UX trip: Pokemon Go has UX design

How long do successful mature games get improvements?

Some new features in PoGo:

When incubating an egg, now you have the ability to purchase an incubator on the spot. Previously, this element was missing, so you had to back out, navigate to the store, purchase an incubator, then navigate back to your pokemon list and eggs, and incubate.

Making purchases like this easier likely increases use of coins, which are the one of the few things you can directly buy for money, and otherwise are limited to 50 coins/day for defending gyms. Incubators cost 150 or 200 coins, so 3-4 days of waiting for someone who doesn't want to pay $.

This makes me think the UX team is being encouraged to design for ways to get players to spend $. This is obvious in PoGo's emphasis on paid ticketed activities, up to $15 per event. Free to play still gets some benefit from the event, but early access to new Pokemon is often sold through these tickets.

I'm not a game designer, and have mostly played PoGo and puzzle games. I stop playing games with intrusive ads, or pay $ so they stop.l How typical am I? That's where companies would do user research to find out.

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