How Niantic turned the Rose Bowl into Pokemon GO's latest Diamond & Pearl celebration

The year began with the Rose Bowl in Pasadena hosting the College Football Playoff Semifinal. As it has been every year, the historic 101-year-old stadium was the site of one of college sports' most watched games and drew in fans from around the country. Less than two months later, it would draw in another massive crowd from different corners of the globe, but for something totally different. For the first time, the Rose Bowl was hosting a major Pokemon GO gathering.

This weekend's Pokemon GO Tour: Sinnoh is acting as home to thousands of mobile players from around the world. Whether they be close friends, classmates, parents taking their kids along for a family activity, life partners, or simply Pokemon fans just wanting to meet other likeminded aficionados, many have come together to celebrate their love of Niantic's long-running mobile game and the Pokemon series as a whole. The event also serves as a continuing celebration of the Pokemon series' Diamond & Pearl generation, marking the appearance of dozens of creatures from those games as well as their Hisui regional counterparts from Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Headlining this year's event are raids for two mythical Pokemon: Dialga and Palkia, both in their Origin Forme.

Turning the Rose Bowl into a destination for Pokemon fans from around the world couldn't have been an easy task. In between jumping into Five-Star Raids ourselves, Shacknews spoke with Niantic Live Events Marketing Manager Angela Ferguson-Martins to learn more about the daunting task of preparing one of college football's greatest venues for a legion of Pokemon fans.

Shacknews: What is the process when it comes to preparing for an event of this magnitude? For one thing, how does a team go about preparing a venue of this size?

Angela Ferguson-Martins, Niantic Live Events Marketing Manager: The process starts months, and months, and months in advance. It's super important for our team that we take all the time we can get. So we collaborate with not only our internal teams, but also lots of great external teams and great partners, to make sure that we are doing our very best in our venue selection. You know, time of year selection, our date selection, all of these small pieces come together to get us ready for a nice GO Tour.

Shacknews: How does the team go about organizing each habitat? Do you like to get a lay of the land? Do you walk the venue and the outside area and determine, "These Pokemon would go best here, this would be the best place for this habitat," and so on?

Ferguson-Martins: The special thing about GO Tour is that it is based on main series Pokemon games. So, we have the luxury of being based on Pokemon Diamond & Pearl. At the beginning of the GO Tour process, we take all of the Pokemon encounterable in that region and we split them off into habitats that tie back into the narrative. This year, we have the Entangled Ruins where you might encounter Grass-type Pokemon or Ghost-type Pokemon. We also have the Bubbling Mire, where you might encounter Poison-type Pokemon or Rock-type Pokemon. And, for us, it's really about making sure that each Pokemon fits well narratively into the habitats we've chosen.

On the venue side, we do come out a few times to the venue. We'll walk the stage, we'll fill it out with our game designers, with our production team, and we make sure that the transition between habitats and the space for each habitat feels natural to the venue that we've chosen.

Shacknews: What made this the right time to debut Origin Forme Dialga and Palkia? Did this have anything to do with the venue that you selected or were there different processes involved?

Ferguson-Martins: I think the decision to include Origin Forme Dialga and Palkia really ties back to our enthusiasm towards a newer game, Pokemon Legends: Arceus. This is a game that released a few years ago, and it tells the story of the Sinnoh region of the past when it was called Hisui. Our team was really interested in incorporating this content and we really wanted to incorporate those legendary Pokemon, Origin Forme Dialga and Palkia, so that was a non-negotiable for us. We wanted to get those in, wanted to feature those. Also, that is my favorite Pokemon game of all time, so I was very happy to be able to include that content.

Shacknews: I know there's a certain expectation for live player turnout, but are there ever times at this job when you're surprised by just how many people show up to an event like this?

Ferguson-Martins: Oh, absolutely! I think we are always shocked to see the enthusiasm from trainers. If you look at any habitat today, you'll see tons of trainers out about catching Pokemon and trading Pokemon.

I think what's even more special than seeing large groups of trainers together is seeing those large groups interact with one another. You see trainers, maybe they come by themselves, or they come with one other person, and they leave with a whole new group of friends. There's something really special about the amazing community that we have, and the way that they come together at each of our live events.

Shacknews: That sort of segues into this next question. We've seen some new mechanics introduced into the game over the last year. We've seen Routes, we've seen the introduction of the Party system. How do you feel those ideas improve an event like GO Tour?

Ferguson-Martins: GO Tour and GO Fest are intrinsically about getting together with others and really having those amazing group memories. I think when we are able to include our newer features like Routes, like Party Play, it just gives even more of a reason to meet other trainers.

We really actually want trainers to maybe find someone they don't know and join a party with them. Or maybe you're going to walk around with someone you met for the first time during your city-wide gameplay add-on. For us, it's all about building that community and encouraging our trainers to build their own communities, and these features really tie into that in our live events.

Shacknews: This is certainly isn't your first GO Tour. What are some lessons from previous live events that the team has been able to use to make an event like this one better?

Ferguson-Martins: I think each year we do improve upon ourselves and we do take away some great learnings. I think a huge focus for me, as we've gone forward, is really focusing on the narrative elements of our events. So, you'll notice here are two habitats, the Entangled Ruins and the Bubbling Mire. They're really narratively tied to the story of GO Tour and into the space-time anomalies that are appearing during the event. You'll see these cracks in space and time in the habitats that are separating the past versus the future, which do tie back to that concept of Sinnoh and Hisui.

For me, it's really finding ways to take the stories of Pokemon Diamond & Pearl and also the stories of Pokemon GO and finding a natural way to blend them together. That's a huge priority for me moving forward and I want to make sure that we are telling the best stories that we can.

Shacknews: Plans are already in place for the next GO Tour, I'm sure. Are there any tentative goals that you may have in mind for the next big event?

Ferguson-Martins: Absolutely! I think for us, seeing trainers out, seeing trainers happy, and seeing trainers find those moments of delight is always going to be our top priority. You know, we may have goals on the product side or on the community side, but the main goal is to just see trainers happy. And if we can make them happier than they were last year, then we feel like it was a success regardless.

Shacknews: Lastly, not everybody can make it to an event like this for a variety of reasons. How does the team go about making a day like this fun for everybody, even if they can't make it out here physically?

Ferguson-Martins: I think the name of the game for us is controlling your own destiny. It's having the ability to customize your weekend to what suits you best. For GO Tour, we have a big slate of add-ons available so you can add on days of citywide gameplay, you can add on more gameplay-focused pieces that will enhance your rate experience or your egg experience. And so, this kind of gives trainers a way to customize their experience and play the way they want to. Maybe I want to travel in a day early and I want to experience some of Los Angeles? Maybe I want to stay a day later and I want to experience some theme parks in the area? Maybe I want to really, really hone in on raids. We give you all the tools necessary to build your weekend the way that suits you in your party.

Pokemon GO Tour: Sinnoh will continue through the end of this weekend. Pokemon GO's next big events will take place overseas, as Pikachu's Indonesia Journey lands in Bali and Pokemon GO City Safari hits Tainan City in Taiwan this coming March.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?