In case you missed the news, Pokemon GO’s Niantic has finally confirmed that it is indeed offloading its games to Scopely. Oddly enough, it was almost two years ago when I noted that Peridot, Niantic’s own monster collecting game, was probably cause for alarm, so this isn’t a total surprise for some of us. That being said, I’ve seen many players from both company’s libraries scream “fire” (the negative connotation, kids) about what the future holds, but I’ve also seen some critiques about reasonable potential.
So for today’s Massively on the Go, we’re going to talk some of the chatter we’re seeing about the future of POGO and its siblings – and about the games’ potential under what POGO boss Ed Wu calls “a broader organization dedicated to games.”
Panicking POGO players
First, take a deep breath, POGO players. I want to start things off with a kind of TLDR aimed specifically at y’all. Like many of yours, my various communities and RL circles were shocked just by the rumor of the buyout, but some people seem to be in full panic mode now that it’s real. I’m admittedly only vaguely aware of Scopely’s history, having played none of its games but watched its financials when comparing POGO’s cash flow. It’s worth pointing out that Scopley did acquire Stumble Guys, a game heavily influenced by Fall Guys, and made a game that in neutral subreddits was seen as arguably better than the original. It’s not all doom and gloom, and while the move hasn’t occurred yet, we’re already seeing evidence of improvement.
I also know that passionate players are often the loudest. I’m a big Pokemon and Nintendo fan, and both get a lot of deserved flak, but having seen some of those sausage factories, I’m still a fan, so I know what criticisms do and don’t ring true for me. That goes both ways: I’m no Niantic fan, but I also know things could be a lot worse in some ways. Without getting into the weeds yet, I do think there are reasons to be positive.
I mean no offense, but if Pokemon GO is your only experience with location-based games, you may not have a good frame of reference for these games. You love the game but maybe haven’t been able to distance yourself from it enough to see how it operates compared to traditional MMOs. Case in point, you might wonder how a company could turn POGO into a pay-to-win game when raiding is co-op and the value of IVs is debatable. Just because Kyurem White is now the best Ice ‘mon to use doesn’t make your Mammoswine army any weaker, just farther from the top, and that’s fine because this game is purposefully made to be easy on the PvE side.
Unless all our pokemon are deleted, difficulties are increased, boss/Rocket scaling is taken out, and/or more premium-only levels or content are added and emphasized, there’s nothing to worry about on this front. You will most likely still be able to clear content as long as you actively level your ‘mon. The restrictions some people suggest (such as daily stardust caps) aren’t a thing in any location-based MMO I can think of, and for good reason: You need to give players a reason to go out and stay out. When players go home, where they generally can’t do a lot, there’s no temptation to stay logged in.
But maybe you’re worried about the collection side of things. If you’re worried that access to new pokemon is the pay-to-win problem, good news! Niantic’s already been doing that for about a year now, and the worst that it does (again, barring PvP) is exclude people from entering contests, which cap at three anyway.
And since most pokemon just aren’t useful, again, it’s hard to argue pay-to-win. Between free incubators and rare-candy piling up due to few-and-far-between releases of new pokemon, collectors only really need to get one of a new pokemon when it comes out. Everything but the occasional hat ‘mon eventually comes out again and often becomes more available (including regionals), which gives you a reason to keep playing.
For those going through Scopley’s other titles and looking into all the ways the company is accused of running those titles into the ground, stop. Breathe. Remember, those are more online games. Scopley can increase difficulty and gate content based on premium items/characters/currencies because it has a large enough pool of players to do so. Location based games like POGO don’t have that luxury.
There are ways around it, but that’s the good news: Before Scopley can do anything that gates content for a lot of players, it will need to increase the player pool as Niantic mostly cares about city folks and has neglected everyone else. Scopely is spending a lot of money on this buyout, so it can’t immediately start trying to milk players without risking a major loss, and unlike, say, a Marvel title, Pokemon is a core gaming series. It has other media, yes, but gaming is the core. From a crass corporate perspective, smart money says you abuse other IPs so you can buy the rights to handle things like pokemon.
