Game Design analysis

Pokémon Go: Economy

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This week, we’re going to finish our look into Pokémon Go. Today, we’ll be discussing the flow of the economy and leveling up. We will talk about how these two work and how they affect the player’s experience. If you haven’t read my last couple posts on Pokémon Go, I recommend checking them out! While they aren’t necessary to understand the concepts we will be discussing today, they will help to give a broader picture of the game and how the individual functions work. They can be found at:

Part 1 – Basic Pokémon Go

Part 2 – Pokémon Go: Gym Battles

Part 3 – Where’s that Pokémon?

Before we get started, let’s briefly review the rewards.

Stardust:

·       Uses:

o   Powering up a pokémon (increasing their CP)

·       How to obtain:

o   Catch a pokémon (100 per catch)

o   Hatch an egg (Varies based on egg level)

o   Defend a gym (500 per gym)

Pokémon Candy:

·       Uses:

o   Powering up pokémon (Increasing their CP)

o   Evolving pokémon

·       How to obtain:

o   Catch a pokémon (3 candies)

o   Convert pokémon into candy (1 candy)

o   Hatching an egg (Variable amount of candy)

With that said, let’s take a look at how stardust and pokémon candy affect the economy and the user experience.

Chart made with Lucidchart

So we know how stardust works, and here we can see how it flows. Players stay engaged by constantly looping through this cycle. The flow of stardust never quite stops so long as the player is moving around and catching pokémon. Essentially, they’ll continue to gain stardust and candy so long as they continue playing the game.

But let’s take a look at a less common currency.

Coins are used exclusively to purchase items. Now, there are two ways to obtain coins:

●      Players are rewarded 10 coins for every gym held when they redeem their reward

●      Players can purchase coins with real world money

This ability to obtain the premium currency in-game is becoming more and more prominent in mobile games. If you look at something like Disney Magic Kingdom (More on that game HERE), we see that they give away the premium currency as well, but at an incredibly low rate. When designing this kind of system, players have to believe that it is a viable alternative to purchasing premium currency in real life. For example, currently in Pokémon Go, a player can purchase 1 incense Item for 80 coins. If the player holds a gym, they gain 10 coins. Thus, if they redeem one gym reward each day, they’ll have enough for one incense eight days later. For the casual player, this isn’t so bad due to how easy it is for players to take a gym, and they’re not playing the game as frequently. For the more hardcore player, they’re going to want the items much faster.

If we examine the flowchart, we can see that the player never really escapes this loop. Because once they purchase and use the one use item, they’re back in it again constantly trying to get stronger. But due to the game’s objective (Gotta catch ‘em all!), when the player doesn’t want to wait or take the time to build up to obtain the item in game, they can purchase it right then and there. This way, the player doesn’t feel like they’re being taken advantage of, and the developer can still have in app purchases without there being a huge hullabaloo.

This balancing act is incredibly important in the mobile scene. Once players start to feel like they’re being nickeled and dimed, they’re going to think just a little bit harder before spending their real world money in-game. That could result in a few players pausing just long enough to reconsider making the purchase.

Let’s talk about powering up the pokémon and how this actually scales to increase the difficulty over time. Based on trainer’s level, a pokémon will have a max CP that they will be able to reach. When the player levels up, the max raises as well. This way the game can keep trainers from just leveling up one pokémon to super high levels and further forces the player to catch a variety of pokémon. It typically costs X stardust and 1 candy to level up a weak pokémon. But what happens when the pokémon’s strength reaches about ¾ of the max?

The price goes up. Instead of only costing one candy, it costs two. This is an interesting twist because it makes players less likely to have max level pokémon due to the increased price. Because this has an effect on all evolution levels of pokémon, it also encourages players to evolve pokémon. An additional reason to evolve them would be a higher power cap.

This Primeape is a second evolution. It evolves from a Mankey. The Golem is a third evolution, and it evolves from a Graveler, which in turn evolves from a Geodude. If we compare the two, we can see that their power levels are about an equal percent to their max. We can also see that a Golem is clearly more powerful than a Primeape. This reinforces the idea that players should focus on using third level evolutions because they will always be stronger.

