1. Assignment: Pokémon’s Dilemma, for Product Management
By Amanleen Puri
All rights reserved © Amanleen Puri, CMU SV
1
Executive Summary:
This document is a proposal to reduce the churn rate to 30%. By introducing users to the concept of Playing
for a cause, opening our platform to game developers outside of Niantic and increasing Pokémon gears that
we offer for in-app purchase.
Introduction:
In this document I would discuss my strategy to improve user engagement of Pokémon go. While chalking out
a product strategy I would emphasize on one product feature. This document is based on an underlying
premise provided, “Digital commerce tracker Slice Intelligence reports that, in the month of August, Pokémon
Go paying player base in the U.S. dropped by a whopping 79%.” [1] Intended audience for this document is
the executive Product team at Niantic.
Glossary:
DAU: Daily Active Users
MAU: Monthly Active users
ARPDAU: Average Revenue Per Daily Active User
Current Metrics [2]
Pokémon Go tapped on childhood memories of Millenials, evident from Figure1. These are our users as well
as buyers. Following chart shows the metrics I’ve used to monitor progress and growth of our game.
Key reasons for Churn:
Churn rate is the ratio of number of users who have downloaded the game but are not playing. We monitor
this over a period of 28 days. Following are the key reasons in my opinion, for decline in paying player base.
Monotonous - No new Pokémon characters
Peer pressure
Bugs in app
1. Monotonous - No new Poke characters:
• We offer limited User actions. If you replace the Pokémon characters by hexagons like in Ingress the
activity of swirling, swinging and throwing the Pokeball on the screen is pretty monotonous.
• We can further use Source, Sink and Flow metrics [A][10] to get a granular picture.
Downloads
• 100 million
(08/08/2016)
Total
revenue
• $268
(08/12/2016)
ARPDAU
• $0.25
In-Game
Metrics
• 80% iOS in-app
• 43 mins/day
DAU
• 20+ million
Retention
• Day 3 is more
than 60%
Ranking
• App store 3
stars
• Google Play 3,2
stars
Figure 1 Player profile [3]
Following image describes the diversity of our players
in terms of their age, gender and income.

2. Assignment: Pokémon’s Dilemma, for Product Management
By Amanleen Puri
All rights reserved © Amanleen Puri, CMU SV
2
2. Peer pressure
• Many players downloaded the game as their favorite Celebrity was playing it. The fact that our game
demanded time and dedication to ‘catch ‘em all’ it was not meant for everyone. Which lead to
decrease in Daily Active Users. Evident from figure 2.
Figure 3 Trend in User Engagement (DAU/MAU)
[4]
3. Bugs in app
• Bugs in app lead to bad user experience.
• Players tricked they system by earning Experience Points (XP) using fake GPS and bots.
• Leading to fall in user engagement.
Proposed strategy:
Following is the product strategy I’m proposing to mitigate key churn reasons. We need to strengthen our
platform but we cannot pause our servers to do so. Hence, let’s start by letting users Play for a cause. This
would improve user engagement; I’ve explained this in detail below. While maintaining user engagement we
need to work on our platform to make it open to other developers so that they can build upon the Artificial
Reality (AR) base. We need to increase the Pokémon gears that we offer so that players are motivated to do
more in-app purchases.
Feature: Play for a cause
Target Audience: Players of all age groups. This feature would attract following types of users as categorized
by Nir Eyal in his book ‘Hooked’.
The type
About User Variable rewards for them
The tribe Players who look for acknowledgement from their
community
Increase in donation would rank their Team
higher
The hunt Need to acquire physical objects is part of their brain's
operating system
Earn more Pokey characters
Game
Play for a cause
Motivate players to play for a
cause they pick.
APIs
Open platform in a regulated way
to game developers to come up
with creative ways to design and
implement parts of features/
activities
Poke gear
Improve the variety of Pokemon
gears we offer.
Figure 2 Trends in Daily Active Users [4]

