{"id":20283,"date":"2023-07-26T14:24:22","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T05:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=20283"},"modified":"2023-07-26T14:24:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T05:24:22","slug":"20230726-20283","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/20230726-20283\/","title":{"rendered":"The real reason why Pok\u00e9mon Sleep\u2032s release was so delayed: Humans can only sleep once a day\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An excerpt from an interview with the development team of Pok\u00e9mon Sleep <\/strong>has been making the rounds on Japanese Twitter, as it explains one of the reasons the game\u2019s release was delayed for such a long time. The comically obvious and unavoidable reason \u2013 needing to sleep in order to test the game, immediately earned the understanding of users. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pok\u00e9mon Sleep, developed by Select Studio and published by The Pok\u00e9mon Company on July 20, is a sleep tracking-based game that revolves around the plot of researching the sleep patterns of Pok\u00e9mon. The game\u2019s release came more than four years after it was first announced in May 2019, and the development apparently took about five and a half years from conception to completion. In an interview<\/a> with Famitsu.com, the members of the Pok\u00e9mon Sleep development team go into details regarding the ideas and efforts that went into the game, as well as some of the difficulties they came across during the development.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When asked about the reasons for the late release of the game, the developers cited various challenges they faced, such as having to simultaneously release the compatibility for Pok\u00e9mon GO Plus + and having the game debut worldwide in 8 different languages at the same time. Another complex issue they faced was finding the right balance between a simple sleep-measurement tool and game, as going too far in excluding game-like elements would make the app boring, while adding too many game-like features would make users play too much, taking away from the purpose of encouraging healthy sleep habits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, what seems to have struck sympathy with users the most is the simple but unconquerable physical barrier the developers had encountered \u2013 not being able to test their game until it\u2019s time to sleep, making it possible to test only once a day. This was mentioned by Miyagawa Keisuke, the game director of Select Games in the previously mentioned interview for Famitsu.com.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2015Are there any other points you paid attention to or struggled with?<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0
\u00a0
Miyagawa: <\/em><\/strong>We struggled with testing the game, because you have to sleep to do so (laughs). Basically, we could only do one test run per day. While it\u2019s technically possible to proceed by using temporary sleep data, there is always a possibility of something unintended happening when actually sleeping, so we tried to have the testers sleep for real as much as possible.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tweet<\/a> sharing this excerpt from the interview quickly went viral, earning over 34k likes and being retweeted over 8k times. Users found the predicament comical and expressed their complete understanding for the development period being prolonged.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sleep\u6c38\u7720\u3068\u304b\u8a00\u308f\u308c\u3066\u308b\u9593\u3001\u30b9\u30bf\u30c3\u30d5\u9054\u304c\u5bdd\u308b\u9593\u3082\u60dc\u3057\u3093\u3067\u5bdd\u3066\u305f\u3068\u601d\u3046\u3068\u2026<\/p>— \u30ef\u30ca (@game7400) July 24, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>