- Last week, Niantic held the annual Pokémon Go Fest, a four-day event in Chicago where Pokémon Trainers gathered to catch trade, and battle Pokémon.
- Niantic says that there were tens of thousands of players in attendance, speaking to the continuing popularity of Pokémon Go.
- I went for the first two days of Go Fest, and had a total blast. Here’s what it was like.
- Visit BusinessInsider.com for more stories.
Do people still play Pokémon Go? It’s been 3 years since the AR mobile game was first released, and based on the crowds in Chicago last week (not the mention the recent $4 billion valuation of the company who makes the game) the answer is a resounding "yes."
Niantic, the game’s developer, kicked off its third annual Pokémon Go Fest in Grant Park in Chicago from June 13-16; a sold-out festival that brought Pokémon Trainers from all over the world to the Windy City to trade, battle, and of course, catch rare Pokémon exclusive to the event. Niantic tells Business Insider that tens of thousands of players showed up across the four days.
Unlike previous years (which I also attended) tickets to the 2019 Go Fest were sold within the app, and in order to purchase them you had to also win a lottery drawing. To accommodate more people, the festival was four days long this year, up from two.
Another new twist: Attendees were assigned a date, time, and place to show up. You could come to the park before or after your assigned slot, but all the activities that make the event special only showed up in the Pokémon Go app during the allotted timeframe.
I was there on the Thursday and Friday of the event, but my app didn’t activate until the second day — before that, all I could do was look around and take photos.
While there were a few network hiccups, and a temporary evacuation on Saturday due to a thunderstorm threat, the rest of the event seemed to go off without a hitch. That’s a good thing, considering that the first Pokémon Go fest in 2017 was a notorious fiasco.
I was one of the lucky few to check it out this year, and I had a total blast. Here’s what it was like inside during my visit, on the first two days of the event:
Pokémon Go Fest has grown so massive, it now spanned four days. To keep crowds under control, Niantic, the game’s developer, gave every ticket-holder a day, time, and place to enter the park. My ticket got me in at 9am on Friday from the North Gate.
Chris Snyder/Business Insider
While I waited for the event to begin, I plugged my phone into one of the Pokéstop-themed charging stations that were scattered around the park.
Chris Snyder/Business Insider
People were situated around these throughout the day. It was a long day of gameplay (10 hours), and so a dead battery could ruin everything.
There were large colored tents set up in the field at each end of the park for each of the three teams players can join in Pokémon Go: Instinct (yellow), Valor (red), and Mystic (blue).
Chris Snyder/Business Insider
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
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- The 5 most interesting things we just learned about the huge new ‘Avengers’ game arriving in 2020
Source: Business Insider – csnyder@businessinsider.com (Chris Snyder)