Pokemon Go Director Wants People To Gather Despite Ongoing Pandemic

thegamer.com:

Pokemon Go's upcoming Stufful-focused Community Day will bring a three-hour window to catch as many Stufful's as you can. That's down from the six hours that became the norm over the course of the pandemic. As noted by Niantic's own blog post, most people didn't play for the full six hours, so putting it down to three hours didn't seem like a huge loss.

However, there's another reason why Niantic wants Community Day back down to its original length of just three hours.

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"Community Day as it was intended is meant to actually get people out at the same time," said Michael Steranka, Pokemon Go game director and the original creator of Community Days, in an interview with Kotaku. “We really want players to have that sense of their local community, and create bonds—and strength in bonds—because we really feel like that’s what sets our products apart from any other game out there.”

Steranka added that Community Days first started to provide a sense of "organic discovery of players around you." That was easy in the pre-pandemic days, but changes became necessary as government mandates prohibited gatherings in order to control the spread of a deadly virus.

Now it seems Niantic is pushing players to get back to the way Pokemon Go used to be played, which sometimes included big crowds at popular destinations. However, that might not be such a great idea. Although the US recorded its latest and largest wave over the December/January period, Europe is reporting a spike in COVID cases in recent weeks. America has historically lagged a few weeks behind Europe in COVID cases, so it's reasonable to assume the United States will see a similar