Pokemon Go Rethink: Economic Benefit and Potential Abuse [Part 4 The End]

Source: http://bit.ly/2aGcfk0

Welcome to the last chapter of Pokemon Go Rethink.
I would like to apologize for spending 2-3 months to end this Pokemon Go Rethink because I spent my time to study this game and meanwhile see the potential benefit in the economy and the potential abuse in this game.

To refresh the memory, the picture below summarize Part 1 to Part 3 of Pokemon Go Rethink.

The Pros:Cons Ratio in Each Aspect on Pokemon Go

How did I generate the above figure?
Very simple just use Microsoft Word to perform word count on how many Pros content and Cons content on each aspect. In short, Pokemon Go is more beneficial to Mental Health than Physical Health if the players know how to control their obsession.

The final chapter will focus on the third party instead of the players. In short question:
How do other people get benefit from Pokemon Go?

There will be two aspects for the above question
1. Economic Benefit
2. Potential Abuse

Economic Benefit:

With this game, it somehow makes Pokemon regain its popularity among the public as this game was not only attracted the fans but our elder generation who used to criticize us to be obsessed with Pokemon. When there is something become popular, it will be a great opportunity to improve the business.
There will another 4 aspects on Economic Benefit:
1. Telecommunication and Phone Accessorises
2. Pokemon Icons
3. Catering and Shopping Mall
4. Freelancer

Telecommunication and Phone Accessories:

The only way to play this game is either you owned a smartphone or a smart tablet. Playing with PC or Laptop will be banned. With current battery technology, most of them were unable to last more than 2 hours as this game drained a lot of batteries. Therefore, the Power Bank Sales should be boosted up significantly during the first month of the game. Depend on which shop, some is more creative to market their power bank product that there will be 10-20% discount when you show them that you had installed the Apps.

Other than Power Bank, I did see some of them are more creative to sell the screen protector in the way they promote it as it is very smooth to slide on the screen which help you to throw the Poke-ball in the game.

With the hype of Pokemon Go, they were able to sell phone case with Pokemon picture that attracted the younger buyers. In conclusion, I believe the Phone Accessories industry should have a good business sales during the first month launching of the apps.

In addition, the game itself consume a lot of data. Some people prefer no data plan as their home country has sufficient free-wifi hotspot until the launch of this game. Immediately, they switched their service with data plan. Meanwhile, some of the telecommunication company did promotion on the data plan based on the game.

Pokemon Industry:

As mentioned, Pokemon Go brought Pokemon returned to its hype again. For me, I only watched the anime until the Johto League whereas Pokemon Trading Card game until the 3rd Generation.

Now Pokemon has returned, every market or shopping mall, you will see they sell Pokemon-related products like stuff-toys, stickers, t-shirts, bag, shoes, etcs.

Pokemon Stuff Toys in Hong Kong
Pokemon is belongs to The Pokémon Company

Perhaps, even an old fans like me will return to the current Pokemon Series to track how was Pokemon developed in the past decade. For example, we were surprise that there was Mega-Evolution and there was a mini-series about Red under Pokemon Origins. In the X-Y series, fans was glad to see Ash was a lot maturer than his first appearance in Indigo League even though he's still a 10 years old boy.

Since Pokemon was owned by Nintendo, its share went up 120% during the launch according to CNN Money.

Catering and Shopping Mall:

Similar to the Phone Accessories industry, Catering service and Shopping Mall also gain the benefit. In the game, there was Poke-Stop where players can top up their item like Poke-ball, berries, potion and eggs while earning 50xp per Poke-Stop.

Most of the time, a shopping mall will have at least 3 Poke-Stop where they will invest on lure module to ensure that their Poke-Stops always released the flower petal that spawn Pokemon every 5 minutes to attract Pokemon Go Players. To further improve the attraction, I had seen Aeon HK promoted that if the players managed to capture three Pokemon inside their shopping mall, they will give HKD5-10 voucher on any sales under Aeon.

Restaurant used Pokemon Go for Marketing in Hong Kong

For Catering Service/restaurant, they will market their restaurant as strategic place to chill when there is a Poke-Stop nearby. As usual, some will offer discount if the players managed to capture the specific Pokemon. For example, Snorlax, Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle were the specific Pokemon that were offered to have discount. 10% discount for 1 of the 5 Pokemon you owned in the game then every +5% for the next Pokemon with maximum 20% discount.

Freelancer:

In 21st Century, it is unlikely to work a single job due to inflation. As there are a lot of people wish to own fancy car and houses in shorter period of time instead of relying in single income. Hence Pokemon Go offered this opportunity.

Pokemon go involved walking to hatch eggs or candies from 2km to 10km. Public Park is one of the hotspots for Pokemon Go Players. After all the workout, freelancer can just set up illegal small hawker stall to sell simple stuff like drinks to the players.

In addition, I witnessed people offered Power Bank Renting Service. Charge rate was HKD50-100/hr with addition HKD50-100 deposit.

Lastly, some players were too lazy to walk. They were willing to pay someone they trusted to walk for them. In Malaysia RM10-20 per hour whereas HK probably HKD50.

In conclusion, there was an opportunity to earn extra with the hype of Pokemon Go but it only last during the hot season since the game was cooled down after 2 months.

Potential Abuse:

The most valuable data in Pokemon Go is the GPS. Did Pokemon Go track every players movements in GPS? Within 1 month time, it is sufficient to track where did the player live, work and shop. That's dangerous if someone attempted to kidnap your family member.

In my opinion, 2016 is a mild dark age or grey where we begin to live in fear due to ISIS and Killer Clown Wave.  Whether a ISIS, Killer Clown or psychopath who wished to seek attention to the public, they aims crowded places with less police forces like such as a park.

One of the simplest ways to the extreamists above to do their act is check which Poke-Stop has the most active flowers petal spawning. As mentioned earlier, it attracted players to have a rest there while capturing a Pokemon every 5 minutes.

Multiple Poke-Stop with active petal spawning
All image are belongs to Niantic and Nintendo

On the other hand, some IT genius were very intelligent to hack into the Pokemon Go map to trace the location of each Pokemon. Either they created a map to indicate where is the Pokemon or they just created a Telegram Bot to announced the location of the Pokemon. Most of them did it in a good intention to help the player to capture the rare Pokemon effectively but it is possible that some with harmful intention.

For example, the third-party app indicate there was a Dragonite spawned at a specific location. From time to time, most of the players trust the app so they just went there without a doubt. Meanwhile psychopath expected that spawn location will be crowded and gladly to do whatever they like to get attention.

This is where I really concerned about how could Pokemon Go be abused when it fell into the hand of terrorist and psychopath. To all players, please rethink your action whenever you are using any of these third party apps or telegram to hunt the Pokemon.