinforcement and reward system that
Speaker 1: fulfills a psychological need we humans typically have. We crave awards.
Speaker 1: It feels good to get a reward. Rewards fulfilled needs
Speaker 1: like a sense of autonomy, like in other words, yeah,
Speaker 1: I rescued the kingdom. Now I've got a pile of
Speaker 1: gold for doing it. Or it rewards a sense of competence,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I chopped that would so well that now
Speaker 1: I'm even better at chopping wood. So video games set
Speaker 1: up cycles that present players with tasks and then rewards.
Speaker 1: Completing tasks means you get the psychologically satisfying result of
Speaker 1: getting a reward, which in turn encourages you to tackle
Speaker 1: more tasks. But let's say we tweak this dynamic a
Speaker 1: little bit. There are a few ways we could do this.
Speaker 1: We could create a shortcut. So yeah, you can play
Speaker 1: the game and you can get a reward, or maybe
Speaker 1: you just spend some real world money and you get
Speaker 1: the reward right now, So you get sort of that
Speaker 1: psychological rush of receiving a reward without all that pesky
Speaker 1: chore stuff that leads up to it. Your character in
Speaker 1: the game, it's more powerful, or it gets a better outfit,
Speaker 1: or it gets more time to spend playing, or opens
Speaker 1: up a new region, or whatever it might be. Or
Speaker 1: we could make the tasks more difficult to a point
Speaker 1: where most players will not be able to complete those
Speaker 1: tasks without paying for help. Maybe you have a game
Speaker 1: mechanic that gives players five minutes of playtime before there's
Speaker 1: a cool down period where they cannot play the game
Speaker 1: for a given amount of time while they recharge, and
Speaker 1: then you include a task that, on average takes seven
Speaker 1: minutes to complete. Well, now players who engage with that
Speaker 1: task have five minutes to try and complete a seven
Speaker 1: minute task. As you can imagine, that's not necessarily possible,
Speaker 1: and they will still crave the reward that comes at
Speaker 1: the end of completing the task, but because they didn't
Speaker 1: have enough time to actually do that, that craving goes unfulfilled. Now,
Speaker 1: they could wait to try and recharge in and see
Speaker 1: if they could complete the task in the next session,
Speaker 1: but that's leaving things unresolved, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: just really hate that feeling. Of something being unresolved. They
Speaker 1: crave having it resolved, and psychologically we need that reward.
Speaker 1: So now we've got the option to maybe pay a
Speaker 1: little bit extra for some more time so that you
Speaker 1: can actually finish the task. It's not paying to complete
Speaker 1: the task, it's paying to get the time so you
Speaker 1: can do it yourself, and then you get the reward
Speaker 1: boom micro transaction, or you create that artificial scarcity where
Speaker 1: you make something that's really cool, like an awesome outfit.
Speaker 1: I think of lots of games out there have different skins,
Speaker 1: Player Unknowns, Battlegrounds, does it? Overwatch does it? Lots of
Speaker 1: games have this right where there's just these really nice
Speaker 1: designed outfits that make you look really cool. Well, they
Speaker 1: tend to be pretty rare and difficult to get hold of.
Speaker 1: You can't just buy them out right or else everybody
Speaker 1: you would be wearing them, So instead you make them
Speaker 1: an item that can be found in loot crates, but
Speaker 1: you reduce the percentage of the chance that they will
Speaker 1: appear to an absurd degree. Completionists or people who just
Speaker 1: really love that design will chase after that. They crave
Speaker 1: the reward of having something that most people do not have.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they just really dig the design, and so
Speaker 1: they'll either pour countless hours into the game trying to
Speaker 1: earn it, or they'll start buying lootboxes in order to
Speaker 1: try and find it that way and just increase their
Speaker 1: odds through you know, bulk buying. Now, the commonality here
Speaker 1: is that you as a game developer trying to figure
Speaker 1: out the ways to create a demand for in game
Speaker 1: items or effects, and then you exploit that way and
Speaker 1: creating a cycle that can be repeated specifically with each player,
Speaker 1: so that each player becomes a a source of repeated revenue.
