The shelf life of an internet trend: Pokémon
In this day and age, the shelf life of any fun trend can last all of two weeks. One of the most important fads of the year 2016 was Pokémon Go, the augmented-reality game that sent the classic Japanese franchise into a new age, took the world by storm. But just a few weeks after the game launched, there was already a number of articles declaring the game all but dead. A report from Bloomberg News showed that Pokémon Go was already “in decline,” including charts from Axiom Management that fewer people are playing the game every day and that the people who are playing are not playing for quite as long.
Pokémon Go is a game that is perfect for groups of people to play together. The wild Pokémon available in the game is instanced for each user, meaning that each user has access to their own set of wild Pokémon in the world to catch and isn’t competing with other users. This allows people to walk with other people while playing the game.
The game had a positive network effect. Millions of people were doing what they always dreamed of doing as kids, going around catching Pokémon in the world, and millions of other people participated in the phenomenon even though they may have never played Pokémon before to either not feel left out, to get some exercise, or to help their more dedicated friends.
In terms of viral marketing, the first group of people, who had been dedicated Pokémon watchers, had a very low threshold to start playing. All it took for these people was one friend, one post on a social media site, or one article in the news to tell them about the game, and they instantly downloaded and started playing it. The second group of people, the ones who just joined the fad through information cascade, had much higher thresholds, but knowing enough people playing the game and reading enough posts or tweets on social media, they started playing too. But the main reason Pokémon Go exploded was the first group’s absurdly low thresholds.
But with all the positive network formations and the low threshold value for the game to popularize to such an extent, the question of its decline could be answered in the following ways. Some obvious answers outside of networks are the novelty wearing off, people getting bored after reaching a high enough level or reaching their original personal goal, the lack of updates, the removal of good features like tracking, and the weather outside getting colder. Not to mention, the school year has started in many places, meaning that players can no longer take advantage of long, empty summer days.These probably contributed a vast amount to the game’s decline and a vast amount of its decline in terms of networks, too.
Another important reason for the decline can also be pinpointed in terms of the threshold value.The threshold to “keep the game alive” for each player increased as the reasons stated previously happened. The first group who adopted the game perhaps got bored of it and with their low threshold, the novelty wore off really easily. And with the loss of the people who truly loved Pokémon, the information cascade would have led to the people who tagged along into the game to leave later as well.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-22/these-charts-show-that-pokemon-go-is-already-in-decline
https://www.google.ae/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-switch/wp/2016/08/31/pokemon-go-and-the-lifespan-of-fads-in-the-internet-age/