Product layer
First of all, we need to clarify one fact: the development team of "PMGO" is Niantic. The previous work of this team was "Ingress", and "PMGO" has a large number of Data from "Ingress" is used: mainly data about map locations, specifically for all PMGO elf stations and dojos. Their locations, names, and pictures are all uploaded and applied by previous "Ingress" players. PMGO can consider not using the current LBS game mode and instead simply searching for enemies on the map background (with the help of map positioning, processing the longitude and latitude data to generate monster information), and then developing an in-game virtual positioning (official aircraft). At that time, it was no different from the "City xx Go" that couldn't even be called a copycat product. You don’t want to play PMGO like this, right?
If there were no Portal location and picture information uploaded, filtered, and screened by hundreds of thousands of players around the world in "Ingress" for more than a year, would there be PMGO? In other words, can PMGO be what it is now?
For another example, there is no concept of "regional server" in "Ingress". Players around the world are theoretically on one server. When a player tries to link, the game needs to search whether there is a block blocking line on the link trajectory, and you cannot predict the number of blocking lines at all. It may be 0 or 10,000. The game has specially designed an algorithm to quickly determine the link. feasibility. Without this kind of technology to back it up, how do you ensure that the game works properly when players are in the same area? For another example, there was news that hundreds of players gathered in Santa Monica, USA, at 1 o'clock in the middle of the night because of the appearance of Chenglong. If you have experience with games in the early years, you should know that when hundreds of players gather in a scene at the same time, the game will basically freeze. This kind of problem can be overwhelming for a new team, but when Ingress was in Anomaly, there could be thousands of players gathered in less than 1 square kilometer, all of whom were repeatedly throwing bombs and super explosions, eating candy, plugging in, Load MOD, charge, or query the server for the current status of a Portal 2 to 3 times per second. Thousands of people are like this. If you do nothing but look at the big map, you will find dozens of Portals in your field of vision repeatedly flashing back and forth between blue and green, like silent neon signs at night - behind each neon light are dozens of people. The agents are fighting hard. After experiencing such a big battle, there is no doubt about whether the server can withstand the pressure of hundreds of dragon suitors.
Chenglong, the first generation of quasi-mythical beast, now officially translated as Lapras
It can even be said that when I saw the combat design of PMGO, I felt that it was too Softcore, this is simply It's a collection game, not a battle game.
Operation layer
PMGO has just been in operation, and there are very few activities. Perhaps the thing that impressed us the most is that it has blocked GPS positioning. Speaking of this GPS, old players probably still have the impression of how many planes were flying around when "Ingress" was first launched - almost all of the earliest players of the game were Hardcore Experts in the computer industry, that is, programmers or coders, and coders GPS Spoofing is a piece of cake. The development team has not disclosed their thoughts, but judging from the development history of the game version, I suspect that they never thought about anti-GPS cheating at the beginning. How could anyone cheat? Don’t we live in a world full of blue sky, white clouds, green trees, red flowers and fluffy bunnies?
Then they were severely educated by coders. To be honest, many people do not intend to gain a sense of achievement in the game through GPS Spoofing, but simply want to try "How far can I change this game through technical skills?" This idea is like a real hacker master. Likewise, behind it lies mankind's great ambition to understand, transform and utilize nature.
(In the early days of "Ingress", someone even developed an "offline plug-in", just like the one in "Legend 3" before: you no longer need to download the game itself, you only need to download the plug-in and then proceed. Simple setup, the plug-in will automatically help you connect to the server, virtual position and perform various set operations)
Offline plug-in interface for mobile game COC
Although the ambition is good, but "Ingress" is a game, not a scientific research project. It was not made just for you coders XJB! Niantic has made many attempts to do this, the most important one being the issue of GPS positioning. In my opinion, even today, the problem has not been completely solved: there are still airplanes in "Ingress", the cracked version of PMGO can still be played, and I am in China, but my heart is in Australia. But it's much better than early in the game.
On the other hand, at least they have accumulated experience in organizing offline activities, especially large-scale activities. MD events may attract hundreds of players, while Anomaly is thousands. When the official After Party is held, you see thousands of people sitting on the lawn. It feels like everyone came specially to watch an idol concert or an open-air music festival. With thousands of people, the supply, security and even sanitation issues involved cannot be ignored - did you know that the 2010 Beijing Great Wall Music Festival held thousands of people in the wilderness but only had 6 toilets? Do you know that the toilet door is unlocked and there is no light? When night comes, if people use the toilet to hold the door with one hand and hold the mobile phone for lighting with the other hand, they would like to lower their heads and bite the belt with their mouths? You take it for granted that operations are good, but this thing cannot stand comparison.