Speaker 1: That reward cycle can become a bit addictive, and it
Speaker 1: can lead some players to becoming irresponsible with their real
Speaker 1: world cash as they play. Now, I am not saying
Speaker 1: that micro transactions are totally evil, or at least they're
Speaker 1: not any more evil than other types of capitalist transactions.
Speaker 1: It's mostly in how they are incorporated into a game
Speaker 1: that really matters. If it's a paid to win scenario
Speaker 1: where you know, if you spend money, you get better
Speaker 1: items that give you advantages in the games, most people
Speaker 1: tend to find that to be gross or lame or whatever.
Speaker 1: If it's purely cosmetic, then I find that most people
Speaker 1: think it's perfectly cromulent and if the game seems like
Speaker 1: it completely hinges on micro transactions. So in other words,
Speaker 1: there doesn't seem to be much of a game there
Speaker 1: unless you're paying lots of money over time, and it's
Speaker 1: really just kind of a churning transaction generator that is
Speaker 1: not a good look. So how does this all relate
Speaker 1: back to Pokemon Go. Well, the game also dips into
Speaker 1: another brilliant cash making scheme that of you know, like
Speaker 1: fun bucks or in game currency. It always makes me
Speaker 1: think of Disney dollars or sometimes gift cards, and it's
Speaker 1: the way that companies can make a lot of money
Speaker 1: and not have a lot of cost associated with it.
Speaker 1: And here's how it works. First, you have to exchange
Speaker 1: real world money for in game currency or in world currency.
Speaker 1: So let's use Disney as an example. Disney World and
Speaker 1: Disneyland for a while allowed you to spend real cash
Speaker 1: to buy Disney dollars. So these were bills of different
Speaker 1: denominations one, five, ten, and fifty, and they had Disney
Speaker 1: characters on them. You could use Disney dollars to buy
Speaker 1: stuff in stores at Disney World and Disneyland, but you couldn't,
Speaker 1: and this was an important part convert unused Disney dollars
Speaker 1: back into real world cash, so you can only use
Speaker 1: Disney dollars to make transactions at Disney properties. Clearly, you
Speaker 1: would not be able to go into a non Disney
Speaker 1: store somewhere and use Disney dollars because it's not legal currency.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of like trying to buy real
Speaker 1: world stuff with Monopoly money. And also people would hold
Speaker 1: on to Disney dollars as keepsakes in their own right,
Speaker 1: which meant Disney was effectively selling slips of paper for one, five, ten,
Speaker 1: or even fifty bucks of real world money, which is
Speaker 1: brilliant right. Well, in game currency is kind of the same.
Speaker 1: You spend a certain amount of real money to get
Speaker 1: a given amount of in game currency, then all other
Speaker 1: purchases within the game are based on the in game currency,
Speaker 1: so you've got to buy cash before you can buy
Speaker 1: say a new hat with that cash. And typically games
Speaker 1: like Pokemon Go will mark down in game currency for
Speaker 1: larger purchases, so a dollar wouldn't let you one hundred
Speaker 1: poker coins, five dollars would get you five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty of them. Ten dollars would get you twelve hundred coins,
Speaker 1: and a hundred bucks would be fourteen thousand, five hundred coins.
Speaker 1: You would be Poka rich and real world poor. The
Speaker 1: coins would let you buy stuff like lures, which, as
Speaker 1: the name suggests, brings out more although Pokemon critters as
Speaker 1: you walk around, so you see more of them and
Speaker 1: in the amount of time that you're playing. UH. That
Speaker 1: would last for a certain amount of in game time,
Speaker 1: and UH you might get better poke balls, which have
Speaker 1: a higher chance of success when you use them against
Speaker 1: more powerful Pokemon, so meing you're more likely to catch
Speaker 1: that Pokemon, it won't get away and you won't lose
Speaker 1: your chance of collecting it. Or you might use the
Speaker 1: in game cash to buy lucky eggs, which allow you
Speaker 1: to hatch a new Pokemon after you walk a certain
Speaker 1: number of steps, and potentially you might get a rare
Speaker 1: one that you otherwise may not have come across while
Speaker 1: you were walking around. All of these items have a
Speaker 1: certain number of poke coins associated with them, and it
Speaker 1: helps obvious gate how expensive each of these in game
Speaker 1: items are with regard to real world money, which is
Speaker 1: another big part of using in game currency. It might
Speaker 1: cost you a dollar to get a hundred poker coins.
