Pokémon Go may never re-create the widespread and deeply surreal obsession that surrounded its 2016 launch. But even without that pop culture spotlight, the game continues to thrive. Last year proved to be the game’s best to date for players.

Over the course of 2018, Niantic delivered long-promised franchise features like trading and PvP battles, established a must-play monthly event with Community Days, and loaded the game with compelling missions and entertaining promotions. It even delivered an excellent Pokémon Go Fest experience after the original crumbled under the weight of technical hitches. Last year’s myriad enhancements and additions restored a lot of faith in a game that, through 2017, seemed to be losing steam.

According to Niantic product manager Matt Slemon, the team now has largely fulfilled its original vision. What now, then? Niantic sees a future in which it further innovates with augmented reality and real-world gaming enhancements in Pokémon Go, rather than simply finding new ways to bring in long-established Pokémon franchise components. In an interview, Slemon reflected on the game’s biggest 2018 wins, recent and upcoming additions/changes, and Niantic’s vision for the future.

Past

In 2018, Niantic needed to accomplish two goals for Pokémon Go: Deliver on the original promise of the game, and then lay the groundwork for a new direction unique to Go —something upon which it can build in 2019 and beyond. Adding features like trading and PvP fulfilled the former objective, but the team wanted to do more than simply re-create classic Pokémon franchise features.

”Last year [we] had a pretty clear vision, where we in some ways wanted to close out what we thought was the original set of expectations around what Pokémon Go would be for players,” Slemon tells Polygon. “We really tried to keep a balance of completing out the Pokémon fantasy, so to speak, while still trying to keep Pokémon Go a special product.”

Pokémon Go’s monthly Community Day was one of last year’s most exciting additions. Every few weeks, there’s a special, brief window of time in which a certain type of Pokémon is especially prevalent, paired with other boosts and benefits to enrich the experience.

July’s Community Day, which featured the sunglass-rocking Squirtle from the memorable Squirtle Squad episode of the Pokémon anime, was one of the brightest highlights. And in August, during the Eevee-centric Community Day, hundreds of people congregated around a cluster of PokéStops in my town just north of Chicago, happily wandering a trail and playing the game in unison.

Pokémon Go may not feel like the world-dominating phenomenon that it was at launch in 2016, but at their best, the Community Days help recreate that sensation with eventful, communal stretches of play.

Slemon suggests that it’s “emotionally validating” to play a social game around other people, even if you’re not talking with them. “It feels good to be in the presence of other people who share the enthusiasm that you have,” he adds, “so creating occasions for people to be able to do that very easily is something that I think is a major strength for Pokémon Go.” And it’s no coincidence that it seems like more people are playing those days: Niantic sees a lot of lapsed players rejoin on Community Days to take part in the fun.

The Community Days are just a taste of what’s possible with Pokémon Go events. Despite the grim result of Pokémon Go Fest 2017, Niantic returned to Chicago in 2018 — and it was a great experience. Rather than cluster everyone into a condensed space, Pokémon Go Fest 2018 spanned a lengthy, open trail in the city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, with starting points on both ends of the path and plenty of things to see and do as players completed research missions. Niantic also worked with network carriers to boost capacity. Connection issues were infrequent and short-lived. It was a triumphant return after such a sour experience in 2017.

“In a lot of ways, Go Fest 2018 is the best example of a response to, ‘What did we take away from Go Fest 2017?’” says Slemon. “I think that’s a pattern that you can expect us not to walk away from. It’s something we really care about, because we think it’s something that is fundamentally important to the game’s identity and the player experience.”

Present

Pokémon Go’s first big addition for 2019 is Go Snapshot, an augmented reality feature that essentially elevates the game’s existing AR+ functionality by improving the visual effects and making it easier to snap photos whenever you please. Rather than only being able to take AR Pokémon photos during capture attempts, you can now choose any Pokémon in your bag at any time and drop it into your surroundings.

“This helps alleviate some of the randomness and the lack of control players feel sometimes,” Slemon says, by no longer making players choose between potentially capturing a Pokémon or just its photo. “There’s not an opportunity cost anymore,” he adds.

With improved shadow and dynamic lighting effects, including clever details like making Charmander’s tail a light source, Go Snapshot shows more of what Niantic is capable of when it comes to augmented reality experiences. And Slemon suggests that we’ll see more of that kind of enhanced tech within the game in future features.

Meanwhile, there are likely changes afoot for the Special Research missions, the light narrative campaigns that provide a series of objectives to complete over time. According to Slemon, last year’s initial missions were a bit overwhelming at times; Niantic plans to make future tasks less plentiful, but hopefully more memorable.

“We’re trying to figure out what the right amount of it is. Some of the special research we put out definitely sort of put some of our more casual players a bit underwater, in terms of we just sort of drowned them with research tasks,” says Slemon. “Our intent is to make it so the storylines aren’t just checklists; so you’re not blowing through four or five of these at the same time, and not even remembering which task goes to what quest or why.”

Future

Slemon suggests that Niantic has brought over as much of the core Pokémon experience as it planned to. Instead of looking for other familiar series features to port over to the mobile experience, he suggests that the studio will put more focus on using its AR and real-world expertise to explore new kinds of functionality in Pokémon Go.

“In a lot of ways, we think we’ve hit the point where our original launch trailer promise has been delivered,” he says. “It’s not entirely delivered — we’re expecting to have iterations, as we mentioned, with the PvP launch to the battle system feature, to allow people to have ways to compete more effectively, or find opponents easier. We expect small iterations to our existing features over time, as well.”

“But I think as we move forward, we’re going to start to see more features that are less traditional Pokémon features [that are] just sort of one-to-one moved over with the Pokémon Go spin,” he continues. “I think you’re going to see more features that are more about really showing what it means to be an AR real-world game, not just a Pokémon game. I think there will be an interesting set of stuff that we have for fans this year, and we’re excited to get that out there.”

After two and a half years, including a very strong 2018, Pokémon Go is thriving. Niantic is already moving onto other projects, with the location-based Harry Potter: Wizards Unite coming this year, and Slemon suggests that Niantic’s learnings from Pokémon Go will influence the way it makes decisions for future projects. As for Pokémon Go itself, the studio has a five-year plan — but it’s not written in permanent marker.

“We try to stay as agile as we can,” says Slemon. “We generally have longer-term plans, but the further out something is, the more it is subject to change. The goal is that we want to stay responsive: We don’t want to get locked in a situation where we’re committed to delivering something that’s no longer the right thing to deliver. Or an opportunity has appeared, either a cool piece of tech or a good suggestion internally has surfaced, and we want to be able to do it, but the timeline is inflexible.”

“We do look out to around five years, and we sort of have a long-term vision for what we’d like the game to look like in five years,” Slemon adds, “but we are very open still to finding better ideas along the way and pivoting the roadmap as necessary.”