The Psychology Of Pokémon Go, 8 Keys To Understanding The Phenomenon
Pokémon Go, the Niantic and Nintendo video game for smartphones, has gained unprecedented popularity during the first days of its launch
The fever that this video game has generated has served, among other things, to cause the value of Nintendo shares to increase by more than 25% in a few days. There are even some stories already circulating about curious situations created as a result of this application, such as that of some night walkers who, after explaining to a police officer that they were playing the game instead of dealing drugs, end up convincing him and making him download Pokémon Go right there.
What could be the keys to the commercial success of the video game? All things considered, Pokémon Go is a pretty simple app: It basically allows us to use augmented reality to explore our environment in search of Pokémon that we will only see through the camera of our smartphone. It’s simple, but judging by the number of downloads of the game, it more than works.
Here I propose some psychological aspects of the Pokémon Go playable experience that could be contributing to its success.
1. There are almost no rules of the game
A good part of Pokémon Go’s appeal is that it’s barely a video game It can be understood as a veneer of augmented reality on the environments that we physically visit, inviting us to walk and explore real areas.
More than a game with very specific rules and a plot line to discover, it is an experience without too much depth that offers us light entertainment. Therefore, we should not spend time playing a game without anything else bothering us. Pokémon Go is embedded in our everyday experiences, and playing it does not require any more commitment on our part than what we are willing to give. In fact, It can be used as if it were an application to force us to stretch our legs during our free time
Pokémon Go can be played without paying anything, and this in itself helps people start playing it But, in addition, the Pokémon Go proposal is so simple that the chances of us feeling cheated once we have started playing are very low.
There will be no script twists that ruin the experience, nor will we reach the end of the game without being given the option to continue experimenting, nor will the quality of the environments and challenges drop unexpectedly a few hours after launching the application. By playing the game for half an hour we can get an idea of whether we like it or not, and Being free, the possibility of starting to play Pokémon Go is practically risk-free (beyond the accidents we may have if we do not pay attention to what is beyond the screen, while we walk around, of course).
3. The claim of the familiar
Clearly it is impossible to seek explanations for the success of Pokémon Go without highlighting the value that the Pokémon franchise has in itself Video games, peripherals and products merchandising of Pokémon they practically sell themselves, among other things because their brand is already known even by many people who have never been interested in this type of entertainment.
If we add to this the fact that the franchise’s games tend to be rated positively, it is very possible that the images and videos (promotional or not) of Pokémon Go will attract much more attention than other competing products. First, because When something is familiar to us, it attracts our attention and second, because those memories are more likely to be pleasant than negative.
4. Addiction to collectibles
The invitation to collect things (in this case, Pokémon) is an easy and effective way to extend the durability of video games They make us play them more because they place us squarely in the logic of the accumulation of elements that can be anticipated: we see other players and characters with better equipment than ours, we imagine what it would be like to have those collectibles that we sense but do not we have reached, etc. Since we know that if we continue to strive under the playable rules that we already know we will achieve all of these elements, it is very easy for the idea of continuing to invest time in increasing the chances of winning these “prizes” to be very tempting.
On the other hand, using the resource of collectibles inflates the duration of video games in a somewhat artificial way, because it is a very simple and stereotyped way of generating interest: it is enough to design new objects and attribute certain statistics and properties to them. It doesn’t cost as much as, for example, creating original environments with new challenges, or altering the plot of the video game to make the story more attractive.
So that, The added value of these collectibles is based on creating small temporary spikes of pleasure when a new item is obtained, which makes us associate that pleasure with these types of simple and predictable situations, in a similar way to what BF Skinner did when teaching his pigeons to play ping-pong. This easy resource is ideal for games free to play like Pokémon Go, since it can be implemented starting from a relatively modest initial budget.
5. Curiosity to see “the other dimension”
Pokémon Go is mechanical and predictable, yes, but it literally invites us to see a version of our own neighborhood and the areas we frequent where things are different
Furthermore, walking the streets and parks that we identify with our lives from the augmented reality of Pokémon Go during the first days of the game’s launch, we are exploring territory that possibly no one else has seen so far. From a local perspective, we feel part of a kind of global party to inaugurate the version of the planet that exists in Pokémon Go.
If there is a way to benefit even more from the fact that the video game that is being sold is consumed massively, it is creating the possibilities for this mass consumption to turn the game into a social experience on a planetary scale Pokémon Go makes this possible not only by allowing real players to interact with each other through the game, but also by giving them the opportunity to create curious situations with augmented reality, images that they can share through social networks.
The possibilities are practically endless and, being a smartphone game, the propensity to photograph and share everything that happens to us is very high. All of this also takes the form of a great viral advertising campaign for this video game, causing more people to start trying it. Which brings us to the next point.
7. An experience in company
Pokémon Go is not just a social app because it is trendy on the Internet and social networks. It is also because starting a solo game It can make us end up walking with people we just met
People go out in gangs to hunt Pokémon, they meet in parks, they meet at Pokémon Gyms, they help each other to find the rarest specimens… It is, for many adults, a return to childhood, not because the elements to collect Pokémon, but because playing with this application is similar to playing just like children who go out to the parks do.
8. Fashion
Part of the appeal of Pokémon Go these days is simply that hundreds of thousands of people have started playing it all over the planet. From nostalgic millennials who have rediscovered the Pokémon universe they played in the late 90s to children and teenagers who simply decide to consume one of the few video games free to play that have an ambitious advertising campaign behind them, everyone has reasons to be interested in a game that, on the other hand, is so simple and shallow that it excludes no one.
All these digital natives They have flocked to Pokémon Go and have begun to share images over the Internet Images that are instantly recognized as part of the Pokémon franchise and that are an advertising claim in themselves. In this way, the desire to start using the game to join this virtual party becomes the fuel for a new trend.
Extra: Possible therapeutic application
This Psycogaming article explores the possibilities that Pokémon Go could be useful to combat mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and social phobia. Without a doubt, a promising line that would give even more strength to the already revolutionary video game.