Speaker 1: But maybe an item in the game is valued at
Speaker 1: three hundred poker coins. Now that means that it would
Speaker 1: set you back three real world dollars to buy enough
Speaker 1: of the poker coins if you were just buying them
Speaker 1: in the one dollar increments. However, as you go through
Speaker 1: it starts to become more difficult to associate the in
Speaker 1: game stuff with the real world price you're paying, particularly
Speaker 1: if you're spending more money so that you get extra
Speaker 1: poker coins with your purchase. Now it might sound like
Speaker 1: I'm saying Niantic is trying to trick players by creating
Speaker 1: a reward system that triggers a desire in players to
Speaker 1: make purchases and then increases their chances of getting rewards,
Speaker 1: coupled with using in game currency to put some distance
Speaker 1: between an in game item's real world cost or price
Speaker 1: tag and the player's awareness of that. And I guess
Speaker 1: that is one way to look at it. However, this
Speaker 1: is also a very common an approach with smartphone games
Speaker 1: in particular. Heck, the one I alluded to earlier uses
Speaker 1: a very similar process, and in fact it has multiple
Speaker 1: in game currencies. Pokemon go at least keeps itself to
Speaker 1: the one means of in game exchange for the store.
Speaker 1: Some games might have four or five different methods, which
Speaker 1: I would argue makes them even more guilty of fleecing players.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the game I play does this, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can sometimes feel a little gross or at least exploitative.
Speaker 1: But whatever you think about the revenue model of micro transactions,
Speaker 1: whether you think it's great or it's not, you have
Speaker 1: to admit it works. In its first month, Pokemon Go
Speaker 1: generated two hundred seven million dollars in revenue, which at
Speaker 1: the time was the most money a mobile game had
Speaker 1: made within a month of launch. And that's made all
Speaker 1: the more remarkable when you consider that Niantic rolled out
Speaker 1: the game gradually across different regions. It was not available
Speaker 1: globally right away. The game launched in July, and by
Speaker 1: September of that year, Niantics saw more than five hundred
Speaker 1: million downloads. By July, one year after launch, it had
Speaker 1: been downloaded seven hundred fifty million times. Most of the
Speaker 1: downloads were on Android devices. There was a nearly seventy
Speaker 1: thirty split between Android and iOS, which actually find pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, the trend is that you see more in
Speaker 1: app purchases on apps that are running on iOS. It
Speaker 1: just seems like Apple users tend to be more um
Speaker 1: inclined to make in app purchases. So while Android phones
Speaker 1: vastly outnumber iOS devices throughout the world, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just way more Android devices than there are iOS devices.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, Apple users tend to spend more
Speaker 1: money on apps and in apps than Android users do,
Speaker 1: so I just found it really interesting that here we
Speaker 1: saw seventy thirty split between Android and iOS in the
Speaker 1: devices running Pokemon Go, and yet there's this incredible amount
Speaker 1: of in game purchases going on, which you wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: given that split. Well, adoption dropped off fairly sharply after
Speaker 1: Pokemon first debuted, and some players dropped off the game
Speaker 1: entirely over time, including myself, but Pokemon goes still proved
Speaker 1: to be incredibly profitable. There was a dip in spending
Speaker 1: in ten players were spending less on average in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: but after that Niantics saw spending increase year over year.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Pokemon Go brought in eight hundred ninety
Speaker 1: four million dollars in revenue. A truly staggering amount. But
Speaker 1: learning that bit didn't surprise me nearly as much as
Speaker 1: what happened in twenty twenty. So, of course we had
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit in and with much of the world
Speaker 1: going into lockdown and isolation by March or April of
Speaker 1: it meant that I would think Pokemon Go would have suffered.
