As many gaming fans are well aware by now, Pokemon GO Fest – which was held in Chicago, Illinois' Grant Park over the weekend – suffered from a litany of severe technical issues and major service problems, which caused most if not all of the event's attendees to have a less than ideal experience, to put it charitably. While many have been quick to blame the game's developer Niantic for the issues encountered during the gathering of Trainers, the YouTube channel known as "Trainer Tips" has stepped forward in an attempt to defend the company and explain why participants experienced so many difficulties.
As seen below in the Pokemon GO YouTube page Trainer Tips' take on the whole fiasco, the owner of the channel, Nick, reveals that he was invited by Niantic to the event with all expenses paid, yet was told to give his full and honest feedback about it. Although Nick seemed to be forthright about some of the flaws he came across – slow load times, bugs, and errors being chief among his problems at the festival – he claims that Niantic is being unfairly maligned for the poor network service attendees encountered, as he proclaimed cell phone providers to be the true source of the issues.
"Niantic contacted all of the cellular network providers in Chicago ahead of time and told them 'this is the traffic we're expecting, this is what we need you to be prepared for.' And all of the cell phone networks said 'We can handle that.'"
In addition to the allusion of network service providers being the main offenders in Pokemon GO Fest's dismal outing, Nick also asserted that Niantic requested portable cell towers at the event, with Sprint being the only company to provide them. Nick's experience was underpinned by the performance of T-Mobile's network, which he said "wasn't horrible," but he acknowledged that players using other network providers found the game to be completely unplayable at the event, with many stating that AT&T provided the worst service at the festival.
Of course, Niantic surely could have taken certain precautions with its own servers to have been far more prepared for Pokemon GO Fest in order to avoid issuing refunds and $100 in PokeCoins as compensation to everyone for their unsatisfactory time at the event. That said, though, those who completely put the blame on the developer might be oversimplifying the issue, as it seems network service providers were likely somewhat complicit in the event's failure as well.
However, it's incredibly important to note that Trainer Tips is officially sponsored by Niantic and Pokemon GO. With this being the case, there's a large possibility that Nick is simply parroting information that the developer gave to him and not truly thinking critically about why a company that has made $1.2 billion in revenue from the game so far would feed him certain falsehoods about the event's failures in order to deflect the blame toward network service providers instead.
Sure, Nick was given carte blanche in regards to being "constructive" and "honest" about his personal recap of what he experienced during Pokemon GO Fest, but that's not to say Niantic had to be as forthright with him. After all, as some of the most esteemed authors, playwrights, storytellers, novelists, and – in this case – public relations specialists would attest, the best way to make people believe in fiction is to camouflage it among the truth.
Pokemon GO is available on Android and iOS.
Source: Trainer Tips – YouTube