Pokémon Go director addresses concerns about its new owners and the future of the game

Last week, Niantic announced that its games division, which makes augmented reality games Pokémon Go, Monster Hunter Now, and Pikmin Bloom, was being sold to mobile gaming powerhouse Scopely for $3.5 billion. The move, which had been rumored for nearly a month, raised concerns among longtime Pokémon Go players — a passionate and dedicated fan base that isn’t shy about sharing its opinions — about the future of the game under Monopoly Go! maker Scopely.

As a longtime Pokémon Go player myself, I also had concerns about the game’s new ownership related to monetization and sharing of player data. On Friday, I spoke with senior product director for Pokémon Go Michael Steranka — who’s been working on the game for eight years — to learn more about the deal from his perspective and address burning questions from the player community.

You can read our conversation below, which has been edited for clarity.

Polygon: As someone who works on the game very closely, what do you think this deal with Scopely means for Pokémon Go for players?

Michael Steranka: I definitely have been looking online myself and reading some player theories and hypotheses and whatnot. What I would love to be able to get across is like, Hey, it’s actually great. It’s going to be a good thing for the game and for the communities out there. Very happy to chat with you and hopefully have an opportunity to set the record straight or at least quell a lot of the concerns that I’ve been seeing from folks online.

Why do you think it’s going to be great? 

So, I am one of the few people that’s actually had the fortune of having been able to chat with members of the Scopely team for the past few months and really get to know them quite a lot before this deal got signed. In the course of getting to know the team over at Scopely, I’ve come to really find that they share so many of the same values that we’ve held near and dear to us at Niantic in terms of really caring about the player communities that they’ve fostered through their various games. [There are] also lots of shared values on how to operate within a team and caring about the people on the teams as well. But also through those conversations, something that’s become really clear to me is how they operate as an organization comprised of lots of different game teams building their total portfolio. The way that they operate is they truly give all of their individual game teams full autonomy to make the best decisions that they can for their games. There’s not really a lot of top-down, executive-level guidance or pressure on any of the different game teams. They’re really there to do their best to support the different teams and make sure that we have all the resources that we need to be as successful as we can.

So hearing all of that, and doing my own personal investigation with friends that I know at Scopely just to get a gut check on how folks felt on the ground, I’ve found that to be true and be very reassuring insofar as we’re going to be able to continue to operate Pokémon Go the same way we always have, with the same practices that we always have, and evolve the game in the way that we’ve always envisioned wanting to do. 

In those discussions that you had, did you get the impression that Scopely views Pokémon Go differently than its other free-to-play titles? 

Absolutely, yeah. This is maybe a little bit into the business side of things, but through the diligence process, they get access to everything on our side, all of our data and our [key performance indicators]. I think through looking at all of our data, they’ve found just a really incredible story of a group of game developers who’ve built a game very differently than any other developer in the market. And what they’ve shared with us time and time again is they’ve been so inspired by how we’ve been able to build such a durable and just a fantastic product with such a strong, rabid fan base that they just haven’t seen anywhere else. So of course they’re really interested in the fact that Pokémon Go is such a stable business, but almost more than that, they’ve been really interested to try to learn from us and see what they can take from how we build Pokémon Go and apply that to potentially other games in their portfolio and future games to come as well. 

I think the big concern is that there will be intrusive ads that will interrupt gameplay in Pokémon Go — obviously, you do have ads, but they come in a very different delivery system. Or they worry that people would be restricted on playtime and then would have to pay money to keep playing. Is that something that’s going to come to Pokémon Go? 

If there’s one takeaway that I would love for people to have from this conversation, it’s that definitively no, that is not happening in Pokémon Go — not now, not ever. Again, Scopely really recognizes how unique this game is, and they’ve told us themselves that they would be foolish to try to change the recipe of what’s made this such a huge hit and a success. So yeah, absolutely not. We will not be building into our games any type of obtrusive ads or anything like that. I just really want to reiterate Scopely as a company, the way that they operate is they give all of their teams the agency to make the decisions that’s right for their games. And that is not something that we feel would ever be right for Pokémon Go. 

I’ve seen some concern that people’s location and movement data is being shared with a second corporation, even more people, and when you get to the top of the organizational structure, a different country. Are there any plans to address those concerns in terms of what players can keep private about their location, their travel information, the businesses they visit? Is there any thought addressing that now that you’re moving to a different company? 

I’m happy to address that one head-on. We do not sell player data to third parties, full stop. We only leverage location data to operate the game, and we store any location data needed to operate the game on U.S.-based servers, and we follow all of the incredibly strict regulatory best practices to protect that data as best as we can. So if there are any fears that this is going to other places that you may or may not know or may or may not trust, I hope that what I’m sharing today can help quell any of those fears, because that is absolutely not something that happens today and not something that will happen in the future. 

In the past, when I’ve spoken to [Niantic CEO] John Hanke very briefly and other Niantic people, one of the things that I think was raised again and again was the philosophy of getting out, being active, exploring. I guess what I’m curious is, is that a Niantic-specific philosophy? Does this move change that mandate in any way? What does this mean for you to have more freedom to do beyond Niantic?

