Pokemon GO has been an enormous success- not just in terms of making the Pokemon brand hugely successful again (though it has done that), but also by itself. It is the most successful mobile game of all time, and though its player base has understandably tapered off from its historic and frankly unsustainable high, it is still played by a massive amount of people every day.
How does Niantic hope to keep those players around, and potentially add more players into the mix? In an interview with MCV UK, Niantic CMO Mike Quigley said one strategy the company hopes to apply is to have special events, like the recent Halloween one, which saw active users rise by 13.2 per cent.
“We’ll have more details on those in the weeks ahead, but that was a core part of our strategy for Ingress,” Quigley said. “We have core attributes of Niantic as a company – the first being around exploration and discovery, the second being around health and fitness and getting people active, and the third is real world social. Social networks have had a major impact on our lives, we know a lot of things happen digitally among fans and family that live miles away. It sounds really basic, maybe a little old school to some, especially younger demographics, but getting people together and having a positive shared experience is one of the attributes that Niantic really believes in. We think real world events are going to be part of that strategy, but nothing to share yet. We have been excited about things that have been happening organically without us putting a hand on it.
“One of our favourite examples is in San Franciso there was a community-led Poké Walk that attracted 9,500 over the course of three days through a Facebook invite. Those are the kinds of things we want to enable through our events strategy.”
The social and community appeal of Pokemon GO is massive, and undoubtedly, by leveraging that, Niantic can ensure that the game sticks around for a long time to come. Pokemon GO is available now on iOS and Android smartphones.