Final week, Monopoly Go proprietor Scopely acquired of a bunch of video games headlined by Pokemon Go from Niantic, thereby creating some form of Saudi-backed terrifying Go-liath alliance. Naturally, there have been numerous issues that left gamers of the Pokemon sport that was as soon as completely unavoidable with some considerations, which one among its execs has aimed to nip within the bud with a current interview.
Along with some justified discomfort about Niantic having bought as much as a writer owned by Saudia Arabia’s controversial Savvy Video games Group within the $3.5 billion deal, people have been fearful it may be the harbinger of modifications that’d deliver a few of the questionable promoting and monetisation practices Scopely’s different video games are identified for to Pokemon Go.
Pokemon Go’s senior vice chairman Ed Wu tried to extingish any fears in Ninantic’s announcement of the deal, and extra of the identical has come from the sport’s senior product director Michael Steranka in a recent chat with Polygon.
Requested if there are any plans for the sport to have stuff like “intrusive adverts that can interrupt gameplay” or playtime restrictions that would push people in direction of paying to maintain going, Steranka’s reply was “definitively no, that’s not occurring in Pokemon Go — not now, not ever”. So, principally the identical response you’d get if you happen to requested somebody in the event that they’d like to make use of the sport to make it appear to be they have been giving Pikachu the finger.
The exec went on to re-iterate just about what Wu mentioned – Scopely good, Scopely thinks Pokemon Go good, Scopely not gonna mess up an excellent factor. It is the message you are getting at this level, although it is as much as you if you happen to belief the corporate to stay to it.
In the meantime, primarily based on one among Steranka’s different solutions, it feels like Pokemon Go could possibly be influencing some modifications to Scopely’s video games, reasonably than vice versa. “They’re actually all for the truth that Pokémon Go is such a secure enterprise,” the exec mentioned of the writer, “however nearly greater than that, they’ve been actually to attempt to be taught from us and see what they’ll take from how we construct Pokemon Go and apply that to probably different video games of their portfolio and future video games to come back as nicely.”
Will issues truly play out that approach within the long-term? It is early days but, so we’ll have to attend and see. One factor I do know is that Steranka at one level within the interview made a joke about Scopely not turning Pokemon Go into “Pokemon Keep at House” attributable to this deal, and that may be the second the idea comedy died.
Sure, it’s extremely wealthy of me – a infamous and unrelenting delivererer of completely s**t jokes – to say that, however I am doing it anyway.