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Ten years ago, “Pokémon Go” vice president of product Michael Steranka was crying in the shower because the first large-scale event for the hit mobile game was, in his own opinion, a disaster.
The Niantic-developed game
kept crashing, too many people were trying to play at once and the servers couldn’t handle the game’s immense popularity.
But today, Steranka is all tired smiles after pulling off a 1,000-person “raid” event in New York City’s Times Square Thursday night to celebrate the first decade of the now-Scopely-owned “Pokémon Go.”
“A couple people joked with me that they hoped that I would go back to my hotel room and cry in the shower again last night, but this time happy cry,” Steranka tells Variety. “So yes, different vibes. It was magical.”
Hosted by video game industry personality and “Pokémon Go” fan Sydnee Goodman, Thursday’s surprise event was a nod to the vision for the game that was first teased a decade ago in an initial “Pokémon Go” trailer that imagined hundreds of people playing the game together (and catching a Mewtwo) in Times Square. More than 1,000 players (“trainers” within the game) all united in one of the largest in-person raids in “Pokémon Go” history to take down the legendary Pokémon Mega Mewtwo Y in a synchronized, real-world raid battle.
“This project was two and a half years in the making,” Steranka says. “There are just so many things that go into making this a reality. The thing that started two and a half years ago was getting our own technology ready for this, because hosting over 1,000 players in a simultaneous raid instance is a technical marvel to pull off under the hood. So we had progressively been increasing over the years, how many players we can facilitate in an environment like that.”
And that was just the in-game logistics part.
“For the actual Times Square component, that took over a year of collaborating and coordinating with local authorities, figuring out how we could purchase out all of the different screens to really create this fully immersive experience,” Steranka says. “And at one point, we were convinced that we’d actually have to pull the plug on this. It’s actually so hard to find a an available day in in Times Square for something like this, and especially in July when the World Cup is happening. There’s so many things competing for this incredible space. It’s kind of like Doctor Strange’s, ‘There’s only one path,’ and we were able to find that one path and stick the landing.”
However, Steranka has already seen the online complaints from “Pokémon Go” fans around the globe who didn’t get the chance to experience the extra special moment — and he’s working on something for them, too.
“We really felt like this experience, although, of course, it was amazing for the people who attended in person, we wanted it to be something that people could feel like they celebrated together all around the world because it has been a culmination of 10 years of ‘Pokémon Go’ together,” Steranka says. “That said, I have seen already some responses from players in different parts of the country or different parts of the world who are like, ‘Oh man, I wish I could have joined on this,’ just really bummed to have missed out on that. And to those players, what I would say is, my personal goal is to create core memories for each and every one of them over the next decade. And so, even if you couldn’t make it to Times Square in person, my promise is that we are going to create equally epic moments all around the world, and I hope that everybody who plays ‘Pokémon Go’ can enjoy the fun.”
The anniversary fun continues with Saturday’s in-game and real-world “Pokémon Go Fest” event, which will offer multiple special rewards tied to the game’s 10th birthday. Goodman, who hosted the “Pokémon Go” Times Square event Thursday, sees this as the perfect opportunity to get back into the game if you happen to be a player who was playing hard back in 2016 but has since fallen off.
“It’s easy to get intimidated because there’s so much to do, and I think that there’s a lot of people who maybe, myself included, feel that there’s a right way and a wrong way to play ‘Pokémon Go,'” Goodman says. “But the more that I’ve spent time around it, and maybe even matured a little bit, I’m kind of like, I don’t really care if you think I’m playing this game wrong.”
Goodman adds: “I like costume Pokémon, and I get excited when I have a shiny costume Pokémon. And I’m really hoping to get my first shiny background costume Pokémon. And the anniversary event, especially this week, has been nice because since I haven’t been playing, there’s a lot of bosses that I don’t have and there’s ones that felt like, oh, I missed it, I can’t ever get it again. It feels like a redemption moment where I’m kind of riding this high a little bit of getting to fill my account back up.”