So how do you set up your newly acquired pokemon game to milk the playerbase? The easiest way to do that would be accessibility, and in the case of location-based games, that means more remote raiding. I’m sure Scopely CEOs looked at the COVID years and immediately thought Niantic leads were fools to give up that kind of money – just as we did. Simply turn off the remote raid pass limits, maybe allow it in other parts of the game, such as GMax raids, and watch the money flow in without having to pay a lot to programmers or artists. It would really be that easy.
Yes, things may get worse for all of us later. That’s true of anything. But I’m someone who’s worst location-based game experiences in monetization involved watching stupid ads to double my rewards or going through a checklist of sites/apps to try to generate “free” premium currencies I could also just pay for, so trust me when I say that the effort involved to ruin Pokemon GO will take Scopely a lot of time and money. And it basically has to improve the game in order to get it into that milkable position.
Into the tallgrass
Hopefully the above was easy enough to understand for non-players too, but if not, don’t worry. We’re going to wade into the tallgrass weeds a bit, not only for the POGO players but for other Niantic game players whose titles are moving.
First, let’s start with Scopley’s reputation. Again, I don’t play any of the studio’s existing games, but the first time we mentioned it, a lot of you expressed dissatisfaction with its business model, and I don’t discredit a single one of you. The only reason I’m not in full panic mode about Scopely running Pokemon GO into the ground is that we just don’t see a lot of those traditional monetization practices in location-based games. In several other titles I’ve reviewed, the problem is usually obnoxious ads with some pay-to-win gamble mechanics affecting PvP. Pay-to-win is just about everywhere, but for those of us who do just POGO raids, it’s not a big deal since we’re helping each other out anyway.
No, ads slowing down our walk or breaking immersion are the real threats to the game in my opinion. And as bad as those are, I just can’t imagine Scopley being so aggressive with in-game ads that it kills the game. If other titles had the pull of Pokemon, I’d probably have stuck with them longer, especially with real-world communities and events, which, again, Scopely seems to want to keep. In fact, it’s one of the reasons I’ve admitted I still play the game. Other location-based games have arguably better design features than POGO, even now, but they’re restricted by their IP’s popularity.
I’d argue POGO players might be willing to deal with some ads more than other titles just because we have bigger communities to help us ignore said ads. However, too many ads could scare off players and make it harder for Scopley to make its money back. Again, this is Pokemon, not EverQuest. It’s far more valuable in its current form than in some future form, and Niantic admittedly has niche talent that isn’t easy to move to other projects, especially because it’s the top dog in said niche. That means Scopely didn’t buy POGO and the other titles to strip them down to parts and sell them. It needs the whole parts to work as is, if not better.
One thing to really focus on is that nowhere in Scopley’s blog about the move is augmented reality mentioned. There’s nothing about location-based games, geo-caching, geolocation games, none of that. It’s just a game. Good or bad, that seems like Scopley’s focus for now.
That being said, Scopley did go on to mention live events, in detail, noting factoids like “[m]ore people attended the global ‘Pokémon GO Fest’ last year than Coachella, Lollapalooza, Glastonbury, Electric Daisy Carnival, and Tomorrowland – combined,” so to me, that says the live events are safe, though I still can’t recommend them.
I do think this also highlights that Scopley may not be interested in Niantic’s data-gathering and augmented reality priorities that often saw new “features” players simply didn’t make use of. That probably means Scopley will continue using Niantic’s own data but contribute little to it, so maybe stock up on those “free” poffins you’re getting from scan quests.
Given Scopley’s love of profits, I also wonder whether the problematic gym system that leads to stalking could finally see some changes. Niantic itself has been backing away from such systems, such as the latest with the Power Spots for Max Battles. The legal team and PR probably both want to avoid hearing or seeing more POGO-related deaths and injuries hit the news, even though these have slowed down in the past years (as the game’s financials decline). I doubt this would happen overnight, but it could be on Scopley’s to-do list to help reduce customer service.
