Pokénomics 101 (Blogger edition)

 Original success of the Medium.com to the front.

by Jay Kapoor

Over the last month, it has been hard to miss Pokémon Go mayhem. Since the free-to-play augmented reality (AR) game launched on July 6th 2016, it has gone from niche mobile app to nostalgia machine to full-blown phenomenon seemingly overnight.

Pokémon Go quickly became one of the most used smart phone apps, surpassing the previous record held by Candy Crush Saga in the United States. As of this writing the app had passed 30M downloads and over $35M in revenue making it the top grossing app in the over $37Bn mobile-gaming market. And that’s not even counting Japan, one of the top 3 mobile gaming markets and the one with the highest average spend per user.

Mo Mankey. Mo Problems.

But more interesting still is the economy of ancillary products and services that have cropped up around the game. The shadow Pokéconomy if you will.

1. Advertising: Pokémon Go is godsend for local businesses. Bars and other small shops across the country are advertising their conveniently located Pokéstops. Apparently The Village Pourhouse in East Village promised the “biggest Pokémon GO meetup in Manhattan,” complete with $5 Pokémon cocktails (and Charizard Shots!?)

Pokémon LOVE Capitalism

2. Apparel: I remember when dressing up like Ash in middle school means you sat by yourself at lunch (… I heard… from a friend). Today there are Pokémon GO themed shirts, hats, watches, bracelets, coffee mugs, and various other items. Some officially licensed, the vast majority are not. All easily accessible, most delivered to you within 48 hours.

3. Transportation: There are Uber drivers willing to drive you around cities while you catch ’em all. I even heard you can give your phone to a bike messenger and pay him $10 to bike around for 5 miles so your Pokémon eggs hatch (Aren’t most Pokémon mammals!?). Craziest of all are the Pokébuses driving Pokéfans on Pokéroutes to Pokéstops like a weird quasi-religious pilgrimage for pagan parishioners that worship at the altar of the all-mighty thunder god.

Praise be unto Him

4. Hardware: While we wait for the Microsoft Hololens to catch up to our need to perceive Pokémon in 3D, the Pokeball Portable charger will have to stand as my favorite example of the Pokéconomy. It is not only ingenious but also quite indicative of the amazing time we live in where a product can be conceived, designed, tested, produced and distributed all in time to monetize a particular cultural zeitgeist.

Diversity sold separately.

5. Apps: There are maybe a half dozen community-driven apps for recommending the best places to catch certain Pokémon. There are chat apps and Slack bots (so your team knows exactly how much work you’re actually getting done). There is the new Tinder like PokéDates to match you with an ideal mate where the first date is free and each additional one costs $20(!). Now there is even Yelp that makes sure that next date is never too far away from a Pokéstop.

Be safe people. Casual dating is the easiest way to “catch ’em all”

And this is just the beginning. Molly McHugh at the Ringer accurately called this exploding shadow economy the “side-hustle”. It’s not unlike the guys scalping tickets and selling unlicensed foam fingers outside Knicks games. It’s even closer to guys with coolers full of Corona on the west side highway for the people waiting to watch the July 4th fireworks.

Who knows how long the Pokémon phenomenon will last… go get yours.

I don’t mind the hustle. I respect the hustle.

That said, I will admit that I was initially really skeptical of the whole shadow economy and I’m a little conflicted. PokéDating Apps? Wearables that vibrate when a Pokémon is near? Chargers shaped like Pokéballs? Does the world really need more crap like this?

Timothy Lee at Vox recently had a great story about the overlooked downside of the Pokémon economy and I think he made a lot of good points. The fact that the July phenomenon happened juxtaposed with more civil unrest between the police and #blacklivesmatters protesters, terror attacks in France, attempted coups in Turkey and the impending end of the Modern Republic (ew) only heightens my doubt. It’s hard to see Pokemon GO as positive, or even significant, in light of actual, impactful global events.

Also, this Pokemon has Donald Trump Hair. That is all.

Maybe it is worth looking at exactly why the Pokémon GO phenomenon and accompanying shadow economy is so amazing.

At the height of the first Poké fever of the late 90’s and early 00’s (shout out to Red and Blue) most of the ancillary products i.e. card games, video games, toys, stuffed animals, tournaments, events and more came directly from the source or officially deputized sources (like retailers).

IP ownership had something to do with it, sure. But I’d argue it couldn’t have come from anywhere else even if it wanted to. It sort of had to.

You or I didn’t have the ability to organically and cheaply create ourselves the kind of things we envisioned that might enhance our experience. And so we patronized Nintendo, Wizards of the Coast and other licensees. Conversation and interaction with the products happened locally and those engagements went unmeasured. And that’s the way it had been for generations. Producers produced. Consumers consumed.

Yeah, don’t worry… I wasn’t planning to…

Pokémon GO is the latest and perhaps clearest sign that all this has changed.

The technological revolution and ease of access over the last decade coupled with the advent of the “social web” are exactly what enables games like Pokémon GO to go from ephemeral to enduring.

I guess all of this to say — you don’t have to like the Pokémon GO economy but at the very least, it should make you feel fortunate.

That we live in an era (and country) where the means of production, distribution and consumption have been democratized and anyone can quickly and relatively cheaply create and monetize their work is really special. That Pokémon means an opportunity for someone to create or supplement their income on platforms like Pinterest and Etsy is pretty cool too. Good or bad, Pokémon GO has shined a light on just how far we’ve come.

I don’t know what amazing cultural sensation 2017 has in store for us (my money is on some combination of Power Rangers and Bitcoin) but this is not the last we will see of the “side hustle”

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.