The premise of a Global Challenge is straightforward: Pokemon GO players everywhere all get a major goal to achieve, and they share a reward when they complete that goal. Pokemon GO just ran a Global Challenge asking players to send 7 million Gifts to one another, and as a reward, fans got to enjoy a major bonus to Candy earned from Transfers. This Global Challenge is great, but Pokemon GO can get more out of the Global Challenge model. Niantic ought to look at Global Challenges more closely and figure out how it can coordinate different parts of Pokemon GO’s international audience as a part of more complicated, engaging sets of challenges.

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Pokemon GO’s Global Challenges Have Potential

Global Challenges are a great element of Pokemon GO because they make use of a central theme of Pokemon: teamwork. The core series of games is all about trainers having positive working relationships with their Pokemon, as well as collaborating with each other to protect the world from evil. Global Challenges give Pokemon GO players a chance to feel like one big team. However, a lot of these challenges are pretty simple, featuring a single objective that Pokemon GO players race through together. As a result, Global Challenges are fleeting, and often not actually very challenging.

Ideally, future Pokemon GO Global Challenges will make more use of the game’s different regions. For instance, a Global Challenge could give the Americas an objective related to completing Research Tasks, while players in Asia and the Pacific have to capture a certain number of Pokemon. What’s more, regions might unlock rewards for one another, rather than for themselves, giving Pokemon GO players a stronger sense of contributing to one another. Both rewards and challenges could switch around as these events go on as well, creating a greater challenge to motivate players. The 2018 Global Challenge already divided up Pokemon GO players into distinct regions, so Niantic just has to diversify the activities that Global Challenges offer.

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More Challenges in Pokemon GO

Making short but layered Global Challenges a common event in Pokemon GO would be especially valuable because it gives players a new event type to interact with. Aside from Special Research, Pokemon GO players frequently get Collection Challenges, and not everyone is keen on collecting a specific list of Pokemon since some of them can be awfully hard to get regardless of increased spawn rates. Collection Challenges are a good occasional feature of Pokemon GO since they also represent a core aspect of Pokemon, but they ought to share the stage with Global Challenges a little more frequently.

Whether Niantic itself has any particular interest in running more Global Challenges remains to be seen. Niantic may see Global Challenges as a tool to be reserved for major Pokemon GO events, which would make sense to some extent, but still seems like a bit of a waste. Hopefully 2022’s Valentine’s Day Global Challenge is evidence to the contrary, suggesting that Niantic is willing to start using Global Challenges more casually. If these events become more common, hopefully, Niantic finds ways to give Pokemon GO players more unique, demanding objectives to complete as a community.

Pokemon GO is available now for Android and iOS devices.

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