Disastrous 'Pokemon Go' Event Leads To Mass Refunds (techcrunch.com)

thegarbz writes: A Pokemon Go Fest hosted in Chicago and attended by between 15-20,000 people has ended in disaster. The event was plagued by logistical issues resulting in 3+ hour long delays getting into Chicago's Grant Park... Those people who were lucky enough to get into the paid event were greeted with a completely overloaded cell network unable to cope with the number of people trying to get online at the same time. The occasional person who was able to connect experienced a never ending string of game-breaking bugs when attempting to catch the rare Pokemon created specifically for this event.
Gaming company Niantic finally just gave a rare Pokemon Go character to everyone who attended -- though one attendee still called it a "horrible, terrible day." The Kansas City Star reported some people had paid as much as $400 for their tickets -- which had sold out within minutes -- and that some attendees had even started lining up for the event at 6 a.m.

Comments

Capacity planning

[djinn6]

You'd think after running into trouble with unexpectedly high volumes when they launched the game, they'd learn a thing or two about capacity planning. And in this case, they knew exactly how many people were coming and what they'll be doing once here.

I wouldn't ever go to a Pokemon Go event, but if I did, I'd be pissed too.

Re:Capacity planning

[Dan East]

Yes, but they are a software company, not an ISP / cell carrier. They obviously did not consider the fact that the existing cellular networks could not handle that many customers in one small area accessing high bandwidth resources at the same time. Had they alerted the carriers, the carriers could have set up temporary mobile cells for the event, and / or Niantic could have set up their own free Wifi hotspots for the attendees.

Either way, this was a very, very expensive way for them to learn about these kinds of connectivity logistics.

Re:Capacity planning

[adolf]

Are software companies somehow immune from hiring competent event planners?

Re:Capacity planning

[whoever57]

In my humble opinion, they are a bunch of shits.

I tried to help some nuns by getting Niantic to delist some Pokemon Go places on the convent's private grounds (at the request of the nuns).

There was construction going on at the time. Despite uploading photos of the construction, showing that the area was dangerous, despite uploading photos of signs and fencing indicating that the area was private, Niantic would not remove the stops from the convent grounds.

Anyone who gets hurt playing Pokemon Go should sue Niantic, because there is a likelihood that Niantic has already been told that the area is dangerous.

Re:Capacity planning

[adolf]

Competent in...planning events?

Events need to have things. Bathrooms, for instance: Someone needs to figure out how many porta johns to rent. Figuring out the quantity of things like is the job of an event planner.

This event needed bandwidth and none was provided. That's a pretty gnarly failure, and being a "software company" instead of some other type of company does not excuse this guffaw.

tl;dr, this is like organizing an Oktoberfest event and forgetting to bring beer.

Re:Capacity planning

[Gussington]

An experienced event planner would likely have made the situation worse. At a typical event, maybe 10-20% are on their cell at any time, mostly using low bandwidth voice and text.

What is this 2008? Anyone involved with any sort of event in the last 5 years knows that 99% of the crowd will be on Snapchat, FB, Twitter, Whatsapp, WeChat, Telegram, Viber, Maps, Uber etc It's all data these days, has been for years.

Re:Capacity planning

[Gussington]

Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before

Ok just stop. Have you heard of the Olympics, or any of the thousands of sporting or music events that happen every week somewhere in the world that have more than 20000 people all snapchatting, facebooking, twittering etc? I was doing this in 2010 and 3G (at the time) was on the same list as power, water, toilets and transport. This is a massive fail for a company that's primary product relies on a cellular network to function.

Re:Capacity planning

[tlhIngan]

Competent in what? Precisely what kind of event has taken place before where 20000 people simultaneously need to use data from the same area. It's easy from the IT sidelines to see the obvious, but given an event with these requirements hasn't happened before, just how were a bunch of "competent event planners" (I hear that's a uni degree now) supposed to know the what they don't know without precedence?

Practically every event ever nowadays. A stadium can hold 20,000+ people easily, and people love to tweet and snapchat and facebook and everything else. And there will be at least 10% of the people who are streaming video and audio commentary during the game, while everything else is bursty.

In fact, we had several festivals already. Not big ones, but since it was aimed at the millennial crowd, there were CoWs (Cells on Wheels) set up around the perimeter. These CoWs are miniature cell towers meant to cover a small area that's likely to have a high density of cellphones. They typically backhaul onto either a dedicated link (if one was put in during construction - so sites like stadiums and arenas and parks will have them) or via a microwave link to a regular cell tower.

All it takes is an event planner calling it in and the big carriers will truck in a CoW with advance notice and set it up. You tell them how many people are there and they'll estimate the number of units and type to bring in (they may bring in more than one and backhaul onto the one with a dedicated link).

This is not new - it's been around a few years and you'll often see them at stadiums until they set up local repeaters inside.

Meaning of "disaster"

[PopeRatzo]

I'm very disappointed in this story. A flaming airship crashing into a crowd of 10,000 people is a disaster, not the failure to catch a rare pokemon.

To be honest, I was hoping for the former.

Re:Sigh.

[Scutter]

Must be pretty easy to see them all from your high horse.

How is this event any different from, say, Comic-Con or any other fan fest? Just because it's a video game you don't happen to like? Newsflash: People like enjoying their hobbies and sometimes that involves paying money to do things related to it.