3. Assignment: Pokémon’s Dilemma, for Product Management
By Amanleen Puri
All rights reserved © Amanleen Puri, CMU SV
3
The self These players don't believe in what people think or
materialistic pleasures there has to be a bigger reason for
them.
Sense of achievement as charity donations
would show along with your total points
Hooked model for Pokémon go players
Trigger
(Internal)
Giving back to the community
Trigger
(External)
Peer pressure, Pokémon go plus
Action Player can pick a charity of his/her choice
Play to earn enough XP to donate
Variable
rewards
Increased pool of Pokey characters
Player ranking (start from your global rank to as granular as county rank)
Investment Time to play the game
Purchase in-app Poke points
Flow of Events:
1. Use the demand supply model to break down the feature. We would create a pool of charities on supply
side and players on demand side.
2. Each player can pick a charity and freeze an amount (Experience Points) to donate. Player can either
donate from current bank or play to earn them.
3. Each of these games would have at least one Pokestop to achieve their target.
4. Pokestops here would be businesses paying to become a Pokestops and 20% for the amount they pay
Niantic would be donated to charity.
5. This 20% money value would be broken down into number of points to earn. Ratio of money to points
would be same as in-app purchase of points currently available.
6. Payments to charitable institutes would follow the same model as businesses paying to declare Pokestops
Go to market
Pilot 1. Launch it in a controlled environment of beta testing group.
2. Monitor usage with metrics to compare total market usage to target group usage to get a true
picture.
Rollout Gradually starting from big cities with higher DAUs to relatively lesser DAUs
Conclusion:
We have come a long way right from turning into reality, Google’s 2014 April fool’s joke. A game, every child
wanted to play growing up. Molding our strengths of Ingress into Pokémon’s story line. We have proved
technology can bring people together literally. It’s time we channelize our efforts to balance the ecosystem,
introduce a culture of giving back through games. This would buy us some time to strengthen our platform
and open it to developers who could contribute building on immortal Pokémon series. In turn, attracting
more businesses on our platform. Which would help us spread deeper into geographies.
Reference:
1. https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0BxYAVCMOlBBXb2hqaC1mQzBiaFk
2. @artie_d. "Pokémon GO Usage and Revenue Statistics - App Industry Insights." Business of Apps.
August 16, 2016. Accessed September 27, 2016. http://www.businessofapps.com/pokemon-go-
usage-revenue-statistics/.
3. Http://heavy.com/author/brendanrmorrow/. "‘Pokemon Go’ Demographics: More Women Play
Game Than Men." Heavycom. 2016. Accessed September 28, 2016.
http://heavy.com/games/2016/07/pokemon-go-demographics-demographic-player-players-data-
statistics-men-women-male-female-gender-majority-income-age-average-players/.

4. Assignment: Pokémon’s Dilemma, for Product Management
By Amanleen Puri
All rights reserved © Amanleen Puri, CMU SV
4
4. Perez, Sarah. "Pokémon Go’s Paying User Base Has Reached A plateau." TechCrunch. July 29, 2016.
Accessed September 29, 2016. https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/29/pokemon-gos-paying-user-
base-has-reached-a-plateau/?ncid=rss.
Appendix:
A. Habit forming steps:
1. Trigger
a. Internal:
Happiness because of childhood memories,
Feel good factor for being healthy as u can burn calories while playing
b. External:
Peer pressure: everyone around u is playing,
Pokestops along with people playing make it hard to resist
2. Actions:
a. People play it to make their team stronger via pokey gyms
b. Discover pokey stops share locations with their friends or people near them this gives a feeling of
unity
3. Variable rewards
a. Eggs hatching
b. Powerplay times, pokycoins
c. Purchase of pokemon gears with XP
4. Investment
a. Time: Players invest lot of time and energy in collecting points
b. Money: Purchase points to play more
B. Metrics:
1. Daily Active Users (DAUs): DAU is the number of unique users that start at least one session in your
app on any given day.
2. Sessions: Every time a player opens Pokémon app, that counts as a session. This player need not be
unique. This depicts how hooked the user is to our game.
3. DAU/MAU: This ratio of Daily Active Users to Monthly Active users shows how sticky the game. As it
tells us how well the app retains users, most successful gaming apps have ratios closer to 20 percent.
4. Retention: Measured by separating users into cohorts. The day a player downloads a game is Day0
then onwards it’s Day 1, Day 2 and so on. Common days used for retention are 1,3,7 and 30.
5. Conversion Rate: The conversion rate measures the percentage of unique users that have made a
purchase out of the total number of users during that time period.
6. ARPDAU: The Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU), helps to understand how your
game performs on a daily basis. It’s good to know this before acquiring users.
7. ARPPU: Average Revenue Per Paying User (ARPPU) measures only the subset of users who have
completed a purchase in a game.
8. Churn: In last 28 days, players who have downloaded and are not playing the game anymore.
9. In-Game Metrics: Helps discover the right point in game where the game gets tougher than usual.
This state is best to monetize the app.
10. Source, Sink and Flow: This metrics is part of the game analytics dashboard, where source metric is
measure of amount of Experience Points(XP) earned. Sink is where users spend their XP. Both Source
and Sink can be hard and soft currencies. Flow are balance XPs player has earned and spent.
11. Start, Fail and Complete: Health check up for user and game interaction. Which level does player start
on, where does s/he fail and at what level does the player complete the game.