When you find that everything is going downhill in an online game, there are players who throw in the towel early. In Pokémon Unite, the developers have added a feature to prevent this. Or rather: They simply omitted one.
The problem: You know it from all kinds of games: In FIFA 22, you concede goals endlessly, in CoD your team keeps getting shot down, or in League of Legends your team just won’t take down enemy towers sufficiently.
The game becomes increasingly hopeless, and you feel like raising the white flag and quitting the match.
The developers of Pokémon Unite have apparently given this some thought, as they recently expressed to Kotaku: The fact that you don’t get a proper score displayed in Pokémon Unite is not a design flaw – it’s intentional.
No score display to keep you engaged
Here’s how Pokémon Unite addresses the problem: In Pokémon Unite, there is simply no proper score display that you can check during the match.
While there are vague announcements about who is currently in the lead, you can only see the concrete scores of both teams at the end. Free according to the motto: If you don’t know you’re losing, you won’t give up.
This seems to be the approach behind omitting a scoreboard, as Unite producer Masaaki Hoshino explained to Kotaku: “The matches last 10 minutes and players have the opportunity to make a comeback. So we wanted players to play until the end without giving up” (via Kotaku).
Because players only have a rough idea of how the game is going, it can motivate them to aim for victory one more time. At the same time, even if they are in the lead, they don’t know how significant the score is in their favor – and must stay alert.
Above all, Pokémon Unite actually has a strong comeback mechanic: Because whoever wins the boss fight against Zapdos at the end of the match has a strong chance to score many points.
Accordingly, players should not expect to see a scoreboard in the game in the near future.
What do you think? Can you imagine a similar system in your favorite games where the score isn’t immediately clear, and everything can still turn around at the end? Tell us in the comments!
