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A year after Chicago's first Pokemon Go Fest, which disappointed thousands of players and prompted a class action, the festival returns for a second time. And this time, the organizers took steps to avoid a snafu repeat of last year.
The four major cellular providers worked with Niantic, developer of the mobile game, to provide additional coverage during the two days of the event. begins Saturday. Last year's festival was plagued by poor access to the network, and players could not connect to the game. Niantic repaid the ticket price and agreed to distribute $ 1,575 million to a class of 18,771 festival goers for their problems.
"We hope that fans of" Pokemon Go "will live a great experience," said Yui Namiki, Sprint spokesperson. 19659002] The carrier deployed a portable cell site in the Lincoln Park area to handle additional activity during the festival. Namiki said. Portable cell sites are often used at major events where thousands of people converge, such as Lollapalooza.
AT & T is deploying two cell sites, which will increase its capacity more than four times, and its spokesman Jim Kimberly. T-Mobile has been working with Niantic for several months and has four temporary sites for additional coverage during the event. Verizon also sent two sites, and plans to have engineers at the event to help with any hiccups.
"It really seems like they're taking steps to make everything a little better," said Adrian Banks, a resident Glenview who has tickets for the event.
Banks was only able to connect to the Augmented Reality game for 30 minutes of last year 's eight – hour festival. It was very frustrating, he said. But since he is local and he does not have to worry about traveling expenses, he estimates that the $ 28 he's spent on a ticket for the event this weekend was worth it.
Banks was not the only one to want to give the organizers a second chance. The 2018 festival is complete, according to its website. Niantic representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Go Fest should feature Pokémon that can not be captured anywhere else, and that's one of the major draws for participants, Banks said. He has already covered portions of the 1.8-mile course at Lincoln Park. The organizers have set up scenes of the game – or habitats, as they are called – in the park. There is a volcano, a desert scene and an ice formation, among others.
Participants will likely be able to catch some Pokémon in their habitats, Banks said. This feature of real life was not available last year.
"Pokemon Go" launched in July 2016 and in a year, it had been downloaded more than 750 million times in the world. That was the best Google search in the world that year.
Although the game does not stay in the zeitgeist as it did two years ago, it has retained loyal players, helped in part by new features or outside services. encourage social interactions.
The game has launched a new feature called raids in 2017, where several players must team up to catch rare Pokemon. This forces them to be in the same place at the same time, and that's one of the things Sarah Chiappe, a resident of Edgewater, was looking forward to for the first time, a participant from Go Fest
. in the same place with all those other people playing the same game as me, "she said.
A discussion app called Discord helped Banks stay interested in the game, he said This encouraged him to go out and meet other players too.
"Pokemon Go did something … video games and all kinds of people had been trying for years to get the people, "he said." This game not only did that, but it went well beyond. "
Twitter @ AllyMarotti
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