We should also note that Niantic and games aren’t exactly getting a divorce. Both Peridot and Ingress are staying with “Niantic Spatial” so it has some way of harvesting data still. This is partially why I wonder whether Scopley may be focusing less on gathering data and AR stuff. That’s Niantic turf. Keeping Peridot and Ingress also gives Niantic the potential to regrow in case players are upset with the Scopley changes and suddenly miss Papa Niantic (though, as a reminder, the company is named after a whaling ship that was abandoned for the gold rush, and with AI being the new gold rush, the gaming company’s name feels just a bit too on the nose right now).
It’s also important to consider genre. A lot of the people complaining the loudest about Scopley are coming from genres that are completely online. POGO and location-based games are more limited to local content for the most part. That means gating content to purchase-required-only for participation means hard-locking rural players out unless it’s soloable content. At the least, it would mean Scopely would need to allow for more remote raiding, which I think a lot of POGO fans would be fine with (though maybe not community “leaders” trying to hoard their members and influence). Again, I expect to see games improve before Scopley can really start the financial squeeze.
While any game can be pay-to-win, this is basically only for the PvP side of POGO. Raids are co-op, and their difficulty is usually pretty low. Again, the real-world availability of players in specific spots means the game devs have to balance global populations vs. content difficulty. Keeping the game’s difficulty low and accessible is in Scopely’s best interests, and feeding into PvP gives room for whales to spend. I don’t see Scopely messing with this too much since it’s a games company, and this is the bare basics of game design.
There’s also the fact that Pokemon as an IP is the holy grail. Same goes for Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now. No cool tech was bought or AAA game devs; this was about high-end IPs with built-in gaming audiences.
You can screw up Marvel or Looney Toons because those exist outside of games. Pokemon is about games. You don’t acquire a pokemon game and then try to break the game up into sellable pieces like you might other games/IPs. If Scopely is also inheriting the other games Niantic was supposed to make for Nintendo, screwing up Pokemon also means poisoning a future with those other titles. Remember, Scoplely’s current “P2W” aggression revolves around non-game IPs. I doubt The Pokemon Company or Nintendo would allow these sales if it thought they would have a more negative impact than Niantic was having on POGO.
Of course, I could be wrong, but seeing as even the monetization aggressive Mario Kart Tour was killed off after four years after it attempted to reel in those issues with free updates (like true multiplayer), I can’t see Nintendo being big on allowing that sort of thing to happen again. Same with Pokemon, as we saw a scary P2W mechanic get majorly walked back between the release of Pokemon Unite on mobile to its Switch port. Yes, there may be bumps to endure, but we ultimately saw improvements.
With that in mind, let me be hesitantly optimistic, at least about the immediate future. We know that Niantic does indeed have competent devs, and not just in Pokemon GO. But the people at the top were clearly ignoring their smarter subordinates. By moving with the games to a more games-centric company – especially at the start when the CEOs may be in a more “wait and see” mode – the devs should have more room to implement quick fixes and features that are game-centric. Even if the CEOs wanted to implement some early changes, the numbers show that things were better when Niantic allowed unlimited remote raiding. It’s a quick and dirty way to make a buck and it’s one the playerbase largely supports.
Without Niantic, I expect the former library to be more game-like. I’m already considering giving Monster Hunter Now a try and am more cautiously optimistic that Scopley could handle a Nintendo title that occurs in a modern setting in order to use its more traditional advertising and monetization plans in a setting that won’t break immersion. Things can certainly get worse, no doubt, but I do think the immediate future looks brighter as we leave the whaling ship behind.
Massively OP’s Andrew Ross is an admitted Pokemon geek and expert ARG-watcher. Nobody knows Niantic and Nintendo like he does! His Massively on the Go column covers Pokemon Go as well as other mobile MMOs and augmented reality titles!