Speaker 1: This is a game that encourages players to go outside
Speaker 1: and walk around in the real world in order to
Speaker 1: encounter Pokemon within the game and then catch them. You
Speaker 1: would think that you would have an enormous hit on
Speaker 1: revenue when people weren't leaving their houses. I was expecting
Speaker 1: to see a really big dep How could a game
Speaker 1: so reliant on physical location be a success in a
Speaker 1: year when most people weren't actually going anywhere. Well, I
Speaker 1: was a percent wrong, because by November of twenty ten
Speaker 1: months into the year, not even a full year, Niantic
Speaker 1: posted one billion dollars in revenue from Pokemon Go a
Speaker 1: billion dollars from in app purchases in a mobile game.
Speaker 1: Upon further exploration, I started again an understanding of what
Speaker 1: was going on. People were spending more time on their
Speaker 1: phones in lockdown, so they were downloading more entertainment like
Speaker 1: games to mobile devices, and Niantic very very smartly implemented
Speaker 1: numerous features to let players have virtual experiences and play
Speaker 1: the game without actually having to leave the safety of
Speaker 1: their homes. One of the big changes was in how
Speaker 1: an in game item called incense works, and essentially, incense
Speaker 1: attracts Pokemon to your location. Really, it just means that
Speaker 1: Pokemon spawn at wherever you are for a set amount
Speaker 1: of time, like half an hour, and for those thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see way more Pokemon spawn around you than
Speaker 1: you normally would, and it gives you a chance to
Speaker 1: collect Pokemon without having to wander physically around your region.
Speaker 1: Niantic boosted the effects of incense during lockdown. They also
Speaker 1: boosted the effects of other in game items, which allow
Speaker 1: players to experience the game from home as long as
Speaker 1: they had those items that is. And how did you
Speaker 1: get those items? Mostly you did it by buying poke
Speaker 1: coins and then using the poke coins to purchase the
Speaker 1: items you wanted in the in game store. Of course, now,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot more to say about Niantic, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break over the course of
Speaker 1: its existence so far, Pokemon Go has generated more than
Speaker 1: four billion dollars in revenue. The US leads the way
Speaker 1: in terms of spending on the game, and Japan is
Speaker 1: not that far behind. Upon initial release, the amount of
Speaker 1: gameplay and Pokemon Go was fairly limited. You could capture Pokemon,
Speaker 1: you could evolve them over time using an in game
Speaker 1: resource called star dust. More on that in a second.
Speaker 1: You could attempt to take over gems so that your
Speaker 1: facts and could control them. You know, the three factions
Speaker 1: or teams and Pokemon Go, but you couldn't battle head
Speaker 1: to head with other players, nor could you trade pokemon in.
Speaker 1: Niantic finally introduced trading, but it was not as simple
Speaker 1: as swapping one Pokemon for another. To trade, you had
Speaker 1: to meet some other criteria first. Both players that would
Speaker 1: enter into a trade would first have to become friends
Speaker 1: with each other, which involves sending and accepting friend requests,
Speaker 1: using a unique identifier to link the two accounts together
Speaker 1: as friends, and that establishes a connection. Both friends would
Speaker 1: need to be within one dred meters of each other
Speaker 1: in real life before making a trade. At least before
Speaker 1: the pandemic. They had to do that, and you needed
Speaker 1: a certain amount of star dust to power that trade.
Speaker 1: Like I said, star dust is an in game element
Speaker 1: in Pokemon Go that typically you use to level up
Speaker 1: captured Pokemon. So let's say I caught a Charmnder and
Speaker 1: to power up my char Mander and evolve it up
Speaker 1: to a char million and then ultimately up to a Charizard,
Speaker 1: I need to collect enough star dust to power that transformation.
Speaker 1: And um, you collect star dust through playing the game.
Speaker 1: But trading likewise requires a certain amount of stardust to
Speaker 1: allow you to trade a Pokemon to another player. The
Speaker 1: more rare the Pokemon, the more stardust is actually needed
Speaker 1: to make a trade happen. Now complicating this is that
Speaker 1: friendship isn't just a binary element in Pokemon. It's not
Speaker 1: either you're my friend or you're not. Friendship has tears
Speaker 1: to it, meaning that over time you can boost your
Speaker 1: friendship levels literally over time. The longer you are friends
Speaker 1: with somebody, the higher your friendship value is. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like going from an acquaintance to a friend to
Speaker 1: b FF two. Seriously, can you help me hide this body?