It is definitely a Niantic-driven mission for sure. But I will say it’s something that we on the game team also feel very passionate about as well. And I would be remiss if through this transaction, Pokémon Go became Pokémon Stay at Home. We still want this game to be something that at its core encourages players to go outside and explore the world and create those real-world social connections because I think that truly is what makes this game unique and as valuable as it is to a company like Scopely. So I wouldn’t expect any changes on that front anytime soon because that’s a mission that we’re hoping to carry along with us, even through this new ownership.

I saw that Pokémon Go senior VP Ed Wu implied that even in-person community events like Safari Zone and Go Fest will continue as they are.

It’s totally true. The two things that I heard time and time again through the Scopely leadership that I’ve had a chance to chat with is, number one, how impressed they’ve been with our ability to build such strong and passionate communities. But number two, how blown away they’ve been at what we’ve created in terms of our live event experiences. That’s something that no other game in the industry really does, and it’s an area that if anything, they want us to double down on and grow in the future. So first and foremost, all of what we’ve announced for Pokémon Go Fest this summer, that’s all still happening. And then beyond that, if anything, what I would say is expect maybe even bigger and better live events from us and maybe in even more locations in the future.

One of the other things I’d seen people say and wanted to address was what seemed to be a bit of a reassurance with players that no matter what Scopely may do with Pokémon Go, that at the end of the day, The Pokémon Company has guardrails set up to protect its players and protect its brand. Can you address what TPC’s role is in a situation like this and how they have oversight over the game?

Yeah. Well, again, not to get too into the business side of things, but The Pokémon Company has always been a part of the Niantic board ever since we spun out from Google. They’ve been walking side by side with us through every step along the way and have been very supportive of this Scopely acquisition. And so we would not be able to make a transaction like this without The Pokémon Company being on board, and they’re going to continue to be absolutely valuable partners for us as we continue to build great and authentic Pokémon experiences for Pokémon Go. 

Is there anything else that you think that people are misunderstanding or over-panicking about as it relates to this deal?

The thing that I really want to reiterate to folks is the team that has been building Pokémon Go over all of these years, everybody’s coming along for the ride if they want to. Of course, if someone doesn’t want to come along, nobody’s forcing anybody to come. And so that was something that was not only important to us, it is really important to Scopely as well. They wanted to make sure that there was true continuity here and that the operational aspects of this game did not degrade as a part of this transaction. And so that’s really important to me. We have such an incredible team working on Pokémon Go, and I would not want to continue operating this game if it meant that I didn’t get to work with the same amazing people that I’ve been able to for years and years. 

In a situation like this, where do you get most of your feedback on the game from? What’s coming into you the most and how do you process all that?

We leverage lots of sources for feedback. I’m personally reading things that I see online and whatnot, but I also talk to folks in my local community and I’ll catch up with people at Go Fest, but my own personal sort of processing of feedback aside, we also have a robust user research arm in the company. And so we’re constantly serving players and pulling not just quantitative feedback, but qualitative feedback as well, because any source of information can come with its own inherent biases, and we really want to be able to cut through that and sample a broad range of players.

We’re coming up on a decade of Pokémon Go. In light of this big change happening, what are the things that stand out to you the most as to how the game has changed, the things that you’ve learned as a team, and what you want to kind of carry forward into — this is scary to say — the next decade of Pokémon Go? 

So you might not know this, but I’ve been spearheading our 10-year anniversary projects, so that’s been a big part of my day to day for the past one and a half, two years or so. We’ve been planning on this for a long time, so I really want to make sure that next year is as big of a celebratory moment as possible for Pokémon Go. And as you probably know, it’s also the 30-year anniversary for Pokémon as a brand. So I think next year as a Pokémon fan, you are going to have just the best year of all time. So I cannot wait for folks to see what we all have planned in terms of these past 10 years compared to the next 10 years. 

I often look back at the announcement trailer for Pokémon Go. In many ways, that signaled what the future of this game might look like. If you look back on the trailer today, you’ll find that a lot of the promises we made back in 2016 we’ve delivered on. So I’m very interested in, if we were to create another, maybe not a launch trailer, but a next-10-years trailer, what might that look like and how can we excite and inspire players for another decade of this fantastic experience? Nothing specific to share on that front, but we as a team are really thinking about that. We look at Pokémon Go as a forever game, as we’ve said before, and I’m happy to share that Scopely also looks at Pokémon Go and all of their franchises as forever products. That’s another area where I feel like there’s just such great synergy between the two groups, and I have all the confidence that Scopely is going to invest in the long-term success of Pokémon Go and not just what’s going to be good for next month.

Finally, with this move to Scopely, does this get us any closer to getting Caterpie in a cowboy hat in Pokémon Go?

Nothing to share on that front, unfortunately. What, cowboy hat Snorlax wasn’t enough for folks? We have to put it on more Pokémon?