okay, so.

let's talk about twitter. twitter is a complicated thing to understand! not so much the basic UI (type in box, press Tweet). but the social context around who you follow, threading, what is public and not-public and semi-public. there's a lot of bitching online about various social norms being violated! "randos in my mentions", etc.

(incidentally, a lot of twitter's strategy makes sense if you follow this, and see that they're trying to lower the barrier to entry. it's fundamentally a social problem they're trying to fix with technology, so they're not doing so well at it. so it goes)

another way of looking at this is that there is a social context to the problem of UI. and a learning curve.

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let's talk about minecraft (it's bad ui succeeded in much the same way that poekmon go has). some stuff is pretty obvious - punch some trees! walk around! fall down and die! some stuff really isn't (crafting, especially). this was more by accident than design - presumably notch planned to make that stuff good, the game just got real big before he could get there.

so what stepped into the gap? wikis. youtube. conversations. you kinda NEEDED these things to play, properly. and so there was a huge social element built into it. minecraft's bad ui led to the rise of youtube gaming stars.

this is the social context part.

the other part is : minecraft benefited hugely from a sense of infinite possibly. a sense of mystery. it feels open, in a way many other games don't. part of that is not knowing what's possible. all the things you can craft. myths of the nether, or the land where float precision breaks down.

and on the flipside: this means that you don't worry about all that stuff when you're starting out. the complexity builds gently. start by punching some trees, end by thinking about the weirdo water-flow mechanics and building boat-elevators.

(this is obviously the learning curve part)

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so: snapchat.

when twitter adds a new feature, it's right there to see. fucking moments, amirite? when snapchat adds a new feature, it's there to be discovered. it's something you have to talk about, explain to people, engage with. to learn how to use it, you have to use it. the shibboleths and social learning you have to do on twitter isn't actually a bad thing - it's a mark of belonging, it's skill conciously exercised. same with snapchat - the basic ui is simple, the interesting stuff is stuff you have to learn. and learning is a social experience! it's part of the experience. learning this stuff is fun! and the reward is fun new filters, or discovering there's live video chat. and also the reward is feeling better than other people (same as twitter).

(oh, and a sidebar: snapchat's UI is gloriously mobile first. everything is designed to be done with one hand, one thumb. random swipes are way easier to do than picking through menus when you're used to it. it's basic mode of interaction isn't typing, a basically awful thing to do on a phone. it's pre-literate!)

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and pokemon go is basically the same as minecraft, except it's dudes you meet in parks instead of yogscast.