Niantic boss John Hanke was interviewed on the anniversary of Pokemon Go. John Hanke from [email protected] about geolocation services, Ingress, Field Trip and wearable computers How many users does Ingress now have?
Exactly one year ago, the game Pokemon Go began its journey around the world, arranging an unprecedented summer vacation for millions of players in the augmented reality world inside the screens of their mobile devices.
Since then, Pokémon Go has changed a lot: there are new monsters, new features and in-game events, and in recent times- joint (team) raids. However, all the same, even now, after a year of improvements and improvements, the game still has many shortcomings: first of all, in terms of battles with players and the enemy, as well as the possibility of trading monsters, although Niantic has long assured that both of these functions are in active development.
On the eve of the game's official anniversary, Niantic CEO John Hanke spoke about Pokémon Go's current status. In the interview, literally all issues were raised, from the ongoing war between developers and cheaters, to the importance of communication with players, as well as the reasons for the protracted development of long-awaited features ...
Now that you are celebrating the first anniversary of your project, how can you assess its status?
Well, it has been a great year. We feel incredible gratitude for everything that happened. We found ourselves in a position where we can really invest in our team much more resources than we could have expected. We've been pretty careful when hiring people, however, and are finally seeing the fruits of it: players take to the streets, communicate with each other through truly collaborative social gameplay.
Therefore, we are very happy with the first year after the release of the game. How it developed, becoming more and more popular throughout the summer in Chicago, Yokohama, and then in Europe. It was great to have this game released there and fix some of the bugs we were even teased about and that we really didn't like but was left uncorrected before we released the first release of the game. But we are very pleased that the game was released exactly in June and received positive feedback.
If you remember that first game and compare it to what it is now, how many differences will you see?
Due to the incredible success of Pokémon Go, we had to work a lot on it, rebuild and rebuild the infrastructure in order to keep the project on the scale it has reached. We were fortunate enough to launch it massively, achieving tremendous success, popularity and recognition with a lot more users than we could even imagine. We even had to redirect a significant part of the engineering team to work on the infrastructure, postponing the development of new game features, such as player battles with each other or trading monsters. This pushed back their release dates by at least six months.
On the other hand, we are Pokémon Go Plus, a game that has become a kind of completion of another development cycle. It was great to have this experience. We have added two types of new monsters, additionally completing our operational team. There were a lot of things that we did without even planning them in advance, and a lot of those that we never had time to implement.
Do you think that you had the opportunity to prepare in advance for the difficulties that arose, given how many people installed the game almost immediately?
I think it would be possible, but for this you must be, probably, a complete madman or a real adventurer. You could get all the work done by planning ahead and predicting the future of the project. But it would be very difficult to know all the time when you are doing everything right. I think we faced a pretty good compromise in that we were able to do our job in parallel and solve problems as they came, so that in theory the development of the game could constantly scale. However, we got an order of magnitude more different problems than we could imagine. And even being ready for them, many situations for us turned out to be completely unpredictable. It was very bad for a "working compromise".
When you look back over the past 12 months, are there things that you would have done differently, with the perspectives and opportunities that you have now?
Of course, if we could predict the future, then at that time we would have assembled a much larger team working on the product so that we have even more features that we wanted to implement in the first release of the game. We had to postpone some planned features, limit the number of gims and raids, and much more, which we planned to complete at least in the first months after the launch of the game. But we had a lot of money, and we did what we thought was reasonable.
How about communications? I wish you weren't talking about things like PvP and trading, given that they are still a long way off.
Well, if we didn't have to divert resources into infrastructure and functions, I would assume that some of these things would have appeared much earlier. I'm not sure ... If we had known in advance that we would have such delays, we would not have become too early and talked so much about them. It's very important, though, for people to know that you don't forget about these things and keep working on them, even if you don't manage to release them when planned.