Side note: This is actually one design choice I heavily disagree with. Primeape is the final evolution of Mankey, but is going to be at a disadvantage against many other pokémon because it can’t evolve as high. The game expressly discriminates against all the pokémon who don’t evolve, or evolve only to the second form. While I like the system of pokémon evolutions raising the cap, I feel as if the second level evolutions should be able to reach the same point as the third level evolutions. Or even the pokémon, like Onix, who don’t evolve (In O.G. Pokémon, I know in the expanded universe he evolves into Steelix). This could be supplemented by making them cost an additional candy to power up when they reach the ½ and ¾ power point. It honestly just feels unbalanced having it work the way it does.

Pokémon Go is an interesting experience. It’s been a pleasure to pick it apart. I really hope you enjoyed looking into this very different mobile game with me. I’ve gotten a lot of requests asking about what my personal thoughts on the game are. Honestly, the only experience I find to actually be done particularly well is the catching of pokémon. But, I mean, the whole game is based around that so I guess it turned out well. It seems like they’ve got a strong core with the other mechanics within the game feeding back into the most fun part. So even though it is an incredibly shallow experience, probably wouldn’t do well if it wasn’t pokémon themed, and is broken half the time, it’s not terrible. The designers were able to figure out the most fun part of pokémon and streamline the process for mobile. So all I can say is good job, you guys made a hell of a game. The world will be watching Niantic’s next move very closely.

I’ll see you guys next week,

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll enjoy Signposted my game design focused newsletter. You can sign up here: https://signposted.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Pokémon Go: Gym Battles!

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In the last blog post, we talked briefly about the battle system. In this post, I want to dive a little deeper into it. We’ll talk about how it works, how the designer’s messaging to the player is displayed, and the pros and cons of how this battle system works. In the interest of brevity, we’ll be discussing pokémon locations in the next post. I’m trying to shorten these just a little bit. If you haven’t read my broad overview of Pokémon GO, I recommend checking it out first. It can be found HERE. Without any further ado, let’s dive into the battle system.

Very brief review from last week’s post:

·      Player takes six pokémon into opposing teams’ gyms.

·      Player takes one pokémon into their team’s gym.

·      Pokémon strengths and weaknesses have an effect on damage received and damage output.

·      Concept of CP is similar to a pokémon’s level from the original games.

Battle:

Now we’re in the battle, our six pokémon are prepped and ready to go. The battle begins.

The player has a few different options:

·      Tap the Screen: Weak fast attack

·      Tap and hold the screen: Slow very powerful attack

·      Swipe the screen: Dodge attacks

These controls really help Pokémon Go’s battle system to be successful. Because they are built around mobile devices, using inputs that most players already understand, anyone can play and enjoy the gym battles.

To see what a battle is supposed to look like, I recommend checking out GameXplain’s video:

You'll notice that when Raticate would attack, the screen would have yellow flashes around the boarder of the screen.

This Gif image was taken from the above GameXplain video.

It also would lunge forward immediately after the flash. The yellow flash messages to the player to swipe to dodge. The Raticate lunging forward is when the actual attack hits. Although these are only on the screen for a split second, they are broadcasted for the player. This allows the player to dodge. Unfortunately, that’s it. The enemy pokémon can’t dodge the player’s attacks or even move.

Let’s take a look at the flow of how a battle is suppose to work:

Chart made with Lucidchart

As you can see, the player is constantly watching the enemy attack and responding to them to minimize the damage against the player’s pokémon. The best Pokémon Go players follow this flow and are able to take down gyms that are considerably more powerful, because they use their skill to compensate for their weaker pokémon.

Now that we’ve taken a look at how the battles are supposed to work, let’s take a look at the flow of how 99.9% of players battle in Pokémon go:

You’ll notice that players don’t swipe to dodge or use the more powerful attack.

Why don’t players dodge or use more powerful attacks?

Most gyms I’ve seen will have maybe three or four pokémon in them. So going in, I’m at an advantage because I’ve got two more pokémon than the gym. I can simply overpower them by pure numbers. The other reason is that I can attack so quickly that I can take out their pokémon typically before mine even hits half. The slow attack makes me vulnerable for a few seconds, which almost guarantees that I’ll take a hit. Why would I use an attack that does forty damage every four seconds, when I can dish out eighty plus damage in the same amount of time by simply tapping the screen as quickly as possible?

Additionally, the AI always follows the same pattern:

·      Attack with a weak/quick attack every X seconds

o   If pokémon falls under one-third health, use slow/strong attack every X seconds.

