Niantic's Own Version Of Steam, Campfire, Can Fix The Pokemon Go Raid Problem
As a daily Pokemon Go player, raids are by far my biggest pain point. Where you live has always had a huge impact on the kind of experience you’ll have with Pokemon Go, but the nature of raiding as a group activity has always excluded players in less-populated areas to some degree. Even as a resident of Orange County, the fifth biggest county in the country, I consistently struggle to find active, populated raids nearby. The introduction of Remote Raid Passes in 2020 further compounded the issue by creating a convenient, paid alternative that eliminates all of the hurdles that in-person raiding presents. You don’t have to leave your house, you don’t have to work around raid timers, and you don’t have to organize with other players. Niantic recently increased the price of Remote Raid Passes and stopped offering them in weekly one-coin bundles, seemingly to deincentivize raiding remotely. This decision has unsurprisingly proved unpopular with the community. As I wrote previously, making remote raiding more expensive doesn’t fix the problems with in-person raiding.
Thankfully, Niantic has been working on a solution to the raid problem. During the Summer Game Fest Play Days in Los Angeles this weekend, I got to see a demo of Campfire, an soon-to-be-released social app that integrates with all of Niantic’s games, Pokemon Go included, to help players find each other and organize for group activities like raids. Campfire offers features that are desperately needed, and based on what I’ve seen, it could go a long way to solve Pokemon Go’s biggest problem.
Related: Go Fest 2021 Set Expectations Way Too High
Niantic sees Campfire as its own version of Steam. It’s both a social hub and an overlay that improves Pokemon Go. When it
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