Posted in: Games, Mobile Games, Niantic, Pokémon GO | Tagged: HearUsNiantic, Niantic, Niantic Labs, pokemon, pokemon go

Niantic Posts Full Pokémon GO Taskforce Follow-Up Part One

September 1st has arrived, and so has Niantic's full report on their Pokémon GO taskforce. This taskforce was created as a means of addressing the #HearUsNiantic movement on social media and the Pokémon GO boycott that came as a result of Niantic pulling back the pandemic bonus of  increased Poké Stop distance. Let's get into the details.

On the official Pokémon GO blog, Niantic posted:

What We Heard from the Community

PokéStops and Gyms are one way we try to nudge Trainers to get outside and discover new places, walk an extra kilometer or two, and meet others. It's been inspiring to see so many players around the world come together as a result of this design. To me, it means Pokémon GO is important to many people, and it means Trainers expressed their concerns because they care about the game.

It was certainly an interesting time. While I thought there was a compelling reason to keep the Poké Stop distance for disabled trainers, I can't help but find myself a bit unnerved at how the game's community acted toward one another. Content creators who didn't agree to boycott, even those who mostly agreed with the goals of #HearUsNiantic such as the popular Mystic7, received harassment. At the very start of the boycott, just a few days in, many of the loudest voices painted Niantic as a sinister company that only wants to use the community to mine AR data and take their money. Some pushed the idea that Niantic doesn't care about Pokémon GO. This seems to be very obviously not true, and it's a bit hard for me to separate the good of that movement from the harassment.

In any case, Niantic continues:

We've been listening to player feedback and also set up four roundtable conversations where I spoke with over 30 community leaders from around the world (thank you all for your participation!). The two main themes we heard were:

● The 80 meter interaction radius for PokéStops and Gyms has been an incredibly positive quality of life improvement over the past year and a half.

That's definitely true. Niantic posted that they would keep this ahead of their scheduled date on September 1st. Thankfully, this move was met with widespread acceptance. Personally, I look forward to seeing conversations on social media about Pokémon GO not being dominated by this topic as much as I do the extra spin distance.

● Niantic has a lot of room to grow when it comes to communication with our players.

This is absolutely true. The biggest issue I've had with Niantic is their lack of communication and follow-up with the community. It's not the big issues like this that they struggle with most here, as their response here came swiftly and decisively when you take into account that this is a company who is in contract with Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, two of the biggest franchises in the world. Niantic struggles more on addressing questions of the community (Was Top Hat Kirlia not being Shiny-capable during Fashion Week 2020 a mistake?) and the platforms used to communicate. For example, it was once said back in 2020 by a Niantic employee that Poké Stop distance would remain increased. Then, this was announced to be a mistake not on any official Pokémon GO platform but on Reddit. Often, important news and updates come out via Twitter without an in-app pop-up. This has been a persistent issue.

PokéStop and Gym Interaction Distance

We understand that the increased 80 meter interaction distance became a welcome benefit for many players — that is clear from the feedback we saw from the community. So we want to keep it: as announced last week, 80 meters (not 40 meters) will be the base interaction radius for PokéStops and Gyms globally from now on.

Very good!

We still believe in the importance of discovering interesting places and things in the real world, and we don't want to lose sight of that. The team and I are eager to develop new ways that motivate and reward Trainers for exploring and exercising in the real world. As a result of the taskforce, we have new ideas to explore and we look forward to sharing more in the coming months.

This is exactly what I was hoping we'd originally see. When it was announced that the pandemic bonuses were ending, I wrote here on Bleeding Cool that Niantic would be better off enriching Pokémon GO with new reasons for trainers to get out walking rather than removing the bonuses that trainers now accept as an everyday aspect of the game.

Stay tuned for Part Two of Bleeding Cool's reaction to Niantic's taskforce update.

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