In June, Niantic announced they intended to start investing some Pokémon GoThe measures taken to make gambling safer in the midst of a global pandemic. In early August, they surprised everyone as they passed by, reducing the key distances from 80 meters to 40, despite the commotion of the fans. Three weeks later they finally backed off, and now they have come out a statement this is surprisingly frank about the evil they fucked it all up.
“Niantic has a lot of space to grow when it comes to communicating with our players,” it is stated. POGO says executive producer Steve Wang. A refreshing, simple and honest comment, in an industry that is much more likely to be overshadowed by corporate bollocks about “improving developer-player synergies” or whatever you have.
When Niantic announced it they were creating a “working group” in response to how angry his players had been this summer, I admit he was quite skeptical. They had decided to halve the interaction distances in their game in the United States and New Zealand, as the Covid Delta variant was causing new deadly peaks in the two countries. He was obviously stupid and didn’t seem to need a circle of friendship and confidence would fall to recognize him.
But when the result is a frankness like this, it seems like a positive outcome for the players. First, Niantic has made it clear that it does finally we realized that the 80 m interaction distances for Pokestops and gyms are simple Pokémon Go a better game, and it’s here to stay, all over the world. Second, they have found that they are absolutely terrible at listening to and communicating with their player base.
At 80 meters, Wang is very clear:
“We understand that the increase in the interaction distance of 80 meters became a welcome benefit for many players, which can be seen from the comments we saw from the community. Therefore, we want to keep it: as it was announced last week, from now on 80 meters (not 40 meters) will be the base interaction radius of PokéStops and gyms worldwide ”.
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This is great news, and honestly, it’s extraordinary that somehow they wouldn’t have taken it into account more than a year ago, when everyone playing the game was communicating it so loudly. However, this is the kind of thing we hope will improve with the other part of this confession:
“We should communicate and engage more with the trainers. I hope that, with your patience and understanding, we can do better here.”
Recognizing that there are many ways to improve, Wang’s statement picks up on three to begin with. Starting in October, they will publish a “developer diary” every two months, which will “share the latest priorities, events and features of the game.”
They then plan to continue with what they called their working group, holding “regular conversations with community leaders to continue the dialogue we started this month.”
Finally, for now, there is a promise to improve the game “Known issues”, Which so far has been ridiculously terrible. Think of one problem you know about the game: it won’t be there. But, says Wang, he will now “prioritize giving greater visibility to the state of existing mistakes for coaches.”
He hang waffles a little about the importance of this Pokémon Go it makes people go out and walk, and “discover interesting places” and of course that’s why they were so desperate to recapture these interaction distances, no matter how deadly the stage was. It has nothing to do with how people are more likely to spend money on remote attack steps if they can’t get to the nearest gym from home, without serree.
He also acknowledges that they are simply not equipped to “effectively adjust the country-by-country experience” and therefore from now on the changes in the game will be global. Which, again, is pleasantly honest. How is the final statement:
“The lack of communication about the PokéStop and Gym interaction radius was not well managed by us, and it was a great learning experience on how to better interact with our players going forward.”
So congratulations on that.