OR: There are 18 Vivillon patterns out there at the moment, and I love how it is a mechanic tied into the postcard system. There are two patterns that appeared in the games that have yet to appear in Pokémon GO: The PokéBall pattern, previously only distributed through special events in 2014 and 2016, and the Fancy Pattern that was a July 2014 Global Trade System-exclusive that was then widely implemented in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Has Niantic considered implementing these two patterns, or other colors such as team colors, into Pokémon GO?
MS: You really know your Pokémon lore – that’s a deep cut there. Nothing to share at the moment in terms of the two un-released patterns in Pokémon GO or future patterns, but we definitely agree that the way that we launched Vivillon into Pokémon GO was such a great way of tying that Pokémon into physical locations around the world, and that’s the exact type of thing that we’re looking for when we want to create unique experiences.
“I don’t think there’s a set-in-stone rubric that we follow on which Pokémon are region-exclusive, and which aren’t.
[…]
It’s something that we feel is kind of core to Pokémon GO and what makes a big part of Pokémon GO special.”
OR: I mentioned a moment ago that there are 18 different versions in different [parts] of the world. How did Niantic decide which region gets how big of an area or how small of an area? Because not all regions of the world are going to have as big of a Pokémon GO community as other places would.
MS: We worked really closely with The Pokémon Company on that one, actually. In the original release of Vivillon in the main series games, that was also based roughly on locations in the real world. And that became a natural opportunity to collaborate and make sure that we got that right and true to the vision of Pokémon.
OR: There were layoffs in June 2023 at Niantic. They shuttered its Los Angeles studio, sunsetted NBA All-World, and cancelled Marvel: World of Heroes. Did the layoffs impact Pokémon GO’s development team or feature rollout plans?
MS: Pokémon GO development team was impacted by the layoffs, as well. Obviously not as much as the studios in Los Angeles and whatnot. And yeah, it was a very difficult decision that had to be made, and I think whether or not the team was directly or indirectly impacted – it’s always tough to go through, right? These are people that you’ve grown very close to and become friends [with]. And folx that you’ve worked very closely with, even if you’re not working on the same game that they are. Super painful and challenging moment for our company.
I’m happy to say that it didn’t necessarily impact our future development roadmap. The teams that are very focused on bringing a lot of brand-new features to life in Pokémon GO were largely untouched. Things have still been moving at the pace that we expected for those. We’re still excited to bring some great experiences and new features to the game in the coming months and years, but that definitely was an incredibly painful moment for all of us – myself, included.
OR: No doubt. When you’re adding new Pokémon to Pokémon GO, how do you decide which Pokémon will be region-locked, and where region-locked to? For example, Sigilyph is region-locked to Greece and Egypt. Outside of this event, Bouffalant is in New York and surrounding areas exclusively. How do you decide to lock, and where to lock it to?
MS: That’s a great question. I don’t think there’s a set-in-stone rubric that we follow on which Pokémon are region-exclusive, and which aren’t. The deciding factor for that is only going to get more and more challenging over time, as new generations of Pokémon have more complex Pokémon out there. Key examples of that are [that] we launched Farfetch’d as an Asia-exclusive Pokémon and eventually Galarian Farfetch’d was released in the main series games. And Tauros, as well.
It’s something that we feel is kind of core to Pokémon GO and what makes a big part of Pokémon GO special. It’s something that we’re constantly assessing, and again, working closely with The Pokémon Company to make sure that this Pokémon feels ‘right’ as a region-exclusive to this location.
OR: Can The Pokémon Company veto y’all’s decisions?
MS: I don’t know if I would say ‘veto,’ you know. I guess what I really want to come across is that it really is a collaborative relationship, and we sort of treat each other as extensions of our own teams. There’s no one group that’s saying ‘[a]bsolutely not, you cannot do this.’ Instead, we talk through things. If we have anything that we disagree on, we can always find a path forward with each other.
OR: One big change from this year versus last year, is that last year there was a continuing storyline that progressed through several events, went through Seattle, and wound up in a Grand Finale that took place virtually worldwide. This year, there isn’t one. Was the overarching storyline not well received, or was it just something that Niantic decided not to do again – can you talk a bit about that?