Generally speaking, Niantic’s online operations capabilities are average, its offline operations capabilities are above average, and it has rich experience in large-scale and super-large events. To translate, it is possible that PMGO will release a GPS plug-in to help you get rare pets. It is definitely possible; if PMGO is going to hold a large-scale event, you can look forward to it.
Market level
Before talking about the profit model, let’s talk about the market. The main reason for PMGO's rapid popularity is of course Pokemon's strong IP effect: counting from the "Pokemon" series, it has a history of 20 years. Products of the same period such as "Diablo", "Mamp; M: Heroes" or "Camp; C: RA" have already become famous, and have spawned a large number of variants. They have long occupied the web game pop-up window advertisement space in the lower right corner of Pheasant Browser, but Pokemon seems to be unknown? The reason may be a matter of machine model: the domestic console market is tepid due to some reasons. In comparison, Japan, Europe or North America are really unforgettable about this IP. But if we look at the Baidu Index, at least today PMGO is on par with Hearthstone, reaching a quarter of OW - and this is without any official promotion.
On the other hand, we must also see that the pulling effect of "Ingress" cannot be underestimated. In just a few days, a large number of new domestic players have poured into the "Ingress" server. They all asked because they couldn't play PMGO and planned to play "Ingress" for a few days to get addicted. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine any "Ingress" player who would not consider trying PMGO. At least all the "Ingress" players I have contacted said that they have tried PMGO or are interested in trying it - after all, the gameplay is the same, no Difficulty to get started. "Ingress" still does not have accurate online figures, and the official report does not even dare to mention MAU. Judging from game experience, there is approximately one "Ingress" player for every 20,000 to 100,000 people in major domestic cities. Based on this data, the total number of domestic players is estimated to be less than 10,000. The situation abroad is very complicated, but based on my personal travel experience, the player ratio in developed countries and developed cities is about 1/2000~1/10000. Overall, there should be hundreds of thousands of players worldwide, or I think the MAU of "Ingress" is in the order of six figures.
This means that PMGO has six orders of magnitude users right after its launch, and 100 are real users! This is still far from the millions of copies sold by "Diablo III" in a few days, but it is enough to be the envy of any domestic mobile game distribution platform.
Profit Model
If there were no "Ingress", PMGO would not have information on millions of Pokestops and Gyms around the world. Niantic would probably operate the game in a mess, and there would be fewer games. Hundreds of thousands of seed users. On the other hand, PMGO now has these because of its previous experience with "Ingress", but this is not enough.
What is the biggest problem with "Ingress"? If you ask this question to a player, he may say that it is an airplane, a poor confrontation setting, and an unreasonable achievement requirement - maintaining ownership of a Portal for 150 days is really unreasonable. All correct, but these are just players’ opinions. As practitioners, of course we have different perspectives.
The biggest problem with "Ingress" is that there is no reasonable profit model. Things were great at the beginning. The gameplay based on LBS was designed (at this time, Niantic still belonged to Google and was backed by powerful resources such as Google Maps). The basic framework of UGC was also determined (Portal application), and later more updates were added. Lots of UGC content (tasks). These concepts combined describe unparalleled sustainability. The game can be played for 10 or 20 years, as long as you keep opening new portals and new tasks. But how do games make money? It's obvious that they haven't thought this through.
The current in-game charging points in "Ingress" are roughly divided into three types: Key bucket, Fracker (French fries), and Beacon. The Key bucket is a one-time consumption and cannot be repeated; Fracker and Beacon are of little significance and are almost completely useless to a single player, and almost no one uses them in the game. Taken together, the store in the game doesn't sell anything at all, let alone generate income. I dare to bet John Hanke (CEO of Niantic) that even if I give him ten guts, he wouldn’t dare to announce the monthly revenue of “Ingress” – that may not even be as good as the first-time revenue of domestic mobile games.
