Pokémon Go director discusses avatar backlash, and a "course correct" needed on the slowdown of new species

Eight years into Pokémon Go’s life, and the game’s annual summer Go Fest events remain a firm fixture in the app’s event calendar. More than a dozen of these meetups have now taken place around the world, with the most recent this weekend in Madrid, where tens of thousands of Pokéfans braved the heat to catch an enticing array of species ahead of other players.

Go Fest’s Global version, a Covid-era invention that remains a lucrative ongoing addition, offers similar rewards next month, but without that same experience of potentially travelling somewhere new, to be among crowds of fellow players. And in both Madrid’s Juan Carlos I Park and within the city’s narrow streets, there were Pokéfans everywhere. Not since its days back in Dortmund has a city felt so dominated by people playing – from the parade of fans wearing merch or even full Pokémon costumes despite the high temperatures, to the in-game experience where lured PokéStops and full raid lobbies stretched out as far as the eye could see. London, last year, had felt just too big a city for the Pokémon crowds to have made it theirs. Not so here.

It was also an oppurtunity for me to catch up again with Pokémon Go director Michael Steranka, after what has been another busy period for the game. The past few months have seen a number of useful quality-of-life features land in the app, while the recent Go Tour Sinnoh event clearly moved the needle in terms of player engagement. But, as ever, there have been criticisms too – not least around the game’s avatar update, which despite its good intentions felt decidedly rushed – and of a general slowdown in the number of Pokémon species being added. I discuss these issues and much more with Steranka below.

Pokémon Go has slowed its release of new species into the game, which is something I’ve noticed and have seen pointed out on reddit as well. How intentional is this, as the game works within the finite number of Pokémon available generally?

“It’s definitely something we want to course correct there, I would say.”

Steranka: Even before I read that on reddit, I was doing the analysis. New Pokémon releases over time, even before that [thread] came out, was something very top of mind for us – we felt like, actually, yeah, it seems we slowed down a little bit on this stuff and we don’t want to operate the game in that way. We want to constantly provide players something fun and exciting to chase. It just sort of naturally happened that way with the cadence of events and whatnot that we were putting together, but it’s definitely something we want to course correct there, I would say. Players will start to see, in the upcoming seasons, more new Pokémon coming out that they know and love in the game.

We also know there’s a finite amount of Pokémon, at least released in the main series games. And so [we’re] really trying to think about what’s next there. How do we keep things exciting without needing to rely solely on a brand new release of Pokémon? That it is top of line for us. But you know what you’re saying isn’t news to me. It’s definitely something the team is putting a lot of serious consideration around and I’m pretty excited with a lot of the discussions we’ve been having on that.