Niantic seems to have expertise in Mobile Gaming from ingress. Which other company has?
If your comment is based on this event, it seems unfair: Who else has successfully done an event with similar bandwidth requirements before? Also, my understanding is that the cellular network is the problem, but you might correct me if I'm wrong.
Besides, Blizzard had spectacular problems in the past with WOW launch events, simply because no one had ever done something of that /scale/ before.
It sounds like they planned an event for 20k people without telling mobile networks they are doing it. For festivals mobile networks usually deploy extra capacity to handle larger than usual number of people. It sounds like this could be handled by large number of local WiFi spots as well.
Deployment of cell sites at events like stadiums for sporting events and outdoor music festivals is pretty common for years and years. Unless you're a hermit you almost have certainly seen a COW at one point or another. Cf Wikipedia mobile cell sites, especially COW.
I've seen them around alright, just not realized how common or easy-to-set-up they might be for an event like this, or how they work from an inter-provider standpoint. Do they not cost a whole ton for the organization setting up the event, and wouldn't every provider (T-Mobile, AT&T, etc.) be required to set one up? It seems like such a massive headache and cost for something like a Pokemon-catching crowd that might not even generate much revenue(?) that I'm confused how everyone is saying "just deploy extra capacity". Like do providers just follow crowded events for free and put antennas wherever people are as if it's no big deal?
20k is actually not that many people as far as these things go. Over 50k in that confined stadium area and you really start hitting some hard limits with current cell tech. 20k should have been no problem with careful planning.
>20k is actually not that many people as far as these things go
20k people in close proximity uploading and downloading constantly without breaks? What specific event is that comparable to? Music festivals don't have all attendees constantly using their data network.
The point is, there are many places in the world that draw large crowds into a tiny area on a weekly basis, and the cell networks will fall over and die without special measures.
Did they do anything at all to anticipate that load? It seems not. "We tried and failed" is understandable, but simply inviting 20k people and expecting them to play a mobile game is monumentally foolish.
The integration of ltheir location api with AR was reasonably well done at the time. I agree though, Niantic has no business making games. I try to imagine a world in which they license their AR SDK
You think the AR was well done? Serious question, not trying to flame or anything, but I disagree. For me, the AR is pretty much just overlaying a Pokemon graphic on top of camera footage, there's very little interaction to the camera input.
In fact, after playing for a bit, I turned off the AR because of loading times.
You're talking more about the graphics than the actual AR experience. It was tied to the real world as mentioned in the sibling comment. I imagine they accumulated a lot of data from Ingress. More often than not, the gyms and pokemon hotspots were located at some point of interest and/or place that had heavy foot traffic, increasing the probability that you'd run into other players.
It was a global sensation for a reason and despite it's extensive flaws, it was one of the funnest gaming experiences I've ever had. Not because of what happened in the game, which admittedly was beyond terrible at every level from core gameplay to polish and UI (I've seen and worked on better better at 24 hr gamejams. I have no idea why Nintendo didn't step in and take over development after the craze happened) The gyms closest to me were located in a popular shopping mall that had no shortage of players. It led to a few new meatspace friends for me.
There was something meta-magical about seeing someone walking down the street glued to their phone while you're doing the same, both of you realizing that you're trying to catch some rare pokemon. Often enough, it led to some friendly social encounter, providing just a glimpse of what AR gaming could be.
It also inspired the dev community to make all sorts of apps and mods that addressed many of the games shortcomings.I left after Niantic dismissed the dev community because the game could've been so much more with the power of the crowd. Instead, Niantic preferred to keep the game shitty so that they could extract profits from the parents of 8 year olds.
I was doubly disappointed when it was revealed that the Switch, a mobile game console, would have no GPS chip. Nintendo could have pioneered AR gameplay like they did with 3D gaming. Maybe that's expecting too much from a company that doesn't even get online gameplay.
It only lasted two weeks, but that's the standard shelf life of most games that aren't endless grindfests.
Shameless plug: have you heard about Terra Mango at all (it's in case beta)? I'm a dev on the game and we're trying to figure out how to connect with more people with exactly your sentiment about PoGO and Niantic.
