Ian Bogost is a professional critic, so I think he'll exaggerate how he actually feels. He probably really likes the game and still thinks it's super cool. Fra

Ian Bogost is a professional critic, so I think he'll exaggerate how he actually feels. He probably really likes the game and still thinks it's super cool. Frank Lantz is a really positive guy overall, so again, I think his negativity overstates how he actually feels. His company Area/Code was not acquired for its location based games, and Area/Code never made a game where you look through a camera and see a thing superimposed in it. Suggesting Area/Code 'got there first,' as Ian does, is a bit of a stretch. Honestly, it's doubtful anyone at Niantic has actually played a single thing Area/Code has made, not even Drop7. Nobody would put a screenshot of Plundr in their pitch deck and say, "We're going to make the next big version of this." Besides, Plundr was never released as a public game anyway, so it would be absurd to compare this actual thing Pokemon Go to what is basically a design fiction. But even if you allow that all these advertisement game footnotes are genuinely cited/used in Pokemon Go, you're forgetting that none of that really matters in gaming as an art form. The only person's opinion that really matters is the consumer's (and to a limited extend the Google Play Store editors and App Store editors). Players are less interested in who invented what concept. If you're going to reference the past, reference familiar control schemes (like nearly every console shooter references Halo) or properties (like, well, Pokemon). It's surprising that professors of games-as-art like Ian and Frank would seem to get this wrong. People on this forum are probably most critical of the bugs, but again, none of that really matters. Other commenters have said it more succinctly: if you have something great, people will deal with its problems. Forget DeNA games (like one commenter noted); have you ever tried to play Minecraft on an iPhone? You're moving around your FPS head with your finger and using a virtual joystick, which is literally the most horrible control scheme for touch possible. Kids still deal with it, they really don't care. Why are there people looking to assassinate Pokémon? I think the Niantic team was given multiple opportunities to do something unconventional, which basically never happens, especially never in any of the jobs of people on these forums. They're kind of rubbing in all your faces that you really don't have to be making elegant hierarchies and making the world a better place all day, if only someone trusted you to do something weird.