Speaker 1: I might be revealing too much about how I rank
Speaker 1: my friends. Anyway, With higher friendship levels, the startup cost
Speaker 1: for trading starts to come down. So the same trade
Speaker 1: with one person who's just like an acquaintance level is
Speaker 1: going to cost you more stardust than that exact same
Speaker 1: trade with your BFF it'll be less stardust. So if
Speaker 1: you're training with a really good friend, you aren't spending
Speaker 1: quite as much star dust to make it happen. In addition,
Speaker 1: sometimes during play you might encounter a gift item out
Speaker 1: in the wild, and gift items are meant to be
Speaker 1: given to your friends. So if I find a gift item,
Speaker 1: I would not be able to open it for myself.
Speaker 1: I could however, send it on to one of my
Speaker 1: friends who also plays the game, and they would not
Speaker 1: only receive this gift uh, they would then be able
Speaker 1: to open it and there would be some useful items
Speaker 1: in there that they could then put to use within
Speaker 1: the game themselves. The gameplay mechanics of trading are a
Speaker 1: bit convoluted, but they also help avoid the issues you
Speaker 1: would have if there were kind of a no holds
Speaker 1: barred approach. In that case, players could end up spoofing
Speaker 1: multiple accounts and then just te eating back and forth
Speaker 1: with themselves in order to essentially cheat their way toward dominance.
Speaker 1: And heck, with that reward cycle built into games, you
Speaker 1: can see why people would actually do this. They're chasing
Speaker 1: that high of a perceived achievement. A reward doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if they had to take shortcuts to get there. Now
Speaker 1: I'm getting toward the end of this episode, so I
Speaker 1: need to switch gears for a minute and talk about
Speaker 1: niantics other game they've launched since Pokemon Go. So there's Ingress,
Speaker 1: which is still going today, that was their first big
Speaker 1: public game. There's Pokemon Go, and then there's another huge
Speaker 1: I p that partnered with Niantic to create an augmented
Speaker 1: reality mobile game that everyone at the time was thinking
Speaker 1: could be even bigger than Pokemon Go, and that would
Speaker 1: be Harry Potter. Uh. The game that Niantic created is
Speaker 1: called Harry Potter Wizards Unite. The World first learned about
Speaker 1: this partnership back in November, just a little more than
Speaker 1: a year after Pokemon Go had launched. According to the
Speaker 1: press release, Niantic promised a game in which quote players
Speaker 1: will learn spells, explore their real world neighborhoods and cities
Speaker 1: to discover and fight legendary beasts, and team up with
Speaker 1: others to take down powerful enemies. End quote from the
Speaker 1: press release. It sounded like this would be in many
Speaker 1: ways very similar to Pokemon Go, but with a Harry
Speaker 1: Potter kind of overlay, and Pokemon Go players choose one
Speaker 1: of three teams to join their either Team Valor, Team
Speaker 1: Instinct or Team Mystic. There's no option to join Team Rocket,
Speaker 1: and yes I have written letters about it. These are
Speaker 1: the teams that compete to control sites like gems, which
Speaker 1: are tied to points of interest in the real world,
Speaker 1: and Harry Potter would change that up so that instead
Speaker 1: of Team Valerie, Team Instinctive, Team Mystic, you would choose
Speaker 1: one of the four Houses and Hogwarts, so of course Slytherin,
Speaker 1: which we all know is the best house, Raven Claude, Griffin, Door,
Speaker 1: or Hufflepuff. When the game finally law punched in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: two years later, this was essentially confirmed, and in addition,
Speaker 1: players the game can choose a profession. The three professions
Speaker 1: are magic, zoologist, orror, or professor. They can also select
Speaker 1: their own wands, which frankly is against Cannon because we
Speaker 1: all know the wand chooses you, but then the ones
Speaker 1: don't have any real effect. On gameplay at all. They're
Speaker 1: purely cosmetics, so it's not like it actually matters beyond aesthetics.
