Niantic recently announced that they’re partnering with the Knight Foundation. Knight Foundation is organising a series of events called Open Street events that empower local communities and the PokéWalk was just on of the activities there.
The first event that came out of this partnership was the Charlotte PokéWalk, held yesterday in Charlotte (North Carolina, US).
DEU5exPIKACHU, a Silph Road user, published a lengthy story describing the event and what was happening. Despite his low expectations, the event still managed to disappoint him, as the rewards they received were cheap-o-plastic team stickers (picture below).
The event announcement said that the following will happen:
- participants will receive “special in-game rewards”
- “more frequent appearance of some Pokémon” will occur along the route
- PokéStops along the route will be lured
Let’s see how it all went down.
Event report
There were 16 stops that players had to visit along the walk, marked with blue Pokéball logos stencils on the ground. The goal of the event was to snap a picture with your phone of each of the 16 stops, but not in game, just a picture of the blue stencil and the sign.
In other words, you didn’t have to play Pokémon GO or to have the app installed to participate in the event. All of the PokéStops along the route had active Lures, but nothing special spawned.
The redditor described the trail as engaging, but nothing special — it was just one of the activities among the many Open Street events. On the way back, they started guessing what the award might be:
My GUESS was that we’d receive a promo code for a shiny Bulbasaur since they were pictured on all the signs and the grass event was going on. I thought that would be pretty sweet and worth the effort. It could have been something they gave to event attendees as an exclusive reward, maybe for a couple of weeks, before they release it “into the wild” for everyone else. It wasn’t like they were just handing out Mewtwo or something.
The prizes were given out by “a guy in a Pikachu hat” who didn’t even bother to check their phones. He didn’t give them any promo codes. He didn’t give them any lures or free items. He gave them two strips of stickers:
The redditor described their experience as “being pretty bummed” with the rewards and spawns. The Open Street event was pretty cool, with lots of activities for kids and adults alike, free water and snacks (bananas).
All in all, the event was cool but there were some issues for the attendees. The activity didn’t actually involve anything within the game, the information that was given out by Niantic was misleading and the rewards were disappointing.
The last comment that attendees had summarises it perfectly:
Overall, the event was cool. I had fun, although I was disappointed with the reward. I would recommend attending a similar event in the future if they hold one hear you, but don’t go to too much trouble.
