Pokémon Go is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The game, which famously uses GPS and augmented reality to let you discover, catch, and battle virtual monsters in real-world locations, took the world by storm in 2016. Blurring the line between mainstream and niche gaming interest, Pokémon Go has retained a lot of popularity in the interceding 10 years since it launched, with a recent New York event even managing to take over Times Square – a fate promised in the game’s initial launch trailer a whole decade ago.
There have been a few bumps in the road for the game, though, and the last few years have seen some major behind-the-scenes changes. Following developer Niantic’s $3.5 billion sale of its gaming portfolio to Scopely, the development team officially rebranded as Scopely Explore. Concerned fans quickly began petitioning the new owners of the beloved app to keep changes minimal, with particularly vocal players floating concerns about aggressive monetisation tactics (such as paywalls and pay-to-win mechanics). The new caretakers of the app promised, however, that there would not be any major changes to the game, and a Niantic spokesperson quickly came out to say “[the development team] will be able keep doing what [they’ve] been doing since the beginning”.
One of the staff that has been at the company a while is Michael Steranka – now vice president of product at Scopely (previously senior director of product at Pokémon Go, a position he held for over eight years). Steranka, then, is a veteran of Pokémon Go, and has been with the title through the various changes that have occurred in terms of its ownership and its direction. At New York’s big anniversary event, our own guides editor Lottie Lynn caught up with Steranka and asked about the past, present, and future of the app – and how what has come before can shape where Pokémon Go may go next.
“Yeah, I would say we’ve been thinking about the next 10 years of Pokémon Go for the past several years, and we have a lot of fun ideas that we want to bring to life,” he teases. “There are three of the focus areas that I’d like to share, however. Firstly, Pokémon Go will always start with community, and so while our community ambassador program has been growing rapidly – and we’ve been seeing in-person communities expand quite a lot over time – we still feel like there’s more that we can do there, and in particular, we have our eyes set on on the gyms feature in the game.”
More events like New York’s 10th anniversary festival are likely on the cards.
Steranka notes that gyms have been unchanged in the game for quite a while now. Battling for control over a gym, and placing your prized Pokémon within them, is a core part of the game’s loop – yet there has been very little iteration to how the mechanic works more-or-less since they were first introduced. “There’s untapped potential in gyms, and I think they can bring communities together in a way that you’ve never experienced before in Pokémon Go,” hints Steranka.
“So that’s number one. Number two; we’re also really focused on bringing more core memories to people, whether that’s in the form of live events or Unity Raids or upcoming features. We really think that Pokémon Go has the unique capability to combine Pokémon with places and people – and all of that together makes the key ingredients for core memories. And so we want to enable more core memories, and we also want to celebrate more core memories in the game over the next 10 years.”
This feels fairly vague, but we can expect to see more live events and more large activations for Pokémon Go in the coming months, I think: we know events like Community Days, City Safaris, GO Fests, GO Tours, and more besides make up a large portion of the Pokémon Go calendar. By my count, there are 21 real-life events scheduled for 2026 by Scopely Explore, and I am sure there are more virtual and real-life dates to come, too. I can’t help but note that Steranka used to be a community manager for Smogon, too: a Pokémon website and community specialising in the art of competitive battling in the main series. Here, he drove initiatives to bring more people to the site, and teach more people how to play; clear evidence that he knows just how important community and co-operation are to Pokémon as a brand.
Virtual and in-person events have become essential to Pokémon Go’s identity.
It stands to reason that the developer is looking at IRL meet-ups as a large part of the game’s future; you routinely hear stories about couples meeting on such days, or friend groups taking to their local cities in cosplay, or with baked goods, ready to share with other eager Pokémon trainers. It’s heart-warming (and something I’ve seen echoed myself with another Scopely Explore property: Monster Hunter Now).
“And then, lastly, we’ve really been thinking about what it means to be a multi-generational game,” concludes Steranka. “Again, these are all things that we feel are truly unique qualities about Pokémon Go, and one of them is the fact that now that it’s been out for 10 years, we’re seeing families that grew up with Pokémon Go together; playing as a family unit across three generations. And while that’s been something that has organically happened in the game, we want to actually be more intentional about how we can facilitate multi-generational play.”
I know one parent that has had two kids since becoming a Pokémon Go player, and they have struggled to bring their children along for the ride. Currently, they make do with sharing an account, but they have long craved a way to engage in a more genuine, game-level co-operative experience. It seems this is something Steranka and his team are looking into, at least.
It’s easy to see why Steranka and Scopely Explore want to keep the game alive: during the viral highs of the game’s 2016 launch, it commanded an eye-watering 32 million players per day. Current estimates place daily active users in the five- to six-million range (not a bad retention rate, by any metric!) with an estimated 40-50 minute daily active play time. This is a loyal, lucrative, and emotionally-invested audience. You simply need to head to any forum or social media site to see Pokémon Go players enthusiastically championing mechanics they want to see (or monetisation practices they’d like to see less of…).
Do Michael Steranka and his team have what it takes to survive another 10 years? The answers here might be light in specifics, but it seems the developers are hopeful, so let’s see if the players stick around for the changes that are being worked on right now.