I think that early in the collaboration between us and Pokémon and Nintendo, there was no real understanding of how to communicate with players on forums such as Reddit, Twitter and other social networking platforms. During the development of our previous game, Ingress, we were able to communicate closely and openly with the players, in a completely different way from the beginning of work on Pokémon Go, because it was kind of a new experience for our partners. I think that over time we have become much more open, and it really helped to make the gaming community a lot happier, thanks to the fact that we communicate a lot and talk more about what is happening inside the project.
Can you share a bit about some of the times you've had to change your plans based on the feedback you've received?
There are features that were not originally included in the game and appeared only thanks to constant two-way feedback from players. Gym icons, the overall functionality of the system, is something that has emerged and developed solely through our dialogue with users. The changes we've made to Gym Battles have made them more dynamic and accessible to low-level players.
Did you expect to spend how much effort fighting cheaters? There seems to be news every week of yet another cheating on players.
We've had some experience cheating with Ingress. We knew there would be problems with players creating fake customers. But I don't think we could have expected the extent to which players would start cheating. The thing is, Ingress's success was not that great. As a result, due to the scale of the popularity of Pokémon Go, there were even real commercial structures that offered services to upgrade your account or other similar things and at the same time earned real money. Therefore, they themselves invested significant resources in developing opportunities for cheating. We really didn't expect the scale of commercial fraud to be a real challenge for the game to be fair for everyone.
From the outside, it definitely seems like you're putting in considerable effort to combat this.
Yes, certain resources are indeed allocated for this, but these are not the people who are involved in the work on the main functionality of the game. There is a separate part of the team for this, and it is not nearly as big as it might seem.
What update or change do you think you have made to the game that really keeps players coming back to it?
If I had to choose one thing, I would call a global change in the structure of gims and raids. This is a really new mechanism that gives people the motivation to keep playing, develop their monsters, appear regularly and be as active as possible in the game. Of course, the very process of collecting and developing monsters, which was originally the basis of Pokemon Go, is still the main reason for the appearance of new users in the game, but this innovation (in gyms and raids) allows Pokemon Go to remain popular for players who have reached a certain level. I think this is the most important innovation, and it is also designed to stimulate cooperative play, which is the core of our mission.
John Hanke
John Hanke is the founder and CEO of Keyhole, Inc. , which was acquired by Google in 2004 and whose flagship product was renamed to Google Earth. Hanke is currently the director of Google Earth & Google Maps.
Hanke received his bachelor "s degree (Plan II Honors) from the University of Texas, Austin and his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. Prior to business school, he worked in" foreign affairs " , according to his bio, for an unspecified branch of the US Government in Washington, DC, Myanmar and Indonesia. Upon Graduation, he subsequently helped start two successful entertainment software companies, Archetype Interactive and Big Network.
External links
* [ http://www.keyhole.com/body.php?h=about Keyhole, Inc Company Information ]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
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Infobox University name = The Haas School of Business motto = Leading Through Innovation established = 1898 type = Public dean = Richard Lyons city = Berkeley state = California country = USA website = where are the control buttons? How do you make the character move? " - Hanke told The Independent. Then it dawned on them that they had to turn on the GPS and move themselves so that your character began to move. True, this was not without a scam. Programs have been written that tell the game the wrong GPS coordinates. With their help, it was possible to travel around the city without leaving the apartment, like on Google Earth. But if the deception was revealed, the lazy person was banned.
When he got to the place, the player looked through the smartphone's camera, and the program drew the image of the portal to the picture. Then the player made a note in the smartphone about his capture. The capture rules were different, sometimes it was necessary to unite in groups for this.
Resource Pocket Gamer claims that one advanced Ingress gamer covered 100,000 miles (about 161,000 km) while playing in the real world. There was a case when a gamer was hired by a private jet so that he could get to a remote portal and connect it to a portal in his hometown - his fellow gamers chipped in on the flight (“Even I was amazed,” admits Hanke). Hanke shared stories of climbing the mountain to get to the portal, and getting to know each other and getting married through the game. As with Pokemon Go, this was one of the goals: to get people out of their home computers on the streets and to push them into communication in the real world.
