Pokémon Unite Analysis

Summary

Pokémon Unite is a team style battle game or a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game that takes elements of League of Legends, Basketball, and Pokémon to create a highly engaging team-based game. At the moment, the game offers 5v5 games where two teams of 5 Pokémon Trainers use their Pokémon to battle other teams of 5 trainers’ Pokémon. When starting the game, you’re given the option of different types of Pokemon (ranged, all around attacker/defender, support, attacker, defender). 

Each player takes these pokémon into a “battle” where the objective is to level up by defeating wild pokémon not aligned with either team, defeat the opposing team’s pokémon, and, most importantly, score points. You can also attempt to defeat special enemies or legendary pokémon to gain score advantages and boosts or armor boosts for the team that defeats the legendary pokémon.

Impressions

This game is surprisingly deep, offering a massive customization system for the trainer and Pokémon from getting new Pokémon to customizing your Pokémon’s outfits. They also offer events, a spectator mode, and a ranking system to allow for more competitive play. 

In terms of peripherals, players can use held items to improve their Pokémon’s performance and there are seasonal / limited time events that allow for players to take advantage of these events and improve both their own experience which translates to improved items from the game or their Pokémon’s performance in the form of earning Aeos Coins or Aeos Gems to purchase new Pokémon or new outfits. Players also have the option to customize their Pokémon’s outfits using Holowear Tickets or Aeos Gems. 

Performance is subject to change based on device and internet speeds, but generally, it performed well with frames per second in the high 20s consistently during the battle phases. I am on a Pixel 4a with ~185 mbps download/29.1 mbps upload speed Even when engaging in battles with multiple pokémon using different movesets the game never felt like it was lagging and the inputs felt immediate. Overall, I had no performance issues during testing this game and was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the overall experience was. There is also the option of an offline mode which was a nice touch given the player can then practice, play random battles and 

One of the biggest benefits to the game, unlike others, is that the game can begin to be played quickly after downloading the initial app and package within the game. It took me about 5-10 minutes to get into the tutorial area of the game from the Google Play Store. There was a download progress indicator on the screen in the non-battle sections of the game indicating that there were downloads happening in the background, but they did not disturb my gameplay.

Pokémon Unite seems to want to go viral with options to share constantly being introduced throughout the experience from the outfit the player is wearing to the player’s performance in each battle. The player even gets additional Aeos coins for sharing the first time they’ve played the game. I attempted to share this with myself via text, but it didn’t seem to grant me any additional points – either they detected my phone number and did not offer me the reward or their ability to track my sharing was hindered by my movement through the sharing mechanism.

In terms of driving engagement, the game does that by offering limited time events, a special set of events for new joiners, rewards for completing matches with a leveling system that seems very prone to rewarding the players, and multiple types of currencies that are each won or bought in their own ways. The game does seem highly invested in your coming back to play as often as possible saying everything from “Log in every day to claim your rewards” to setting a cap on your Aeos Coins earned for the day at 2,100. 

Matchmaking also seemed to be relatively fair – as a new player, in my first game playing with others on the internet, I managed to score only a few points behind the top scorer of my team while outpacing most of the players on the other team. The Pokémon on my team and my competitors were all likely available to the other players within 1-2 days of playing the game which meant there was likely a balance-focused matchmaking system within the region. There also seemed to be servers by region and an estimated time for a match – these are both commonplace now, but good to have the baseline covered. 

Business Driver(s)

As a business, this game drives revenue at scale for several reasons. Putting aside the initial development and publishing costs, the makers of the game are Tencent Games, TiMi, and The Pokémon Company. 

I would expect the largest revenue to be the ability for players to purchase a form of the in-game currency, Aeos Gems that allows them to buy new Pokémon, outfits for their trainer, or outfits for their Pokémon. Given the rise in mobile gaming revenue year over year – close $80B spent in 2020 and closer to 93B spent in 2021 (source) – I’d expect this trend to continue to apply here. 

Nintendo is likely receiving some form of licensing revenue from this particular game as well given the game developers seem to be Tencent / TiMi, though they could very well be working together on the project. The marketing appeal certainly comes from the introduction of well known characters in Pokémon. There was additional momentum for this game from a marketing perspective given that, at the time of this game’s launch, there were no additional mainline games, but there was a remake and spinoff game in the form of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond / Shining Pearl in early 2021 and Pokémon Snap in April 2021, only 2 months before the release of this game.

Suggested Features and Prioritization

Emphasis on sharing should include some way to clip sections of the battle and 

• Push notifications to re-engage players
  • After playing the game for a few days and putting it away, I was shocked when I realized I never received any push notifications to come back to the game – there were tournaments, new player bonuses, first time purchase bonuses, none of which I took advantage of or used
  • On Android, push notifications are instantly enabled on downloading the app so the population is available to interact with
  • According to MoEngage, push notifications increases app retention rates by 3x-10x so this feels like a missed opportunity from an engagement perspective
• Offer a way to purchase Aeos Coins directly
  • Operating under the assumption that the pokémon are balanced, the player does not seem to gain any unfair advantage by buying Aeos Coins
  • The benefit for the player and the business is the quicker achievement of different Pokémon licenses in the game 
  • Risk: Players may choose to buy their way to the “best” Pokémon or the “best” outfits; from other players and the business perspective, this is not a bad thing given balanced Pokémon and the outfits have no material impact on the game
• The ability to convert from Gems to Coins
  • As a user, I can buy Aeos gems from the game, but I have to play to earn Coins. Given I can use both of the in game currencies to purchase new outfits for trainer character or new Pokémon, by both playing and buying gems, allowing myself to convert from Gems to coins would let me maximize the use of my purchases, but also incentivize me to lean more into the act of buying the gems
  • This explains why this conversion would be one way, but for the sake of the player, it would be helpful for them to allow the conversion the opposite way as well
    • Risk: enabling conversion the opposite way can backfire given the player would be then even more incentivized to play to earn coins and therefore be able to skip purchasing the Aeon Gems; the upside here is that this player would have to be highly engaged given the exchange rates of 10 or 17:1 (see below)
  • Risk: items for sale from the store can be mismatched in terms of conversion from Gems to Coins. As you can see in the examples below, the conversion from Coins to Gems for trainer outfits is approximately 10:1, but the conversion for Coins to Gems for Pokémon is closer to 17.4:1 (even where the prices vary, the game has kept the conversion rates for Pokémon and outfits the same).
    • In order to offer this particular feature, the pricing structure for these two types of items would need to be either brought closer in line or experimented with to understand where the user can benefit the most without sacrificing revenue for the game

Examples of the purchasing price / conversion differential when purchasing a new trainer outfit vs. a new Pokémon

Bugs identified

• During offline mode, if the player leaves the game, the player is not given a way to navigate away from the final score screen – the player has to close the app and reopen it
• This might be on purpose, but Day 2 or Day 3 is considered the second or third day the player logs in to the game rather than the number of days that have passed since the first day the user has logged in
  • As a user, I did not realize this difference so after spending a few days without playing the game, I thought I missed out on the benefits of the days I didn’t play and would be taken to the 7th/8th day
    • This is user-friendly approach, but it might make people discouraged to pick the game up again because they may feel like they lose out on rewards by not playing rather than feeling the game is waiting for them to play on their terms which is a much more positive message for the players