Another day. Another survey about Pokemon GO.
Following on from my previous opinion piece about the validity of consumer surveys, Qriously - a mobile online survey on steroids but reliant on self reporting and with unclear sampling accuracy and - has entered the fray.
That said, it consistently predicted Brexit albeit also consistently overly estimating the scale of the Leave campaign.
Its post-vost, pre-announcement poll came in at 56% Leave, 44% Remain.
With friends
But back to Pokemon GO.
Qriously polled almost 1,000 mobile gamers aged 13 or older in New Zealand, of which 243 had played the game.
The only game that had been played more was Candy Crush Saga.
It also found Pokemon GO had a strong social component with Friend Recommendations being the #1 source of awareness.
Indeed, playing with friends also seemed to be the main reason people continued to play with almost half of the 243 Pokemon GO players knowing more than 10 other people playing the game.
This is interesting because it suggest that the game will have better retention that expected, but that like a failing social network (or Nintendo's Miitomo), when players start churning, the decline will be faster than expected.
That said, developer Niantic Labs is looking at ways of introducing more in-game social interaction.
The final thing Qriously considered was monetisation.
Given the small sample size and the unclear statistical basis of the survey (self selection and self reporting etc), we shouldn't take any firm conclusion other to say that Pokemon GO seems to have more payers (12%) but less big spenders than titles such as Clash of Clans.
You can see the complete survey here.