Speaker 1: Like Pokemon Go, the intended gameplay for Harry Potter Wizards
Speaker 1: Unite is to walk around your real environment and encounter
Speaker 1: confounded creatures or items. You are then to cast spells
Speaker 1: to reverse this confounding curse on these things, and casting
Speaker 1: spells involves tracing a pattern shown on your screen dependent
Speaker 1: upon whichever spell you're casting, and different ones have different powers. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like Pokemon Go. You can actually have
Speaker 1: the set to a R mode so that you get
Speaker 1: a digital overlay of critters that appear to be in
Speaker 1: your real world environment, or you can just turn that
Speaker 1: off Savior Battery life and just play on the screen.
Speaker 1: Tracing the pattern correctly increases your chances of unconfounding things,
Speaker 1: or at least that's what's supposed to do. In my experience,
Speaker 1: the gesture detection is a little bit wonky, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm told that I didn't do a very good job
Speaker 1: when I am sure I nailed that gesture, and other
Speaker 1: times I'm like, whoo, I really really messed that one up,
Speaker 1: and yet get a perfect result. So there's a lack
Speaker 1: of consistency there now. Granted, I have not played this
Speaker 1: game in a long long time, so it may be
Speaker 1: that it has improved over time, but when it first
Speaker 1: launched I was having real issues. The game has a
Speaker 1: lot of other gameplay features in it, many of which
Speaker 1: are clever and fun when you can, you know, go
Speaker 1: outside without a care in the world. So, for example,
Speaker 1: they have port keys in this game, and you can
Speaker 1: find a port key essentially like a chest, and you
Speaker 1: can open it with a one of your keys, and
Speaker 1: that creates a portal, uh that appears in your view,
Speaker 1: so you can actually hold your phone up and you
Speaker 1: see that there's a portal in front of you. To
Speaker 1: go through the portal, you actually do have to take
Speaker 1: steps and walk through the thing, which is why I
Speaker 1: recommend that you do this somewhere really safe, like not
Speaker 1: next to a busy road where the portal would have
Speaker 1: you walk into traffic. Anyway, once you go through the portal,
Speaker 1: you collect in game stuff that gives you special items
Speaker 1: that you can use within the game play. Like Pokemon Go,
Speaker 1: you can also purchase things within the game to give
Speaker 1: you boosts and unlocked items much more quickly. The launch
Speaker 1: of Wizards Unite was a far cry from what Niantics
Speaker 1: saw with Pokemon Go. With Pokemon, Niantic generated more than
Speaker 1: two hundred million dollars in revenue in that launch month.
Speaker 1: Harry Potter was closer to twelve million dollars. Now that's
Speaker 1: not chump change. Don't get me wrong. I would love
Speaker 1: twelve dollars, but it wasn't a grand slam home runs
Speaker 1: the way that Pokemon Go was. You know, everyone was thinking,
Speaker 1: Harry Potter is such a recognizable intellectual property, for sure,
Speaker 1: this game is gonna be just a license to print money.
Speaker 1: Um So, while the Harry Potter franchise is huge and
Speaker 1: and is bigger than Pokemon, has a rabid fan base
Speaker 1: as well, but the game just didn't see as much
Speaker 1: adoption early on. Whether that was because of a failure
Speaker 1: in marketing or just a lack of interest among Harry
Speaker 1: Potter fans, I can't say. Maybe Pokemon fans were already
Speaker 1: used to interacting with Pokemon within the context of the
Speaker 1: game world and the game like like revenue structure, so
Speaker 1: the transition to playing Pokemon but in the real world
Speaker 1: had a greater appeal for those folks. But whatever the
Speaker 1: reason Harry Potter has not paid off the same way
Speaker 1: Pokemon has. Nyantik, however, continues to develop games, you know,
Speaker 1: in between cashing enormous checks from Pokemon Go. Next up
Speaker 1: is a game that's based around the popular board game
Speaker 1: Settlers of Katan, which you know. I've never actually played.