Usually I can eliminate that pokémon before they get their strong attack out. And even if I can’t, it won’t last much longer because it has no way of avoiding my attacks.

While I don’t think the designers intended to have a shallow battle system, it seems as if it is due to how players play the game. The only way I can think of to fix this is to create a cool down for player attacks. This would force the players to actually dodge the opposing pokémon and think more strategically about combat. The other way to fix it would be to either force players to only have the same number of pokémon as the gym, or make it even easier for teams to fill up their gyms with six pokémon. These tweaks would even the battlefield a little bit more and require the player to have a little bit more skill to take a gym down rather than a fast tapping finger.

For the next post, we’ll be talking about the pokémon spawn locations. I know there were some requests for me to rip on the game due to the absolute terrible server issues, which nullify the point of the designer’s messaging in place. But as that is technically not part of the game’s design and actually a bug, so I’m going to leave it alone. I hope you enjoyed this post.

I’ll see you next time,

Scott

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll enjoy Signposted my game design focused newsletter. You can sign up here: https://signposted.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Basic Pokémon GO!

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Pokémon Go has a daily player base nearly the size of twitter’s. I think it’s safe to say there has never been a mobile game quite like this. Because I want to talk about the systems in place behind the scenes, I’m going to be splitting this post into two parts. For this week, we’ll talk about the basic functions of how the game works, and we’ll touch on finding the fun. We’re taking it slower because a lot of the information online has been incorrect and I want to set the record straight before proceeding. Next week, we’ll focus on the underlying systems at play; this includes the economy and Pokémon locations being affected by geography as well.

How to Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go is a mobile game, which utilizes your GPS location on the planet earth. As a player travels around the world, they will encounter different Pokémon based on their geography, which I will be exploring in greater detail next week.

 

As players encounter Pokémon, they can catch them by selecting them in the world map then throwing poke balls.

Players throw poké balls via a flicking motion starting from the poké ball and traveling up the screen.

Upon hitting the Pokémon with the ball, the player will have a percentage chance of catching them based on a few factors, which we’ll get to a little later. If the Pokémon is caught, the light turns off and “Gotcha!” is displayed, otherwise they will burst back onto the screen and players will have another chance to catch them.

 

How can I improve my chances of catching Pokémon?

There are a few ways. First, you need to understand the circles. If you tap and hold on the poké ball, you’ll notice a ring decreasing in size on the Pokémon. This is how Niantic shows the player’s chances of catching the Pokémon.

This image was pulled from SeriousPokemon’s video on how to throw a nice, great and excellent Poke ball and can be found HERE

The greener the circle is, the better chance the player has of catching them. The redder the circle is, the harder it will be for the player to catch the Pokémon. Players can reduce the redness of the circle via feeding the Pokémon or using more powerful poké balls, like the Master or Great balls, to increase their chances of catching the Pokémon.

The other way players can improve their chances is more skill based. When the circle shrinks, it creates a smaller target. If the player hits the target when it is at it’s largest, it will say “Nice!” and their chance of catching the Pokémon will increase. At about half way to the circle’s smallest point, if the player manages get the ball inside of it, the message “Great!” will appear, and further increase their chances. If the player throws their ball and hits the target at its smallest, it will say “Excellent!” and even further raise their chance of catching the Pokémon. Needless to say, it is best to always try to get it in the circle while it is at its smallest.

Upon capturing a Pokémon, a player is given experience, Pokémon candy, and stardust. Stardust is used to raise a Pokémon’s CP (Combat points, all you need to know is higher is better). Pokémon candy is used to raise a Pokémon’s CP and evolve them. The player’s trainer experience allows the player to level up the Pokémon to higher CP. This is similar to the badges in the original Pokémon games, as you’ll be able to use and attract stronger Pokémon as the trainer’s level rises.

You mentioned attracting Pokémon, is there an easy way to do that?

Well, players can search for them wondering around the world. Another way is to use items. The two major attraction items are incense and lures. Incense will attract Pokémon to you, and only you, as you walk. Thus you’ll have a higher chance of encountering that rare Pokémon you are looking for in the area. You can see some of the Pokémon in the area via the “Nearby” screen.