MS: I think a lot of the feedback we got from players after summer of 2022 was that GO Fest is this incredible tentpole moment every year, but we may have stretched that out a little bit too long. Starting it off in early June and then finishing things off [at] the end of August was, I think, maybe a little too much GO Fest for even our most hardcore fans. Especially when you consider the fact that a lot of those major story beat moments are in-person exclusive experiences. The vast majority of the player base cannot engage with that in the game and would have to follow along on social and whatnot.
So, this year, we took a little bit of a different approach and we tried to condense everything into a singular month. And I think we’ve been seeing some really positive reception to this. We had GO Fest in Osaka and in London at the start of the month, we’re here in New York for GO Fest New York, the Global Experience is coming literally next week. So even if you weren’t able to attend these experiences in person, you don’t have to wait very long to get your Global experience in your hometown.
“I’m a little biased, because I personally love Pokémon GO Fest as my baby- my favorite moment of the year.”
OR: Going back to PVP for a moment, because you are Legendary rank – you know quite a bit about it. If you want to be truly competitive, you’ve got to grind. You have to grind the XL candies, you have to know your metas: your Medichams, your Lanturns. That can be very intimidating to people who haven’t been playing for a while and who aren’t able to sit there and do all these raids to get all the XL candies.
How do you make it approachable to new players?
MS: Yeah, that’s such a challenging question and one that I did my best to answer on the Battle Catz Podcast. It’s tough because we want our most dedicated players to feel that sense of accomplishment and to feel like they’ve really put their time and energy into a team and have that payoff, right? We don’t want you to spend a bunch of time and energy and then not really have much to show for it at the end of the day.
At the same time, I agree with you that it is really important that new players aren’t completely hosed and have no way to get into PVP in Pokémon GO. So, the balance we’ve tried to take here is, yes, you have some Pokémon who are incredibly strong with XL candy like Medicham and whatnot. But I would argue that the Lanturns and Noctowls of the world are very approachable. You don’t have to go into XL at all with them. And then you look at things like Swampert and Venusaur – these are incredibly strong Pokémon that not only do you not need to power up into XL levels, but they have 10,000 stardust move unlocks and are much, much more accessible Pokémon for players who are just starting to get into Pokémon GO to try their hand at.
So, what I think we’ve tried to do is create an onramp where this is a handful of really strong Pokémon that you don’t need to spend so much time and energy investing in powering up that can get you up to a pretty competent area within PVP. But there’s also these longer-term chase Pokémon that you can really set your sights on and create long-term goals for you to build around to maybe get that slightly incremental advantage on the competition.
OR: What are you currently running in PVP?
MS: It depends on the meta. But right now, in Open Great League, there are two – well, three teams that I really enjoy running.
The first is Medicham, Shadow Charizard, [and] Noctowl as a nice A-B-B format where Noctowl can pull out Charizard’s counters. As long as Charizard can have a shield advantage by the endgame, you’re usually in pretty good shape.
Another team that I really enjoy is Tapu Fini, Shadow Gliscor, and Galarian Stunfisk. That team is really strong, because a lot of people aren’t really prepared for the Tapu Fini and Shadow Gliscor – it’s not super commonly used. And they offer really unique type-coverage between the two of them. And then [Shadow] Gliscor and Galarian Stunfisk also have dual ground coverage in the back, which can be incredibly powerful.
And the third team I like to use that’s a little bit, you know…I wouldn’t say like brainless, but you know, you don’t have to be as on top of your timings and whatnot, is Shadow Dragonair, Bastiodon, and Medicham. So essentially, the strategy there is you want your Shadow Dragonair to always win the switch advantage for you, even if you go down two shields, because Medicham and Bastiodon have such strong type-advantages on the Pokémon that they’re strong against, and you can keep alignment very well with that.
OR: What’s your current favorite Pokémon?
MS: My current favorite Pokémon is the same as my always-favorite Pokémon, which is Machamp. And you know, it’s nice that Machamp has play in all three Leagues – let’s put it that way. *laughs*
OR: Going back to the Pokémon GO Fest for a moment, because we are in New York – you had shirts that were released online, shirts that were released at the event. Can you talk a little bit about how the shirt designs are created? Because this one is wildly different than last year’s in Seattle.