Ingress was launched in beta in November 2012. In early 2013, Hanke realized that players were assigning diversions - coming together in the real world. They had an idea to make these meetings part of the game, writes The Independent. In February 2013, such a gathering, formalized as a mission in the game, was assigned on the territory of the Cahokia Historic Site, a group of 109 North American Indian mounds in the state of Illinois. As luck would have it, the day turned out to be cold and rainy, and it was not very close to the mounds from the city. The creators of the game decided that the meeting had failed. Imagine their surprise when about 60 people spent almost the whole day running between the mounds and playing Ingress. Over time, such events began to gather thousands of crowds not only in the United States, but also in Japan and Spain.
Ingress players were given the opportunity to propose portals themselves. The main criterion was that it had to be a crowded, remarkable or beautiful place. Hanke did not take into account one thing - in the first two years alone, the game was downloaded 8 million times. So his team received about 15 million applications for portal sites. “We have approved about 5 million of them worldwide,” Hanke told Mashable. Last year, Niantic employed 41 people, they were physically unable to cope with the flow of proposals and removed the opportunity to make an application from the game. But the network of portals and statistics of player movements played an extremely important role in another project - based on this information, the next game, Pokemon Go, was built.
Pokémon are coming
Pokemon Go was born out of a joke. In 2014, on April 1, April Fools' Day, Google and the Pokemon Company teamed up, hid Pokemon in different places on the mobile version of Google Maps and invited users to find them. The success of the action made Hanke think. The Pokemon rights are owned by The Pokemon Company, a joint venture equally owned by Pokemon game developer Game Freak, toy maker Creatures, and Nintendo. Hanke went to negotiate with The Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekatsu Ishihara about a new game with his animals and augmented reality, and it was unexpectedly revealed that Ishihara and his wife are passionate Ingress players. Their heroes are more pumped than the character of Hanke himself. This greatly facilitated the negotiations.
Why Hanke named his startup Niantic Labs
Hanke chose a name for the startup that would show that there are many interesting things hidden around us, says The Mercury News. Niantic is the name of a whaling schooner launched in 1832. In 1849, she was unlucky enough to sail to California in the midst of the gold rush. Almost the entire crew fled from the ship to the gold mines. It was not possible to find new sailors, so the ship was dragged ashore and converted into a hotel. It was a common practice then. The hotel burned several times, then it was rebuilt again, the cultural layer increased - and over time, the ship literally grew into the street. His remains were stumbled upon in 1978 while digging a pit next to the 260-meter Transamerica skyscraper in San Francisco.
In 2015, there was another important event for the developer. Google has conceived a reorganization of its business into the Alphabet holding, which ended in October last year. The various directions were split into separate companies. Google previously developed services like Google Maps as a horizontal, low-level platform, Hanke complained to Business Insider. In other words, Niantic had no right to collaborate with other developers if their joint product used Google developments. Now he was free.
In November 2015, Niantic held a Series A funding round, raising $ 20 million from the Pokemon Company Group, Google and Nintendo. “We haven't gone far from the nest. We're just five minutes away, ”Hanke told VentureBeat. “But it’s very important for us that we are outside the Google mother ship. This is our universe "
In February of this year, Niantic received another $ 5 million in investment from Fuji Television Corporation's venture capital fund and Alsop Louie Fund. Not only money was important, but also knowledge. The Japanese broadcaster is good at Asian marketing. And Alsop Louie founder Louis Gilman is a branding specialist, explained to Hanke on the Niantic blog. He knows Gilman firsthand - he was the co-founder and first CEO of the In-Q-Tel fund to invest in Keyhole.
But working with Gilman paved the way for conspiracy theorists. In-Q-Tel works for the CIA, they grumble. Thanks to Google Maps, American intelligence captured our streets, but could not look inside the buildings. Games like Ingress and Pokemon Go solved this problem. Now it is enough to send a rare Pokemon to the desired room - and the online broadcast is ready.
