Since its release on 6 July, the pocket monsters managed to grab attention of each and every possible publication across the globe. Right from the day of its release, it managed to create a hype which made me wonder what’s the fuss all about as Pokemon Go is yet to officially set its foot in India. Eventually after doing some research (which was not really hard, given it was everywhere), I found out that Niantic was (is) probably just running the initial trial in some countries, given the maturity of the audience’s acceptance for a newly launched game. But this did not stop the Pokemon enthusiasts from downloading the game through the APK file from other regions.
While I joined the bandwagon to catch Pokemons in order to faintly experience one of the most fantastic and alluring universes of my childhood, the global milieu was getting bombarded by news related to Pokemon Go. Some showed their support, some raised questions and some rested their case with speculations of ‘what could be’.
Albiet, it was needless to say, Pokemon Go has definitely created an identity already, or is it just the initial post-release hype? That would indeed be a tough question to answer as the game has not even launched officially here, at least. While thoughts regarding the game pondered my mind, I reached out to the Indian gaming industry personnels to get some perspective of what they feel about the game.
“I think the game will continue creating news because of the Pokemon fan following. Every game serves a different purpose, so Pokemon Go has its own purpose and its own place. Currently, I am playing other games as well but my motive to play this game is not to sit in a place, it’s more like collecting them from places around me. The target audience here is not the ones who play Teen Patti, but the ones who are into pop culture and I am assuming that all of them have a smart phone with a 3G connection. So it might not be a long term activity, it’s more like I am going out to a shop so I might as well play Pokemon Go,” said Lucid Labs, creator, Chirag Chopra.
However, Dropout Games, co-founder, Ankush Madad seems to have another story to tell. “I have been playing the game for about four days and boy-oh-boy! The game feels awesome. I have gone out at three in the night, walked two to three kilometers, just to try and catch those rare Pokemons, increase the number of Pokemons in my list and to hatch the egg.”
“Pokemon user base has been around for long and has an active user base, and this is something people wanted for so many years. When I watched Pokemon on television almost a decade ago, first thing that popped into my mind was that even I want to do something like this and be in this world. And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Will it attract everyone? I don’t think so. It might manage to attract some people who are not familiar with the universe. As far as others are concerned, it won’t really matter as Pokemon already has a strong user base who have been playing Pokemon based games from Nintendo since a long time.”
When asked about how the game will fair in India, Madad asserted his views saying, “I tried catching some Pokemons at night but the ones that I caught didn’t get registered due either connectivity or server issues. In India, it will only work in Metro cities where 3G connectivity is proper.”
Indeed the game might face some issues running in India given frequent connectivity issues, thus it might just be more popular in more developed areas, and the same was expressed by 99Games, AVP Operations, Anila Andrade.
But as we talk more and more about Pokemon Go, a topic that draws our attention is the comparison of VR with AR. With all the hype of VR technology bringing in a revolution, does Pokemon Go’s success go on to prove that Augmented Reality (AR) is the future and not Virtual Reality (VR)?
A good VR device comes at a pretty steep price right now whereas for AR games, you just need a smartphone, making it more feasible for a user. To get a clearer perspective, we spoke to Smartvizx, head of virtual reality, Chandan Singh.
“It depends as both have their own pros and cons. VR has a very specific user base, it is not something that you will use in the day to day life, thus AR will have a better penetration.”
So, the audience that’s already niche for both the genres is different and they serve other purposes, but can a VR game create the same excitement that Pokemon Go has done with AR?
“It’s hard to sell something this huge unless you have an IP like Pokemon and people have been looking for a Pokemon game on mobile for years,” said Singh.
We also spoke to Dhruva Interactive, CEO, Rajesh Rao on his views about the game’s scope in India.
“Firstly, the game has not been launched in India, so we don’t know what Nintendo’s plans are for launching it over here. I would guess that they would launch these games in a phased manner in mature markets and will be careful about providing a good, clean user experience and also think about the ROI (return on investment) after investing in all the technology.
India is already exposed to Pokemon in the form of TV series and trading cards fame. So, if you bring a Pokemon game, they will definitely play it. But then again, it’s a game that requires a lot of infrastructure, so they might take an extremely phased approach for the launch.”
Speaking on the competition between VR and AR, Rao stated, “I think both have their own USPs, but it’s like watching a movie on a big screen and watching a movie at home, so there is a value to both those experiences. Like AR can be accessed with just a smartphone with a camera but it cannot provide the immersive experience that VR does.”
Finally, we can conclude one thing. VR and AR, both have their own exclusive perks and shine in different areas of interests.
While taking over the world by storm, Pokemon Go must have inspired a lot of developers to follow suit and create a game embellished with AR technology, can we expect games with AR technology from Indian indie studios?
“Yes, maybe in the future,” says Anila Andrade, as does Rao, saying that it will definitely be an inspiration for a lot of indie Indian studios to plug in AR into their games.
Madad has some other views on this subject, as he says, “I don’t think so. Indian developers have not caught up on much of VR and this is something far superior in terms of technical feat. In terms of development, I don’t think people will take this up as people are still fixated on getting money out of games of inferior quality and the ones who actually want to try don’t have the resources.”
While it would be very hard to predict how the indigenous studios will react and follow the recent trend, Pokemon Go has definitely created a buzz even in the Indian industry with no one mincing their praises for it and they believe that given the popular IP Pokemon is, the game will continue getting a strong following. We will have to wait for the formal launch of the game in India and see the results for ourselves.