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Pokémon Go hit the UK app store right smack in the middle of Brighton’s game developer conference Develop, and it seemed suddenly the entire indie community was flicking Pokéballs into hotel corners to try and snag some of the city’s omnipresent Voltorbs and Magnemites.
“I hope some of my friends get well-paying work making doomed clones of Pokémon Go,” tweeted indie developer George Buckenham (Beasts of Balance) in the wake of Go’s release. We thought we’d ask those from the indie studios here at Develop how they were planing to capitalise on its success and what kind of pitches they had at the ready for when augmented reality (AR) investors come knocking for their own revamps of Pokémon Go.
Despite the game’s widespread popularity, and a Gyarados and a Ponyta in the press room, some remain unconvinced that it has opened the doors for a new wave of AR games. There are those who question whether it’s simply taking a new kind of Pokémon game on to a new platform, while others hope that the social aspect of Pokémon Go’s AR might encourage more fun, silly, and joyful AR play.
Robin Hunicke, Funomena (Woorld, Luna), formerly thatgamecompany (Journey)
What would you do with Pokémon Go?
I would probably introduce some selection and choice so that not everything that you found was perfect for you. I just think it’s nice to design games where you can choose and curate and design your experience, and instead of just thinking you want to get all of them maybe you want to get the ones that are perfect for you.
What kind of augmented-reality game would you make?
I think that you could make augmented-reality games that make the world more silly and joyful, and less logical. That’s what Woorld is.
Mitu Khandaker-Kokoris, The Tiniest Shark (Redshirt)
What would you do with Pokémon Go?
Pokémon Go is the game that I wanted to make, like, 10 years ago when people were doing ARGs as a thing and you’re like, ‘You know what, only Nintendo can do this, or whoever gets the Pokémon brand,’ because the thing about it is it’s so successful because of the Pokémon brand, right? It’s not necessarily because of doing anything new or fancy with AR. I mean, it’s Pokémon. People want to catch Pokemon in the real world. It’s like the most natural game-to-real-life equivalent there is.
How would you improve it?
Just having more opportunities for social interaction within the game. There’s a lot of emergent social interactions that happen just around the game, which is really cool, but I think some way of being able to team up with your friends in the game would be pretty cool – bringing some of the real-world richness of social interactions into the game somehow.
What kind of augmented-reality game would you make?
I don’t know, that’s a weird one for me because I’m obviously interested in social simulation as a thing, basically, so I’m almost taking the real world and putting it into games. I guess I would have non-player characters just, like, projected in the real world and you don’t know who’s real and who’s not, and it would all just be this big weird mystery. Like SpyParty in real life, maybe.
Jo Haslam, Mediatonic (Hatoful Boyfriend, Heavenstrike Rivals)
What kind of augmented-reality game would you make?
If we did a kind of Hatoful Boyfriend version, rather than Pokémon it would be more of a pigeon-collecting app, because I love pigeons. I’m a Brightonian. I feel bad for pigeons in London. They get a lot of stick. But I think they’re lovely creatures, and in Brighton they get picked on by the seagulls, so I fight for pigeons. Go round and just collect lots of different lovely pigeons, and try to, I suppose, romance them a little bit. It’s a bit weird but, you know, make them happy.
Richard Franke, Magic Notion (Kitty Powers’ Matchmaker)
What kind of augmented-reality game would you make?
So, being a gay man and well-acquainted with Grindr, which is a similar kind of game to Pokémon Go, with gay men especially it’s kind of realistic to go wandering about in secluded places looking for people loitering about so you can catch ’em all, do you know what I mean? What you’re going to catch is debatable.
Because I’m, I guess, specialising in dating games, I would probably make a dating game where you could bump into people, like in a Hollywood romcom where people bump into each other at the coffee shop, and then you have a little exchange, a bit like in Matchmaker, I guess, where you have an awkward conversation and hopefully the stars will align and you’ll have something in common, or maybe you’ll drop something and do the bend and snap to impress them, that kind of thing.
I think if you’re going to have a game that encourages people to socialise in real life, maybe you could turn it into a real dating thing but in a kind ofcomical way where there wasn’t really any pressure. Make it fun and silly. A lot of people said to us, ‘Why don’t you make [Kitty Powers’ Matchmaker] into a real dating game? Because it could totally work,’ and it probably could, but then you’re kind of making it a bit too real. Love is a dangerous thing, because it can hurt people really badly, and I don’t want to do that. So you’re better off encouraging them to make friends. Maybe they’ve got little characters that they can make fall in love but they don’t feel like they’re falling in love themselves. You could totally translate that to a Pokemon-style thing, I think.
Cherie Davidson, Media Molecule (LittleBigPlanet)
What would you do with Pokémon Go?
Definitely more UGC (user-generated content), customisation, people injecting themselves more and their personality more into the game. The first step is avatars. They’re way oversimplified at the moment. It’s good, but you want to go to the gym and be like, ‘”Oh, that’s who that person is. I understand that’s that totally punkass person who keeps being top of that gym in my town,” so that when you see them you kind of make that relationship between their avatar and person, and that adds to that social aspect, which I think is really core to Pokémon Go.
This is just me, but I just like to put little accessories on pets, so being able to put accessories on your Pokémon, oh my goodness ... And then just more of the Pokémon breeding, kind of Tamagotchi aspect, because I’m a big fan of that.
Hannah Flynn, Failbetter Games (Fallen London, Sunless Sea)
What would you do with Pokémon Go?
One idea is a faux documentary that follows Team Rocket on their quest of crime. The player directs the action, and they may or may not catch them all.
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Mark, one of our techs who has wonderful ideas, came up with the festival that we’re doing now, actually, Election “We’d go about setting up the Ministry for Pokémon Equality,” he said, within Fallen London. “Where the great minds of the age could debate whether the ancient bloodsport has gone too far. Pokémon are disappearing all over the city, meanwhile, and there’s a strange new rubbery lump recipe being sold in street stalls that has a distinctly sweet and altogether new flavour.’ So that’s standard Fallen London.
I would add a really lovely luscious character creation with lots of different options, because Failbetter are really well known for having a third gender option and it’s a bummer that there isn’t one in Pokémon Go. Lots more colours, and grey hair, because there’s never enough hair colours in Nintendo character creation options.
I think I would like to see a Fallen London layer to it, so if you had the world of Pokémon Go, what would happen if the entire thing was laid over the landscape that we’ve built? There’d be a whole new range of Pokémon. We have an animal in our game called the Bifurcated Owl that can split itself in half. That would be cool.
Haley Uyrus: I think it would have to be that Pikachu would have escaped and gone to Fallen London, and you would follow his story as he discovers what the city is like, which I can only imagine would be epic because you’d have the cheerful Pikachu discovering all the nitty-gritty of London.
And he would bring electricity to Fallen London, because it’s gaslit.
(THE GUARDIAN)
