Pokemon GO Fest Chicago Summed Up in One Cringe Compilation
The Pokemon GO Fest in Chicago ended up being a disaster. Players couldn’t connect, the game kept freezing and crashing, and a lot of paying trainers had to wait in line for a long, long time. Some of them probably couldn’t even come into the park. All the while, the presenters tried their best to be extremely chipper, ignoring the loud boos. Bottom line, people got extremely angry, and a compilation video on YouTube sums it all up perfectly.
To celebrate the first anniversary of Pokemon GO, Niantic organized a huge event in Chicago. Trainers poured in from all over the world. All they wanted to do was to catch a bunch of Pokemon, and be the first to catch a Legendary Pokemon. Unfortunately, the whole event went south pretty quickly, as connection issues and long lines prevented most people from playing the game at all.
As trainers boiling in the summer heat got angrier and angrier, the hosts of the event proceeded as if nothing was happening. They completely ignored the loud boos and chants of “We can’t play!” In the end, this only made things worse, as it only fed into the frustration. Some of the hosts attempted to interview audience members, only to quickly cut them off when participants explained that they couldn’t even play the game. Also, now we know what “savagely seasoned” means. In case you were wondering.
Niantic tried desperately to push more bandwidth to save the day, but to no avail. Finally, their CMO Mike Quigley walked on stage and announced that they would be refunding tickets, and that each trainer that took part in the event would get $100 worth of Poke Coins on their accounts. While this is at least some consolation, it probably did very little for people that spent a lot of money to travel to Chicago.
The disaster that was Pokemon GO Fest is perfectly captured in a compilation video put together by bobvids. You can check out the video below. Fair warning, though, there’s some colorful language in there. That should come as no surprise, given how frustrated people got.