MS: Our GO Fest T-shirts are some of my favorite designs that we do every year in Pokémon GO. I’m a little biased, because I personally love Pokémon GO Fest as my baby – my favorite moment of the year. We have internal artists actually design the T-shirts for Pokémon GO Fest, and we want to make sure that it has some nods and alludes to some of the things that are happening at the event itself. So, we want to keep the design that is something that we believe players will feel comfortable wearing, whether they are playing Pokémon GO or not. And I think that we’ve done a pretty good job over the years of creating T-shirts that people are comfortable rocking and representing their Pokémon GO pride without being over-the-top.
OR: One big change from last year’s event in Seattle is that there are much more elaborate structures in the various areas. Look at Poisoned Swamp, which appears to be a fully constructed [cave] – and it’s giant – for this event. Last year’s event seemed to be [to] just stick something in the ground and adapt the surrounding area in Seattle [Center] Park. Can you talk a bit about designing and implementing the various fabrications for this event?
MS: The first thing I would say there is if you look at the park we have here in Randall’s [Island] Park versus Seattle Center [Park], from GO Fest last year – they are vastly different parks. You have lots more green space here that we can actually stake things into, versus Seattle Center that had a lot more concrete space but a lot more interesting features built into the space.
For a place like Seattle Center, we really want to lean into the natural components that come with that park, but a place like Randall’s Island – it gives us more opportunity to be a little more creative and build out structures, as you mentioned. Across all three GO Fest, in Osaka, London, and New York [City] – this year, we’ve created the most impressive habitats that we’ve ever done in any of our GO Fests, so a huge shoutout and kudos to our live team who put this together, because yeah – I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to look at the Cursed Treasures area, but there are such fun photo ops there [like] where you can be inside the gemstone that resembles Diancie. Just epic and really cool habitats to explore here.
OR: How do you go about selecting the various locations? What are you looking for?
MS: We’re looking for a number of things. First and foremost, you need to have the physical size. And there’s actually not many parks around the world that can even facilitate that types of ambitions that we try to do for Pokémon GO Fest. So that whittles down the options considerably, right off the bat. But the second, and probably most important thing that we’re always taking a look at, is what sort of network infrastructure is needed to pull it off at this park. And there are some massive parks around the world that have almost no cellular infrastructure capacity in those locations. And so then we have to rule those out, because if you go to a beautiful place, but you cannot play Pokémon GO, you can’t really have a GO Fest. We also really take into consideration the ease of access to that city or location, right?
So, New York [City], London, Osaka are airport hubs that players can fly in from all over. And what we typically see is that anything from 60 to 80 percent of our GO Fest attendees are coming from out-of-market. So that is really important for us to make sure that the location is somewhere that players can easily access.
And I would say that the final piece is ‘[w]hat is our active player base look like in those markets?’ New York as an example – one of the most popular places to play Pokémon GO in the entire world. And so we’ve always wanted to bring a GO Fest here. Just wasn’t ever the right time or place, and we were thrilled to finally be able to pull the trigger on that this year, and bring our biggest event to one of our biggest communities in the world.
OR: So, what’s next for Pokémon GO?
MS: Well, we’re going to be wrapping up this season at the end of this month with the big GO Fest finale. And that’s going to spin us right into season spanning from September through November. And during that season, we’re going to be launching Paldean Pokémon for the first time in Pokémon GO. So super, super excited about that.
As I’ve mentioned in other interviews over the past months, 2023 is probably our most ambitious year when it comes to new features that we’re developing. We’ve had a smattering of new features come out in the past couple of months alone between Shadow raids, routes, Pokéstop showcases. But that’s not all, right? We’ve got a number of other new features that are slated to launch before the end of this year that we can’t wait for players to find out more about and get their hands on.
OR: And the fact that you’re introducing Generation 9 Pokémon, and you haven’t introduced all that many Generation 8 Pokémon – are y’all moving on from Generation 8 to focus on what’s bright and shiny and new in everybody’s Switch?
MS: Definitely not moving on from Gen 8. But we did feel that now was the appropriate time to highlight some of the Paldean Pokémon, because from the main series games, that’s where a lot of players are really excited to engage with. We’ve got great plans for our friends over in Galar as well, no news to share at the moment on that, but they haven’t been forgotten and they will be coming to Pokémon GO.
OR: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me!
Did you attend Pokemon GO Fest this year? Do you plan on attending next year?
What is your favorite Vivillon pattern?
Let us know in the comments below!
