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I realize this statement probably won't go over well here, but Niantic's behavior strikes me as the kind of thing that happens when a company is entirely run by

I realize this statement probably won't go over well here, but Niantic's behavior strikes me as the kind of thing that happens when a company is entirely run by software engineers who refuse to accept relevant advice from anyone who isn't a software engineer. There are people who understand event planning, there are people who understand how to build F2P mobile games, and I get the impression that exactly zero of these people were consulted, or, if they were, their advice was immediately ignored.

quasse 9y ago
If that were the case you would hope they would at least be good at software engineering, but all evidence points to that being completely false.
awalton 9y ago
Anyone who's played Pokemon Go or Ingress can refute this; their UI design is abysmal at the very best, the game suffers a million bugs and patches introduce at least as many as they fix, etc. A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production... No, I'd argue Niantic may originally have been engineering driven, but once Ruthless cut them from Alphabet, they went straight for the greed play, developed with an IP that would sell billions with next to no effort, and are now tightening the screws on the player-base with Pay-to-Win gym tickets and events requiring as many Lures and Incenses as you can buy to continue extracting income.
- FreakyT 9y ago
  > A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production UI developers? Testing? You have apparently worked with very different software engineers than I have! Most I've worked with have followed the "if users don't understand the UI it's their fault" UI design philosophy, and all testing is handled in production because no one wants to put emphasis on testing when they could be working on the next feature.

quasse 9y ago

If that were the case you would hope they would at least be good at software engineering, but all evidence points to that being completely false.

awalton 9y ago

Anyone who's played Pokemon Go or Ingress can refute this; their UI design is abysmal at the very best, the game suffers a million bugs and patches introduce at least as many as they fix, etc. A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production... No, I'd argue Niantic may originally have been engineering driven, but once Ruthless cut them from Alphabet, they went straight for the greed play, developed with an IP that would sell billions with next to no effort, and are now tightening the screws on the player-base with Pay-to-Win gym tickets and events requiring as many Lures and Incenses as you can buy to continue extracting income.

FreakyT 9y ago
> A company ran by Software Engineers would have hired competent UI developers and QE engineers and would have demoed the hell out of the event before putting it into production UI developers? Testing? You have apparently worked with very different software engineers than I have! Most I've worked with have followed the "if users don't understand the UI it's their fault" UI design philosophy, and all testing is handled in production because no one wants to put emphasis on testing when they could be working on the next feature.