In-app purchases in "Ingress"
It is true that the game also has real income, such as cooperation with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), SoftBank (SoftBank), and AXA (AXA) Cooperate to set up naming props in the game; for example, we cooperate with the Lawson Group to set up a Portal in every Lawson offline convenience store in Japan; for example, we cooperate with the local tourism bureau during Anomaly and Mission Day, and authorize peripheral sellers to obtain Divide and so on. But how many of these can there be? Anomaly holds dozens of events a year at both home and auxiliary venues, and just relies on authorized sales of towels, water bottles and badges to support the operation of the entire company? Maybe even the electricity bill for the server is not enough.
I have also imagined F2P in-app purchase props, such as opening Lv12 Resonator, which can only be bought/drawn by spending money? 20 Lv8 bombs combined with 1 Lv9 bomb? Design gold edges, wings and colorful animations for Agent Icon/Avator? These are all well-used routines in domestic mobile games, but none of them are suitable for "Ingress": this is a LBS PVP game, not an RPG. The purpose of the game is confrontation, not growth. But having said that, if you design a Mana slot and equipment slot for the Agent, and see the enemy Portal throw a flying hammer or use an Annihilation Sword to slash, I think this MOBA approach may not be reliable...
After much deliberation, I finally felt that there are only two options. One is T2P charging based on time, such as 15 yuan per month.
If you insist on in-app purchases, you can take the girly and cute route and add more changes. For example, you have a chance to touch the Resonator, a beauty avatar that can be reused 10 times (beauties can be painted by outsourcing studios, which are many in China). The Portal of the beauty Resonator will emit a golden light, just like the Dinghai Shenzhen Iron. You can even see several beauties with different attributes standing next to the Portal. Foreign players don’t have to be afraid. If you don’t set the Poseidon Needle Iron, you can create a blessing effect with the Virgin Mary shrouding it. Of course, you can also have Brahma, Mohammed, Supreme Laojun... Anyway, whatever you believe in (this idea is Inspired by Fracker/Beacon. Both are paid props in "Ingress": Fracker can double the Hack output for 10 minutes, which is more cost-effective when there are many people - after using it, the Portal will have a seven-color glow rising into the sky; after using Beacon, Display an Icon on the Portal for a period of time, usually to facilitate teammates to find points). After using it 10 times, you can buy a supplement pack, which costs only $0.99 and you can use it 10 more times (of course, you can also use a regular Resonator if you are poor). Similarly, XMP bombs and AXA Shield can be used in this way to create various special effects, such as dive bombing, ballistic projection, etc., and gold AK dragon pattern grenades are all old tricks. The key is to add randomness, difference, and collection. These are the roots of charging-you must be different from others, and you must spend money for this difference.
These thoughts came to me as early as the end of last year, not long after I started playing "Ingress" seriously. Now that I think about it, if you put Pokemon in Gym, that’s not the same as plugging Resonator into Portal; there are many kinds of Pokemon that can be collected and battled. If you lose, you will die and can be resurrected with medicine (the system will give you some medicine. But if you fight frequently, you will definitely have to buy medicine yourself), isn’t this what I said.
Summary
There is a saying when we play WOW that "all problems are DPS problems". Similarly, in the game market, all problems are ultimately related to the profit model. This is because your purpose of making games is to make money (if your purpose is world peace, please find a church to pray), and the way to make money is the profit model. "Ingress" is not a bad game, but it does not have a good profit model, at least it did not find a good profit model at the beginning. So the question now is, if even I can think of a profit plan, why can’t Niantic think of so many plans?
I think a more reasonable explanation is that they did notice the problem (through a period of development and operation) and thought of a solution, but they decided to embody these in PMGO. The idea of ??PMGO was first seen in a fake news on April Fool's Day in 2014, and the project was established in 2014, not long after "Ingress" was launched. Niantic realizes that they have accumulated enough technical experience, operational experience and user base through the "Ingress" project, and have also found the right direction in terms of profitability. Coupled with a strong IP at the level of Pokemon, the final product will be a " SSS grade products”.
At that time, the whole world was discussing "Will Nintendo and Google cooperate?"
Today's PMGO has almost perfectly avoided all the problems of "Ingress" - those in the past A problem that has troubled us for several years. But new players don't know this. They just use the saying "You can think about it with your butthole, it will definitely be popular!" to force the opponent into a corner. Yes, if you think about it with your butthole, you know it will definitely be popular. Why did you just make it today?
Fortunately, not everyone in the gaming industry thinks things out of their assholes, otherwise our industry would be really dangerous.