Three Pokemon Challenges
In addition to the commercial game, Pokemon Go has three important tasks, writes Business Insider.
The first is physical training. A variety of fitness apps leave an aftertaste like you're an athlete who screwed up at the Olympics, Hanke sneers. Pokemon Go does not insist that you have to run so many kilometers or burn so many calories, otherwise you will lose. On the contrary, the game offers a tasty prize, a Pokemon, if you still gather your strength. The game has such a quest: find an egg and walk a certain distance with it. Then a Pokemon will hatch out of it.
The second is to look at the world with a new look. Many points in the game are tied to historical or just beautiful places, so even your hometown can be rediscovered.
Finally, the game sets people up to communicate. In pursuit of Pokémon or in the stadiums where they are trained, people meet in the real world. And at a certain stage, according to the terms of the game, they are simply forced to unite in order to win.
The game itself consists of several parts. First, you look for and catch Pokémon. To do this, you need to throw a virtual ball at them. Pokemon can be everywhere, one was recently found on the desktop of a Vedomosti employee. But most of them are in places where players gather (for example, near the Yandex office) and near the so-called Pokestops. These are points where players can replenish their supply of balls and find other useful virtual items. After a certain level, players can put their Pokémon in fights on special sites, and then fight the team against the team. The locations of these actions were determined precisely thanks to the Ingress portals. “For two and a half years, people have been visiting places where, in their opinion, it is more convenient to play Ingress, so there are quite remote locations among them. There are portals in Antarctica and at the North Pole, ”Hanke stated in an interview with Lazygamer.net.
But mixing the game with the real world creates some difficulties, Hanke admits in The Time: “Our instructions for players are not only about how to play, but also the need to comply with the law and respect private property, and communicate politely with other users. The latter we try to inspire our users in all ways. The design of the product itself is specifically tailored for this. This is not a game about how to beat someone. The gameplay (scenario of a computer game. - Vedomosti) is friendly and, I think, promotes positive social interaction. "
Overwhelming interest
“We counted on success and prepared the infrastructure for this. But, to be honest, they were slightly overwhelmed by the scale of interest, - Hanke told The Time. "We are now trying to maintain the infrastructure so that it can cope with the influx of people who want to play." A Russian gamer complained to Vedomosti that as soon as morning comes in the US, there are problems with access to the game server.
Pokemon Go is a free game, but for money, users can simplify their lives by purchasing services and artifacts, for example, to speed up the leveling of monsters. A similar strategy was used by King Digital, which released the hit for smartphones Candy Crush in 2012, writes FT. In 2013, she admitted that 96% of users did not pay a cent. True, the remaining 4% allowed to show such financial results that in 2015 King Digital was sold to Activision Blizzard, the producer of World of Warcraft, for $ 5.9 billion.
In both Ingress and Pokemon Go, for a certain amount, any company can make their store or office a place for a portal and the appearance of rare Pokemon. Ingress's partners are McDonald’s, telecommunications and media corporation SoftBank, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. When Pokémon appear in Russia, this list, apparently, will include domestic companies.
John Hanke is the CEO of Niantic Labs, the company that makes Pokemon Go. (Google Plus)
The company’s CEO is John Hanke, a man who has had plenty of experience with online games and with mapping programs. Though he has created some brilliant pieces of software, it has taken about 20 years for Hanke to be widely recognized for his creations.
Here’s everything you need to know about John Hanke, creator of Pokemon go.
1. He Graduated From the University of California, Berkeley
Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke, MBA 96How a love of games and a Berkeley MBA helped John Hanke map the world: Hanke, MBA 96, co-founded Keyhole, the startup that became Google Earth, and most recently launched and leads Google "s Niantic Labs. Watch full video: https : //youtu.be/UzqEMp12teQ 2016-07-12T23: 39: 04.000Z
John Hanke grew up in Texas, and he received his bachelor's degree from University of Texas at Austin.
