3/14/17 an hour of game-play over the course of the day, using my phone on U of O campus. The game is no longer fun to me. It feels like I am working to squeeze out enough time in-game for this post, which I suppose is an indicator that Niantic’s game has serious work to do. This also proves my prediction correct, that it wont hold my attention long, and I maintain that it wont until they introduce the traditional battle system. As it is, this game barely resembles the original Pokemon games, which is a shame, because this game has so much potential, as we saw during the “golden months”. During that time, a game as flawed as this brought hundreds of thousands of people together, crossing racial, gender, sexuality, politics and class. Everyone had something in common, and this game was the binding agent. Imagine what it could do, if Niantics goals were to serve the consumers, and produce a game that is as fun as possible, and honors the game that we fell in love with, grew up with, and sometimes got so frustrated with that we wanted to snap our brick of a Gameboy Color. Right now, the game is designed to make progressing incredibly difficult for anyone unwilling to make micro-payments, keep people from using their own imagination to progress, and force they players through hours of grinding (work) in order to get to the gym battles, which don’t reward the player enough for the work that has been put in. Niantic should study World of Warcraft and take notes on the work versus reward structure, because WoW has dominated the MMORPG stage for over a decade, and continues to do so because of its intelligent design of catering to the player’s need to have fun, and the companies need to make money off of the players.