[itcmcgrath]

I can guarantee you the chart is accurate as I created it. Yes they did expect change, but the only number that matters for this graph is "how big can we get" and then "if we get that big by the end, is there enough capacity". The answer to to the first one turned out to history making ; no-one in their right mind would bet on happening beforehand, and the second turned out to be "Yes".

[mtrpcic]

Since you created the graph, could you provide more context as to the units of measurement and scale for the axes? Are you using the derivative of growth as biot mentioned below, or something else? This graph shows two lines that stay static over time (meaning that either Niantic started off on day one with their entire server infrastructure already running with no plans to scale up, or they did not plan to scale up as demand grew), and one upwards trending line that shows actual changes in traffic over time. I'm trying to discern what this graph is supposed to represent, and if it's supposed to represent the expected traffic over time versus actual, it's showing that there was no expected growth in traffic.

[itcmcgrath]

I cannot dive into too much more detail than is in the graph since it's still sensitive information. Y-axis is essentially traffic to Cloud Datastore (think: after layers of caching, etc), x-axis is date.

The 2 lines can be thought of as ceilings or upper bounds, hence why they are static - this are the numbers that traffic was expected to eventually reach at peak.So you can think of it as, "we thought we'd be looking at graphs that had this line as the top and traffic would be some curve underneath.

Obviously from the graph shown here, we/they needed a tall graph.

[mtrpcic]

I think that my issue with the chart (and it's such a minor issue to quibble about) is that you're effectively treating your single dataset (actual traffic over time) the same way you're treating your annotations (expected and worst-case traffic). Both of these different things are represented the exact same way in your chart, which is a confusing way to structure things. I would alter the appearance of the ceilings/bounds to not be represented in the legend, and instead be on-chart annotations that show where those expectations were relative to the actual traffic. I would also recommend adding even the most rudimentary labels to the axes.

[itcmcgrath]

No arguments there. There's a balance that needs to be struck between technical detail and marketing appeal. Not everyone is going to agree on where that balance is, less so when you're trying to share sensitive information without giving too much away.

[BinaryIdiot]

> The 2 lines can be thought of as ceilings or upper bounds, hence why they are static

I think this is the disconnect. This wasn't not obvious to me. It looked like everyone was expecting flat growth at either 1X or 5X. If there was a line showing what they thought would be the traffic that goes up (which would be expected) in addition to the ceiling lines then I think there would have been a lot less confusion.

I wonder if a single bar graph would have illustrated it better with overlaying colors for each ceiling.

[f_allwein]

https://xkcd.com/833/

[i336_]

> I cannot dive into too much more detail ... since it's still sensitive information.

Question: When should we start checking around for posts containing

A) High-level technical overviews with some basic implementational detail

B) In-depth analyses of the stack you built, the challenges you faced, what improvements you folded back into various open-source components, what you'd have done differently, etc etc

?

I'm thinking in terms of timescales - like n months or so. I suspect (A) will be a little easier (and quicker?) to publish than (B).

[biot]

If one interprets the graph as "derivative of transaction growth" instead of "number of transactions" then it makes perfect sense. The derivative of linear growth is a horizontal line, whereas quadratic (edited, thanks acomar) growth would be a line that has slope.

[acomar]

Quadratic, not exponential. d/dx(e^x) is e^x. That's actually why e is called the natural log.

[devilsavocado]

Do you know how those estimates are made? As someone who only passively follows some Pokemon news it was obvious that Pokemon Go would be absolutely huge on launch. It was all over facebook, youtube, reddit etc since the day it was announced. I don't think I've ever seen so much hype for a game, including major AAA titles. It seem strange to hear that no-one in their right mind would think it would happen.

[itcmcgrath]

Yes, and I can tell you even though I spend every day working with extremely large scale systems I wouldn't have told them "you should expect 10x larger", yet alone 50x. Their initial estimates would still have been an very large launch.

The Niantic team did incredible things given the instant historic success that became Pokemon Go.

[devilsavocado]

Sorry if I implied you did something wrong, not my intention at all. I'm just curious how someone comes up with an estimation at all for a game that doesn't have pre-orders, and where similar games don't already exist.

[itcmcgrath]

They ran a closed beta.

[BinaryIdiot]

> Yes, and I can tell you even though I spend every day working with extremely large scale systems I wouldn't have told them "you should expect 10x larger", yet alone 50x. Their initial estimates would still have been an very large launch.

The generic 1X, 5X and 50X are hard to understand in this context I think. Pokemon is so popular it's very difficult in imaging what the real numbers actually are. For instance on launch day in America and Asia I would have expected insane numbers (many hundreds of million).

I also feel like the 1X, 5X and 50X number placeholders are useless in this conversation because it doesn't give a sense of scale at all.

[itcmcgrath]

"For instance on launch day in America and Asia I would have expected insane numbers (many hundreds of million)."

Given no app had ever done this in history over the first few weeks, yet alone on launch day with no marketing, I doubt it.

[BinaryIdiot]

There was no marketing? It was being talked about everywhere. If they didn't spend any money on marketing then good for them!

But in all seriousness this is Pokemon; they sold over 3 million copies of a remake of a game on a niche portable console in just 3 days; elevating its brand to an open platform for FREE that can be downloaded and installed on theoretically, what, a billion or more devices? Seems incredibly doable for Pokemon. Few other brands could do the same. Even Mario wouldn't be able to come close to competing with Pokemon's brand power.

I would be very interested in the real numbers :)

[itcmcgrath]

How about this - Pokemon search trend for the last 5 years: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=pokemon

If this doesn't clearly show how crazy this growth was compared to what anyone was expecting, I'm not sure we're operating in the same plane.

[alasdair_]

The US has roughly 330 million people in it.

"Many hundreds of millions" implies at least three of them.

I would not expect the entire population of the US to be playing on day one, especially the roughly 50% of them that don't even own a phone.

[BinaryIdiot]

I'm not sure I follow. Why are you only focusing on the US? This was launched in many countries. Granted not at the same time but that's why I said take the aggregate of each launch day.

[alasdair_]

I took "on launch day in America" to mean the US (since no other part of the Americas was launched on that day).

[hexane360]

Maybe there were just a lot of sockpuppet users. :P