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An Open Letter to John Hanke & Niantic by Yang Liu

Afterglow Ampharos

Afterglow Ampharos

Ampharos are the ultimate kid's bed. They have a b
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    I had to share this Open Letter to John Hanke & Niantic written by Yang Liu.

    It's so heartfelt, and it echoes feelings I'm sure many of us have about Pokémon as a phenomenon, Pokémon Go, and Niantic's recent behaviour.

    I write this not as one of the creators of Pokevision nor as player who has gone through the past few turbulent days in Pokemon Go; instead, I write this as a fan of Pokemon ever since I was 8 years old.

    My family and I moved to the U.S. in 1998, when I was in the first grade. I didn't know much back then, and even less about popular culture. When my friends introduced their Gameboys and Pokemon Red/Blue to me, I couldn't help but feel envious. I begged and begged my parents to buy me a Gameboy and Pokemon Yellow. I remember that when I finally convinced them to buy me a Gameboy for $70, they also found out that they had to buy the actual game too for $30. This was foreign to them, and I got yelled at a little. $100 was a lot back then, I believe it was almost 10% of our family's income at the time. While this may seem irrelevant, even today, this amount of money is still not insignificant to many families in the US, not to mention the rest of the world.

    So I got my game, and I played along with my friends for hundreds and hundreds of hours — trying to figure out all the puzzles in the game, like how to get to Articuno; battling our favorite Pokemon to see who's stronger, train, repeat; and just trying to "catch em all." I've spent countless hours in that video game with my friends, and it became my fondest memory of that time in my life. Pokemon is so ingrained within me, and I can't imagine myself being the only one. I'm not the only one that vividly remembers how you beat the Elite Four, then go to the dungeons above Cerulean City and find Mewtwo for the first time, right?

    Fast forward almost 20 years. I've barely touched anything Pokemon-related since then. I still have my Pokemon cards, as I'm sure many others do; but I haven't bothered to take a look at them for quite a while now. Pokemon is something I'll probably remember forever, but it's not something that's actively in my life — because it just doesn't fit. On top of work, friends, family, etc, there's just simply no time for Pokemon. It doesn't mesh with life any more as well as it used to when I was 8. You can't just bring up the topic of Pokemon and expect people to not give you an odd stare.

    Enter Pokemon Go — 2016.
    Click to expand...

    Read the rest here. It's a long one, but please read it.

    Comment your thoughts on it below. To honour how Yang kept this letter on the positive side, please strive to keep your comments positive as well.​
     
    Problem 1. Niantic doesn't have a community management team.

    Problem 2. Niantic's PR team is either nonexistent or doesn't know what PR means.

    Problem 3. If Niantic has a consultation/advisory team (which every company should), then that team likely needs to take lessons on community management. Circle back to the first two problems and now we have a looping mess.

    But then again, none of the above's an excuse for lack of transparency and communication.

    They did have that one brief Facebook note, but those are just words.

    I doubt their team is remotely big enough nor was it ready to tackle the enormous amount of activity the game brought to their table. They weren't ready to begin with and they're still scrambling to try to catch up. For that reason alone, I can't really put much blame on them. Had they been fielding a massive team across every department in business you can name and still managed to screw up, that's a different story (one that I hope isn't actually the case; and every bit of evidence points to them not having such a team or else they'll probably be in the running for the most dysfunctional company in the last century).
     
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    Niantic is one of the worst companies out there. They create an update and do things that cause extreme outrage from THEIR fans. And they go completely silent and unresponsive. If this doesn't convince them to actually care about the fans and their players, then I don't know what will.
     
    The Den said:
    Niantic is one of the worst companies out there. They create an update and do things that cause extreme outrage from THEIR fans. And they go completely silent and unresponsive. If this doesn't convince them to actually care about the fans and their players, then I don't know what will.
    Click to expand...
    ordinaryOddball said:
    Comment your thoughts on it below. To honour how Yang kept this letter on the positive side, please strive to keep your comments positive as well.
    Click to expand...
     
    Part of their biggest problem has been they are focusing on releasing to all regions before fixing what they have actually released. When they eventually get it right this game will be amazing. Right now they are lucky that there isn't a lot of competition in this type of game so they can mostly get away with the mess they've made but a lot of it boils down to they simply weren't prepared for the success of the game. They now have the money to hire people to fix these issues so it's down to waiting to how they resolve it now
     
    Yang Liu said:
    I write this not as one of the creators of Pokevision
    Click to expand...
    I don't think so, Pokevision has ads and since it was popular site, he made a lot of money with it.

    Yang Liu said:
    After 3 weeks though, we started seeing that you guys seemed to not want to talk to us (the players). Pokevision, at this time has grown to almost 50M unique users, and 11 million daily.
    Click to expand...
    See those numbers? Obvious economical incentive is obvious. That part was even highlighted on the letter.

    Of course he doesn't mention that Pokevision used Niantic unapproved API because it wouldn't fit to the story.

    Conclusion: Yang is as bad as the bot makers, don't let that sob story fool you.
     
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