From there, he attended the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1996 with an MBA.
Since 2008, Hanke has been an Haas School Executive Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, according to the school's website.
2. He Helped Create Google Earth
John Hanke helped developed software that eventually became Google Earth. (Google play)
The idea of Pokemon go actually popped up a few years ago when Google, as an April Fool's Day joke, announced a fictional product that involved catching Pokemon using Google Maps... That isn’t the only way that the game has ties to Google, though; the creator previously worked for the company.
In 2001, Hanke founded the startup Keyhole, which created a program called Earth Viewer. This allowed users to explore the globe using satellites and 3D mapping technology. It gained some notoriety when it began to be used by news broadcasts, and in 2004, the company was bought by Google for $ 35 million. Earth Viewer was later renamed Google Earth.
Hanke says he and his team brought this experience to Pokemon go.
“A lot of us worked on Google Maps and Google Earth for many, many years, so we want the mapping to be good,” he told Mashable.
3. He Worked on The First MMORPG
Meridan 59 was the first major MMORPG. (Meridan59.com)
Pokemon go was not Hanke's first experience with large online gaming. In fact, he helped create the first commercial Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, Meridan 59, which was released on PC in 1996. It was a sword and sorcery game which required players to pay a monthly fee, as is the case with modern MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.
4. He Created Ingress, Another Augmented Reality Game
Similar to Pokemon Go, Ingress is an online game that users real-world locations. (Ingress)
Pokemon go is in some ways an evolution of another game that John Hanke created. Ingress, released in 2012, is a science-fiction mobile game in which players must work together to take control of “portals,” which are based on real-life locations. These portals are essentially the equivalent of Poke Stops. It's a bit more complicated than Pokemon Go, but it follows a similar premise of basing its map on actual places and on having players join teams and all work towards a goal.
Hanke says that both games are so fun and popular as a direct result of the fact that they’re so social.
“That social organization is exactly the same dynamic here. We saw it in Ingress and we’re seeing it in Pokémon go, it's just in the real world, ”Hanke said.” So instead of getting together with a bunch of avatars in a virtual guild hall, you're getting together with your friends, meeting and going out together, or meeting up with them some place in the city. It just blends in with real life, which makes it infinitely more interesting to me than something that’s occurring only in this virtual space. Because it's real. Real friendships are forming. "
Ingress is not just a thing of the past, either. It’s still played in 200 countries around the world, and a game event recently held in Japan saw over 10,000 participants, according to Time.
Although everyone is now falling in love with Pokemon Go, Hanke says that when Ingress first came out, a lot of people were confused about the phenomenon. He saw it as an extremely positive thing for players.
Hanke explained, “When journalists reach out to the community and ask‘ Why are you playing this game? Why are you doing this? Is it weird that people are out in the middle of the night? ’The response is,‘ It’s amazing, it’s changed my life. I’ve met so many new people, I’m seeing the world in a completely different way. I’m walking three miles a day and I was housebound and watching TV all day before I started playing this game. ’It’s positive story after story.”
5. He Says Augmented Reality Is the Future, Not Virtual Reality
John Hanke says that augmented reality games like Pokemon Go are the future. (Twitter / John Hanke)
Companies like Google and Sony are hard at work on virtual reality systems like the Oculus Rift. But Hanke believes that games in the same vein as Pokemon Go, not these virtual reality headsets, are the future. He said in an interview that he doesn’t think people are built to sit in dark rooms with electronics on their head, noting that he’d rather have them go outside and interact with one another.
He went on to say that while VR replaces the real world with fantasy, augmented reality seeks to add to the real world.
“It’s not something that completely replaces them with a fantasy experience,” he said. “You see that with Pokemon go... There’s of course this fantastical Pokémon element, but really it’s enhancing your experience of going out for walk or doing something with friends. "