The feet at the bottom tell the player about how far away a Pokémon is. The less feet there are, the closer a Pokémon is. While this typically does show all the Pokémon in the area, sometimes, while using incense or lures, other Pokémon will appear as well that don’t show up on on the nearby screen. Also, if you notice the order in which the Pokémon are appearing above, the closest one is always in the top left corner, the next furthest in the top middle, etc.

 

The other way to attract Pokémon is to attach a lure to a poké stop. A lure will attract nearby Pokémon to a poké stop for all Pokémon trainers for 30 minutes. You can tell a poké stop has a lure attached by looking for ones with confetti flying out of them.

This route is good for if you’re not going anywhere for a while and are nearby a poké stop, or if you want to help a friend out catching Pokémon nearby.

 

 

So I get how to catch and attract Pokémon but what about all these gyms I keep seeing?

First the player will need to be trainer level 5. Then they'll need to choose team Mystic. (I’m kidding, they can choose any team they like.) Once they’ve chosen a team, it’s time to either support or take over their local gym!

If the gym color matches their team color:

Then they're going to support the gym.

In this kind of gym battle, the player is allowed one Pokémon, which they will use to attempt to defeat all the current Pokémon in the gym. For every Pokémon the player is able to defeat, they will gain trainer experience and they will raise the gym’s prestige.

Notice the Gym’s prestige highlighted.

 

 

When a gym’s prestige is high enough, another slot will open in the gym designated by this button:

 

The player can then add one of their Pokémon to the gym.

Side note: Don’t worry about your Pokémon in the gym when you are battling them. If you defeat them, they will automatically heal, unlike the Pokémon you used to challenge the gym that will only heal when you use potions. Also, you should put a Pokémon into every gym you can because you’ll get bonus rewards such as stardust and coins. We’ll elaborate more on that in the rewards section.

 

 

If the gym color does not match the player's team color:

Then the player is going to try and defeat the gym and take it over.

In this case, the player gets to take six Pokémon with them. They will then battle one by one against the Pokémon in the gym.

Pro Tip: You can see the gym’s line up by looking at the Pokémon stationed there. They will appear from weakest to strongest. You can also rearrange your order by tapping on your Pokémon in the pre-fight screen. Plan against their weaknesses!

For each Pokémon in the gym that is defeated, the gym will lose prestige. The player will more than often have to defeat the Pokémon at the gym multiple times to lower the prestige to 0 and make it available to be taken over.

Pro Tip: While it is tempting to put your strongest Pokémon in the gym, it is recommended that you do not because then you won’t be able to defeat the Pokémon and increase the gym’s prestige.

When it is ready to be taken over it will be gray and look like this.

 

Okay but then what about rewards?

Well, aside from the most obvious reward of Pokémon, players receive a variety of rewards based on their actions.

  • For catching Pokémon: Players are rewarded with stardust, trainer experience and Pokémon candy. If the Pokémon has not been caught before, the player will be rewarded with additional stardust and experience.

  • Transferring a Pokémon will convert the Pokémon into candy. This can be done via selecting a Pokémon and scrolling all the way to the bottom of their stats page, then select transfer. The player will lose this Pokémon so it is advised to make sure they wish to transfer it before they do.

  • For hatching an egg, players are rewarded with a common, uncommon, or rare Pokémon based on if the egg was 2K, 5K, or 10K respectively. Eggs are hatched after being incubated while walking 2K, 5K or 10K. Eggs can be found via navigating to the Pokémon screen and swiping right. Incubators can be equipped by selecting an egg, selecting start incubation and selecting the incubator you wish to use.

  • Evolving Pokémon will net the player trainer experience as well. The player will gain additional experience if the evolved Pokémon is one that has yet to be caught.

  • Holding a gym: Once per every twenty-one hours, players can redeem rewards for holding gyms. For every gym they have a Pokémon in, they will get 500 stardust and 10 coins.

Side note: this is the only way to get coins without spending real world money. It’s important to know that you can redeem your gyms once every 21 hours. You don’t have to hold the gym for 21 hours. I recommend quickly taking over a few gyms then redeeming it because gyms don’t typically last long. This button is located in the shop. To access it select the poke ball on the front main screen then select shop.

 

Next week, we’ll get into some advanced concepts in Pokémon Go, like tracking Pokémon, evolving Pokémon and other systems.

So, why is this fun?

