Niantic talks Pokemon GO Dortmund event problems and apology distribution, preparing for Chicago's event

Pokemon GO just hosted an event in Dortmund, and it didn't exactly go smoothly. It wasn't as bad as the Chicago event, but there were definitely some nasty hiccups throughout the day. Eurogamer caught up with Niantic boss John Hanke to talk about the event's snafus, the apology content being offered, and worries about Chicago's upcoming event.

E: This is Pokémon Go's first big event of 2018 but, just like last year's Chicago, it has been a bumpy ride. How did yesterday go for you guys?

John Hanke: Well, not like Chicago in the sense that was a total outage for quite a while. Yesterday we had bumps with the carriers and bumps with our own server so it wasn't as smooth as we'd have liked, but it was nice some people at least got to play in the park for all day, and the city seemed to be working well, and then everyone got online and it was a really nice evening. But definitely stressful during the day at times.

The [early morning] queuing was unfortunate - it concentrated people onto specific [mobile network] access points accessible from the queueline which then created a sort of shock to the system which took a while to resolve. We opened the park early today, unannounced for those who did show up, so they could disperse into the park rather than being clumped around the entrance to take the pressure off specific sites. So we didn't see the specific lock up which we saw yesterday when those specific cell sites were overwhelmed.

E: What went wrong with the Incense bug? Players started to work out this had caused it, Niantic caught on. What happened?

John Hanke: It was a bug in the software - a very, very large number of people in a small area were using Incense and it wasn't a situation we'd encountered at that scale before. We found a corner of the code were something wasn't as efficient as it needed to be...

E: Looking to Chicago, which is just two weeks away, have there been any tweaks? How are you reacting?

John Hanke: We're absorbing at the moment, writing up our internal reports on what we think the causes were for things which didn't go as we wanted them to and what we can do. Thinking about Chicago I don't think we have the major takeaways [from Dortmund] at this point, but obviously it's top of my mind to make sure we avoid - if at all possible - any kind of hiccups. I'm sure we'll have a lot of scrutiny on us there - probably even more so than here - it'll be bigger because of what happened last year. But we signed up to return to Chicago because we want to put on a great event there and deliver that for fans. We're doing everything we can to pull that off.

E: So fans shouldn't be worried, looking at Dortmund?

John Hanke: We'll be doing everything we can to make a great event. I think it'd be arrogant of me to say 'don't worry!', but we believe it'll be good or we wouldn't be doing it.

Niantic has announced a makeup event in-game this week for Europe. You have a difficult balancing act there, because people who did make the journey to Dortmund will not want to feel like everyone else across the continent is getting the same in-game rewards. They are the ones being apologised to, after they bought flights and hotels, after all. How do you balance that?

John Hanke: All I can say is we're aware of exactly the trade-off you just outlined and we're trying to find a reasonable balance there.

[Niantic has now announced it will release Corsola - the event's region exclusive - across Europe for 48 hours.]