Pokémon Go essentially runs an event every week, but Go Fest is by far the biggest, essentially taking over the summer. Locking the event to a specific timeframe is something the community thinks might limit certain elements of what Niantic can offer with it, but summer is a “sacred window” for Go Fest that won’t be changed.
It isn’t that Niantic is unaware of demand for more large-scale events outside of that summer season, but, according to Pokémon Go director Michael Steranka, it fits perfectly with what the team is aiming to accomplish with Go Fest.
“It’s really important for us to host Go Fest in the summer because that’s when so many families have time off,” Steranka said to Dot Esports. “Kids are on summer vacation and parents will take time off to spend time with their kids. When you come to these events, you see huge groups of families out here, so we want to maintain that sort of sacred window of time for our flagship Pokémon Go Fest.”
With that window for Go Fest set in stone, Niantic is more focused on improving the “flagship” event based on feedback from players to ensure it is always growing in the best ways.
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Part of the feedback implemented for Go Fest 2023 was containing the event to just the month of August compared to its previous iteration starting in June. Steranka says this is because players commented that the celebration was running long, which led to Niantic trying to run a “concise and condensed” version with four events across August this time around.
And, just because Go Fest won’t move, it doesn’t mean Niantic isn’t listening to players asking for more big or interactive events at other points in the year. That is part of why Go Tour was made to run in February every year and the new City Safari events were created, to fill those gaps.
“That’s why we launched Go Tour right? We thought the same thing, that there’s a pretty big gap over there and it’s great weather in some parts of the world so let’s host another major event,” Steranka said. “And, we have Safari Zones along with the new format called City Safari coming later this year. I’m really excited to see how that unfolds and, if it’s something players enjoy, we really want to invest in more [City Safaris] next year.”
City Safaris are a new in-person event kicking off this October in Seoul, Barcelona, and Mexico City that will be like a local and smaller-scale Go Fest or Go Tour, featuring themed Pokémon spawns, Special Research, and more.
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Niantic is also always looking at “bringing Go Fest to as many people as possible,” which involves a lot of research into where people are playing and the best places to host the main event hubs. For example, New York and London are both key markets with plenty of Pokémon Go players, but they are also easy to travel to for Go Fest events, something that the developers want because it allows for more people to attend.
With Niantic looking to invest more in City Safaris, based on player feedback for the first batch later this year, new events seem to be very much a focus too.
