Pokemon GO Creator Talks Future of AR Gaming on Mobile
John Hanke, CEO of Pokemon GO developer Niantic, talks about the future of augmented reality and its role in video games at the GamesBeat Summit on Monday.
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At the GamesBeat Summit on Monday, Niantic CEO John Hanke talked about his ambitions for augmented reality gaming during a session focused on how science fiction inspires today’s communications and entertainment creators.
Niantic is best known for the global phenomenon Pokemon GO, which uses augmented reality as a core concept. The game has changed a lot since then, with the addition of new Pokemon and features like in-game events, but the contribution of AR to the player experience has always been at its core.
Hanke is a sci-fi enthusiast, and certainly is no stranger to experimenting with new technology. He was the creator of the tech that became Google Earth, after all. He then started Niantic within Google in 2010 to create a new kind of location-based game. And out of Niantic eventually came Pokemon Go.
After working on Pokemon GO, Hanke looks forward to the possibilities AR and science fiction could bring to video games in the future.
“Sci-fi is a great source of inspiration and ideas,” Hanke said. He then recalled reading William Gibson’s book about a cyber-centric future when he first embarked on his career in the early internet. “It was predicting the future of the industry I was working in.”
Hanke also said he is “investing heavily in the AR cloud.” Augmented reality involves the integration of digital information with the physical environment in real-time and the AR cloud is essentially a future in which AR experiences are tied to specific locations. Think Pokemon GO, but on a much more massive scale.
During the session at GamesBeat, Hanke asked the audience to imagine going to a coffee shop, sitting down at a table, and being joined by an AR quest-giver. These virtual characters are shared, but they might give different quests to different people. In the AR cloud, a digital world overlays the real world.
Hanke predicted that video games will be leaders and pioneers of the AR cloud. “It feels really natural,” he said. “Gamers are willing to put up with some glitches and imperfections in new technologies, which makes gaming a great frontier to try new ideas.”
Augmented reality has the potential to completely revolutionize the way people interact with and experience the world. Even through games like Pokemon GO, players can make a huge impact on the world around them through the game’s upcoming Earth Day Event.
This event will take place on April 22 and is described as “a series of events that will take place across locations around the world.” This event follows the principles of Earth Day and will be hosted by Niantic and local non-governmental organizations. Players will be encouraged to gather garbage and debris in public spaces in order to unlock special in-game rewards. It would seem Hanke is already making the AR cloud a reality, little by little.
Pokemon GO is available now on Android and iOS devices.
Source: Polygon
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