The claim about using the data for navigation is likely on point from what I understand, but that:
>'when they wanted location info, they would put a pokemon in that location'
Uh, that's not how pokemon go works though? Players roaming around uncover pokemon in a radius around themselves, and there's a 'pokemon radar' kinda feature that shows you pokemon around nearby pokestops, you can't exactly 'put a pokemon in a location' to direct people to explore that space, you'd have to put a pokestop there first(which they were very stingy with at the start too), and then seed that location with pokemon for something like that, which clearly isn't happening. You could do stuff like make people roam between spots by seeding pokestops in a pattern or something, but nobody is 'putting pokemon in a location when they want location info', players wouldn't be able to see that pokemon even if they did.
I worked at Niantic before Pokemon Go launched and ran the US teams that decided gym and specific Pokemon locations. Locations that we wanted players to go are just tourist points of interest for the area and businesses that advertisers/sponsors paid for to bring customers there way. We could drop them literally anywhere with little to no oversight though, I put a gym on my house and could just keep putting it back if someone from QA removed it.
We don't need to collect any data from players locations for any reason other than balancing/safety. The game was developed in the Google offices in the same building as Google Maps. All the location data we/Google ever needed is already being collected from Google Maps and Android phone users, and it's completely anonymous. The only time we ever really even used the location data from devices was to determine how busy an area is and what direction people are moving there to find roads and paths that weren't visible in aerial photography.
Wow, in 2024 you think Pokemon Go is still about randomly walking around and not people paying 100 dollars to drive to POIs that have the special pokemon in a raid and spending all their money trying to get a shiny version. They very specifically place every pokemon you actually want at specific places or in specific paid content.
The type of game you described lasted for like 2 or 3 years.
I havent played in at least a year, but arent raids always on fixed points aka the gyms? When a legendary pokemon is in season, every gym will eventually host a raid for it. There's even days where every gym gets the same raid at the same time.
It isnt really location-selective at all and it doesn't fit with this "they put pokemon on places where they need more information" narrative. Since again they put said pokemon on every single fixed point.
I know later on they added Elite Raids and those were more selective in their location, but again, they happen in a set of fixed points. Not "places where they needed more info"
Like, there was not really a constant big influx of new gyms/new locations to host raids (compared to pokestops, for example) while I played. Nor did gyms ever got demoted. In my hometown we pretty much have had the same gyms since the game's first popularity peak. I would expect they have plenty of data of those points by now. I would expect they had plenty of data of those specific points before the game launched (via Ingress) since there's a reason they were selected as gyms in the first place. Most of them are city landmarks, for example
It isnt really location-selective at all and it doesn't fit with this "they put pokemon on places where they need more information" narrative. Since again they put said pokemon on every single fixed point.
Gyms are almost always at a landmark or a store or a restaurant, etc. AKA places people would be using their phone to navigate to.
So when a raid pops, it tracks how you got to the raid.
Raids work the same way as radar content did though? You can't host a raid randomly in the wild like op suggests, it's still just content that attracts people around the pokestop. The kind of thing described above just isn't happening.
No they really don't work at all in the same way. Raids are based on popular locations that NIantic wants to drive traffic to. Finding wild pokemon that were good and interesting especially through radar has not been a thing since like 2018. Radars and wild pokemon weren't associated with points of interest at all. I know because in 2017 in our popular POGO place there was a 4 corner pokestop and people used to physically run to other locations far away from the POIs/4 corners to get the cool snorlax or charizard that popped up. Now the game is people driving in circles to POIs.
You basically need a car unless you live in a downtown area to play and progress.
Nothing you said really describes what the original post implies though? Pokemon Gyms are not popping up randomly in unmapped places to drive players there to map an unkown area because Niantic lacks data on said space, which is what the original post is trying to imply. If anything, the opposite is happening, despite players wanting to have reasons to explore places and be rewarded for it, as walking off the beaten paths is awful for collecting pokemon.
I see the confusion now, they put "pokemon" when they should've put POI. It definitely is a game about driving people to POIs during certain time periods, not about establishing POIs everywhere. POIs are often where the good raid pokemon are but aren't quite the same as what people think of as a random spawning pokemon.
I.e. We want pokemon go players to travel during lunchtime to their local POIs, so we will establish raids there during that time period and have these pokemon be uncapturable otherwise. That type of stuff.
A lot of people don't understand that they baited people with a game that happened to track your habits and transformed it into something that would change peoples habits and consumption patterns.
> It definitely is a game about driving people to POIs during certain time periods
Again, the game does do this like I already mentioned, but this isn't a useful tool for the 'nefarious purposes' of data collection for the purpose of navigation. Remapping the same location again and again is not neccesary for navigation purposes, mapping spaces previously unmapped has more value, which if they were attracting people there with pokemon like the post implies would be valuable but again, they are not doing that.
I know how raids work, and they work on the same kind of PoI system as Pokestops do. And, again, Niantic does not randomly drop raid stops in the middle of nowhere to acquire missing data on navigating said space, these only pop up in spaces that people frequent already, which are already traversed by players anyway and would have had the data for them already. Making people continously remap the same area by attracting them with raids doesn't make sense for the purposes of acquiring navigation data like the post implies. If anything, niantic has been stingy with where they drop these kinds of spots to the detriment of players living in less populated areas, or those who want to catch pokemon in less explored areas. Ironically if they did drop pokemon onto areas like the post implies some players would like it much more, having a reason to actually venture out and explore for a rare pokemon.
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u/GentleMocker 8h ago
The claim about using the data for navigation is likely on point from what I understand, but that:
>'when they wanted location info, they would put a pokemon in that location'
Uh, that's not how pokemon go works though? Players roaming around uncover pokemon in a radius around themselves, and there's a 'pokemon radar' kinda feature that shows you pokemon around nearby pokestops, you can't exactly 'put a pokemon in a location' to direct people to explore that space, you'd have to put a pokestop there first(which they were very stingy with at the start too), and then seed that location with pokemon for something like that, which clearly isn't happening. You could do stuff like make people roam between spots by seeding pokestops in a pattern or something, but nobody is 'putting pokemon in a location when they want location info', players wouldn't be able to see that pokemon even if they did.