Speaker 1: I think that means I have to hand over my
Speaker 1: geek card. I know we've got some Katan players in
Speaker 1: our office. I think Tyler and Matt might play it,
Speaker 1: but I have never sat down to a session. I
Speaker 1: only have a vague idea of how the game works. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Nyantick announced it was working on this Katan related title
Speaker 1: back in November twenty nineteen, but we haven't yet seen
Speaker 1: the game come out, presumably really through a wrench in
Speaker 1: the works because Niantic had to dedicate a lot of
Speaker 1: resources toward optimizing Pokemon Go and Harry Potter in order
Speaker 1: to have the play at home approach. Very very recently,
Speaker 1: just back in March of this year, this year being one,
Speaker 1: in case you're listening to this from the future, Niantick
Speaker 1: announced it was making a game in the Pickman franchise.
Speaker 1: This game will come out of the Tokyo based branch
Speaker 1: of Niantic, which was first set up back in but
Speaker 1: I think it's safe to say that the bread and
Speaker 1: butter of Niantic continues to be Pokemon Go. While the
Speaker 1: game saw a lot of players migrate away, particularly before
Speaker 1: stuff like trading was introduced, Niantic has incorporated a lot
Speaker 1: of in game and real world incentives to bring people
Speaker 1: on board and to keep existing players engaged. That includes
Speaker 1: introducing more Pokemon. There are hundreds of Pokemon, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of like controlled releases. So the initial Pokemon that
Speaker 1: were available in Pokemon Go, we're all like first edition Pokemon,
Speaker 1: but lots of them have been introduced over subsequent games,
Speaker 1: and Pokemon Go has capitalized on that. Uh. They also
Speaker 1: have held really large events which used to be you know, physical.
Speaker 1: It used to bring people together in the same physical location.
Speaker 1: These days they run more towards the virtual. However, some
Speaker 1: people have started using Pokemon recently as you know, an
Speaker 1: excuse to get out in the world again as vaccination
Speaker 1: numbers are on the rise. And of course it also
Speaker 1: has included finding incentives to encourage players to purchase those
Speaker 1: dang poker coins. Now, I would say that the augmented
Speaker 1: reality nature of these games is a fairly light touch,
Speaker 1: particularly in the pandemic. The game world does correlate in
Speaker 1: some measure to the real world. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: only encounter certain things within the Niantic games based on
Speaker 1: where you are physically on Earth. You can't find Mr
Speaker 1: Mime in the USA, you can't find Taurus in Asia
Speaker 1: unless you're trying to cheat the system through spoofing your location.
Speaker 1: But I think most folks turn off the A OUR
Speaker 1: view of gameplay to conserve battery life, so that augmented
Speaker 1: reality part of the game is really more about just
Speaker 1: wandering around in an effort to encounter more game elements.
Speaker 1: But you aren't experiencing the game as if it's overlaid
Speaker 1: on top of the reality you exist within. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a baby step in a R. But the
Speaker 1: success of Pokemon Go indicates that there just might be
Speaker 1: something too augmented reality games. Clearly, the best approach is
Speaker 1: going to require the right i P, the right gameplay mechanics,
Speaker 1: the right technology to create the a R experience, and
Speaker 1: the right integration of digital elements with the real world.
Speaker 1: And that is a secret sauce that's really hard to achieve.
Speaker 1: I mean, even if we just look at Niantic, they've
Speaker 1: really only hit the jackpot once, and even Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: which seemed like a guaranteed success story and came after
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go did, just hasn't made a huge splash compared
Speaker 1: to Pokemon So it might be a while before we
Speaker 1: see another real juggernaut in the space. Oh Marvel augmented
Speaker 1: reality game, Now, I'd be so into that. But that
Speaker 1: wraps up our episodes about Niantic. The company, as I said,
Speaker 1: is still going like gangbusters, still developing games, and still
Speaker 1: making an enormous amount of revenue from Pokemon Go, so
Speaker 1: we're likely to see them be a big player for
Speaker 1: some time now. Hopefully they'll continue to innovate. I would
Speaker 1: hate to see it by a company that just relies
Speaker 1: solely upon Pokemon Go, but as we've seen, repeating success
Speaker 1: is never a guarantee. I hope you enjoyed these episodes.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, reach out to me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle is text Stuff h s W and I'll
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an
Speaker 1: I Heart radio production. For more podcasts from My Heart radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.