As I’ve mentioned before, the concept of fun is subjective. Everyone finds different actions fun in different games. From what I can see, there are two primary kinds of fun explored in Pokémon Go.

  1. Catching all 150 Pokémon

  2. The Gym Battle

Catching all 150 Pokémon

Honestly, this is a combination of simple intuitive mechanics built for mobile phones, adorable creatures, and a human desire to collect things. In mobile game design, simplicity is king. The mechanic of tapping Pokémon, and then catching them, takes very little thought to get started. Every mobile user is familiar with tapping and flicking because we use it in functionalities like surfing the net. The concept of “I flick this ball and it will fly the direction I flick” allows older individuals to enjoy it as well. It’s something they would understand in real life unlike the concept of leveling up in Dark Souls. Ultimately, I think it is that incredibly tense moment where the poké ball is shaking and the player is holding their breath waiting to see if they caught the Pokémon that is the most interesting. It’s an excellent balance of tension to keep the player catching Pokémon.

As far as the adorable creatures go, it’s the IP. Pokémon is a juggernaut, which has been around for 20+ years. A similar game would not be nearly this successful if it didn’t have them attached (See Ingress). For my particular generation, Pokémon in the real world has been a dream since we were all kids. Additionally, the mobile phone install base is HUGE! Not to mention the game is free. There is very little stopping people from trying out this game. Hell, they didn’t even have to advertise the game. It stealth released and all the news outlets picked it up. That shows the power of the Pokémon IP.

Then there is the exploration and social media photo sharing. We saw the power of photo sharing in games with Nintendo's previous app, Miitomo. This allows players to share their experiences and draw in additional players on social media. Niantic successfully leverages the outside world as their MMO Pokémon world. (More on that can be found HERE ) It’s actually quite clever because people are so shut in nowadays that using the actual world as their environment to explore just makes sense. This is the same appeal gamers get from exploring World of Warcraft or Destiny. What’s going to be around the next corner? A Lapras? A Dragonite? Nope, just another damn Pidgey.

Finally, there is the collection aspect. Going back to the original 150 Pokémon was an excellent choice because catching them all seems very doable. This is unlike the current version of Pokémon, which no longer advertises “Gotta Catch Em All” for the 3DS games. Had they included all the current Pokémon it would have been too much for players and the tug to collect them all wouldn't be as strong, due to them being overwhelmed.

So how about the gym battles?

The gym battles are part of a larger turf war across the country. Like mentioned before, when a player takes over a gym it changes to their color. Someone who lives nearby might want to hold that gym simply because it is close or a business they enjoy visiting. But Niantic has created a sort of tug-of-war between the three teams. They’ve had years to refine this style of battling across the world due to their previous game Ingress.

I would say the actual battles are fun, but outside of the actual preparation, they just involve the player tapping on the screen as quickly as possible until they win. It’s nearly impossible for a player to hold down a gym for more than a few minutes due to how simple the combat system is. Making it nearly impossible to actually obtain a decent amount of coins from them. The other issue is that there is no end to the fight. There is no winning in Pokémon GO. There is no credits rolling or goal for the player outside of catching all of them. Which, as of right now is impossible because we don’t know how to get Mew-two or the legendary birds. It just kinda goes on until we burn out. While they advertised the game to have trading and public events none of that is in the game. It doesn’t even quite qualify as a beta because it’s not feature complete. The experience as a whole feels incredibly shallow. With that said, I plan on continuing to attempt to catch them all when the servers are actually working. In my free time enjoy the simple mechanics, nostalgia, and catching the old Pokémon I grew up with.

I hope you enjoyed this week’s look into the basics of Pokémon Go. Next week, we’ll be diving deep into the advanced mechanics of the game. We’ll also be getting really technical about leveling up, Pokémon hunting, and we’ll talk about how the app brings people together.

I’ll see you guys next week,

Scott

P.S. GO TEAM MYSTIC! (Sorry, couldn’t resist)

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Disney Magic Kingdoms - Game Design Analysis

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Disney Magic Kingdoms - Game Design Analysis

I wrote this from a design perspective and hope anyone who hasn’t familiarized themselves with the app can enjoy the post. I start off outlining the mechanics and how the game functions, to familiarize the reader. From there, we get into the game’s economy balancing and how the designers promoted engagement.

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