Over the years we’ve seen a hell of a lot of trends come and go. Lots of internet-fuelled crazes have sprung up out of nowhere to huge proportions and then, just as quickly as they arose, disintegrated into nothing.
The world of gaming is no stranger to these fickle fads, with certain titles seeming to sweep across the world, engulfing everyone in their path, only to then completely disappear.
It’s almost as if they never even existed.
Sometimes this process happens so quickly that we barely get a moment to say, “hang on a minute, what the hell happened? Where did it go?”, and before we know it we’re on to the next one.
There are a million different reasons why a massively popular game can suddenly die a rapid death, ranging from issues caused by the creators, dodgy code or even by the players themselves. No matter how fantastic you think a game is, I promise you it’s not immune to the test of time.
In ten years time, will you remember which game was in the news last week?
When it was released in the summer of 2016, absolutely everyone was playing Pokémon GO. As with most things, time went on and the hype died down a little, but the thing that put the nail in the coffin of Pokémon GO’s mainstream rush was their decision to remove the Pokémon radar.
At first, players were able to find out which Pokémon were nearby in-app, and were further able to download third party apps to get more detailed data. The problem is that the tracking mechanic behind this feature’s functionality was apparently broken, and instead of fixing it, the game’s developer Niantic opted to simply remove it altogether.
Players were outraged at its removal, noting instantly how much harder it made the task of finding the creatures. Third-party apps became useless and plenty of people felt the game was just not worth playing any more if there was no reasonable way to track what was nearby.
Niantic would take months to implement a suitable replacement, and by then, it was too late.
