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	<title type="text">Dan Porter | Vox</title>
	<subtitle type="text">Our world has too much noise and too little context. Vox helps you understand what matters.</subtitle>

	<updated>2016-07-13T20:05:46+00:00</updated>

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				<name>Dan Porter</name>
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			<title type="html"><![CDATA[Will Pokémon Go last?]]></title>
			<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/13/12176474/pokemon-go-bandwagon-fad-games-draw-something-candy-crush" />
			<id>https://www.vox.com/2016/7/13/12176474/pokemon-go-bandwagon-fad-games-draw-something-candy-crush</id>
			<updated>2016-07-13T16:05:46-04:00</updated>
			<published>2016-07-13T16:00:03-04:00</published>
			<category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Augmented Reality" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Innovation" /><category scheme="https://www.vox.com" term="Technology" />
							<summary type="html"><![CDATA[A version of this essay was originally published on LinkedIn. The texts and tweets started rolling in a few days ago. Folks like @RichBTIG asked me: Is Pok&#233;mon Go the next Draw Something? Or the next Candy Crush? If Pok&#233;mon goes up, must it and will it come down? Is Pok&#233;mon Go just another fad, [&#8230;]]]></summary>
			
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<p><em>A version of this essay was originally published on </em><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/pokemon-go-last-dan-porter?trk=prof-post"><em>LinkedIn</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<p>The texts and tweets started rolling in a few days ago. Folks like <a href="https://twitter.com/RichBTIG">@RichBTIG</a> asked me: Is <a href="http://www.recode.net/2016/7/9/12132748/what-is-pokemon-go-game">Pok&eacute;mon Go</a> the next Draw Something? Or the next Candy Crush?</p>
<p><q class="right">If Pok&eacute;mon goes up, must it and will it come down? Is Pok&eacute;mon Go just another fad, or is this a genre-changing game that&#8217;s here to stay?</q></p>
<p>Four years ago, <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/draw-something-free/id488628250?mt=8">Draw Something</a> &mdash; a game made by myself and the team at OMGpop &mdash; burst out of the gate with 50 million downloads in 50 days. Pok&eacute;mon Go has already seen 7.5 million downloads, and with all the press and social media exposure, it will surely continue its explosive run. Despite <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/07/update-pokemon-go-app-now-fix-privacy-mess/">privacy concerns</a>, the game has terrific game design, which has been <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/11/the-brilliant-mechanics-of-pokemon-go/">well documented by others</a>.</p>

<p>My task is to answer these questions: If Pok&eacute;mon goes up, must it and will it come down? Is Pok&eacute;mon Go just another fad, or is this a genre-changing game that&#8217;s here to stay?</p>

<p>In its favor are the following attributes:</p>

<p><strong>It&#8217;s a game built on 20 years of legacy </strong>with deep cultural resonance among millions of players. The game barely even has a tutorial, because who doesn&#8217;t know how to catch Pok&eacute;mon? To build a brand like a Candy Crush or a Clash of Clans from scratch is extremely hard. In its favor is the fact that a 28-year-old playing Pok&eacute;mon Go on his $500 iPhone gets to feel like a kid again. Few other games can do that.</p>

<p><strong>It&#8217;s uniquely social.</strong> Friends tell each other that their office is a great place to catch Pok&eacute;mon, and my son and I met folks hiking in the Catskills who were also catching Pok&eacute;mon. It&#8217;s cool to be playing Pok&eacute;mon Go right now, and sharing Snapchat stories about others who are, as well.</p>

<p><strong>It has leveled game play</strong>, which can keep players engaged in short-term goals and achievements.</p>

<p>Pok&eacute;mon Go also has the attributes to support a big bang and then a slow fizzle:</p>

<p><strong>The game is IRL social</strong>, but that&#8217;s not sustainable like true social. In a game like Draw Something or Words With Friends, the other player provides the content. It&#8217;s an endless stream of content that takes the pressure off the game developer and enhances already existing social connections, mostly in private. That&#8217;s what a good messaging app does, and what Pok&eacute;mon Go does not do.</p>

<p><strong>Game dynamics like Match-3 (Candy Crush and Bejeweled) and Tetris tend to work on our brains in a different way.</strong> Anyone who has ever dreamed about matching falling blocks can understand that matching and tidying up are <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121022-the-psychology-of-tetris">psychological twists</a> that cause both pleasure and repeated game play. Pok&eacute;mon Go is exhilarating, but lacks this human compulsion (although it does have collecting, another core compulsion).</p>

<p><strong>I believe that while there are many people able to create a game, there are very few who are excellent at leveling in games </strong>&mdash; at creating that moment right before you say you will never play again, the game understands, and then you advance. For the casual Pok&eacute;mon Go player, the joy of early play, I believe, will eventually be replaced by gyms that are too competitive and Pok&eacute;mon that are too hard to find. At the moment you want to quit, you probably will, because the game will become too difficult and the purview of only the truly dedicated.</p>
<p><q class="left">Pok&eacute;mon Go will most certainly be the game of the summer, but I believe that its numbers will fall back to earth, as it lacks certain attributes that will retain millions of players a year from now.</q></p>
<p>So while I believe that Pokemon Go will have a great run, and will most certainly be the game of the summer, I do believe that its numbers will fall back to earth, as it lacks certain attributes that will retain millions of players a year from now. That being said, I believe that its run will be longer than expected and, most of all, that its eventual leveling and dip are not a cause for concern.</p>

<p>At its height, Draw Something had 24 million daily active players. While the numbers decreased from that height, the remaining number of players was still so astronomical that it created a great deal of value. My rough and conservative estimate is that Pok&eacute;mon Go is generating around $.20 per DAU.</p>

<p>So, yes, we are all jumping on that Pok&eacute;mon Go bandwagon now. And many of us will fall off. Yet while the press narrative will document the casual players who fall off, and there will be millions, with a base of hardcore, nostalgia-oriented players remaining, the game will be just fine. Fine to the tune of around $75 million in annual revenue for every one million players in the game. And if they can maintain around seven million DAU, from what will surely be a much larger short-term number, they can come close to doubling their revenues.</p>

<p>You don&#8217;t always have to catch them all.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danporter"><em>Dan Porter</em></a><em> is head of digital at </em><a href="http://img.com/home.aspx"><em>WME IMG</em></a><em> and also CEO of the sports app </em><a href="https://itsovertime.com"><em>Overtime</em></a><em>. Reach him </em><a href="https://twitter.com/tfadp?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor"><em>@tfadp</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator" /><p><iframe frameborder="0" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gEb4UFIuXLM" height="315" width="560"></iframe></p>
<p><small><em>This article originally appeared on Recode.net.</em></small></p>
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