“This is our universe. Niantic boss John Hanke gave an interview on the anniversary of Pokemon Go How many users does Ingress currently have?
A lot can be written about John Hanke, but more eloquently is the fact that this man was at the origins of the Google Earth project. Having completed work on it, he did not want to rest on his laurels, and created a startup within Google called Niantic Labs, which became famous not only in the world, but also in Ukraine thanks to the game Ingress. We have already written several times, it is an augmented reality game for Android users, in which two factions fight for dominance over portals, real objects in the world surrounding the players. Another, lesser known Niantic Labs project is called Field Trip, which is an augmented reality app for smartphones and Google Glass that aims to be a virtual tour guide for travelers. On this moment, both of these developments are at the beginning of their journey, and it may well be that in the future they will become no less popular than Google Earth. We were able to chat with John Hanke about his work, wearable computing, the future of location-based services, and, of course, Ingress and Field Trip.
You developed the product that is now the basis of Google Earth, how did you come up with the idea for its creation and how difficult was it to implement this project?
Google Earth evolved from the technologies used in those days by Silicon Graphics (SGI), which were complex graphics with high hardware requirements. They did some work on rendering the images. We were inspired by this and wanted to build a whole digital world to fill it with information. The idea itself came from science fiction, there is the author Neal Stephenson, he wrote the book “Avalanche”, which was very popular 10 years ago. What he described in the book also inspired us to create the Earth, so I would also acknowledge his contribution to our work. How difficult was it to complete this project? Very, very difficult. We created it in parts. Starting with small pieces, we developed the project within software and information. But before we joined Google, we didn't have access to the full data, and only after that we were able to significantly expand the backend of the product. We also received a lot more resources to get the global information you see on Google Earth today. After all, when we started our work, the coverage of Google Earth was quite limited, today you can explore the whole world, but this was not always the case.
In your opinion, are Google Earth and Google Maps moving in the right direction today?
I can only answer yes :) But seriously, these are great products that continue to evolve, becoming more detailed, complete, and also interactive. I love the fact that Google Maps and Google Earth have effectively been combined into one user experience. And this happened thanks to the evolution of web technologies such as WebGL, with which we can get 3D graphics directly in the browser.
From the perspective of the head of Google's experimental lab, what trends would you see in mobile location-based apps today?
In my opinion, the purpose of Google Earth and Google Maps was to create a foundation from which a new wave of companies could emerge with location-based products. For me, the most interesting are background geoservices for smartphones, which can provide information about your surroundings, more or less automatically. This is what we are doing in the Field Trip project for smartphones and Google Glass. It seems to me that this is an evolution from ordinary maps to informational, automatic services that teach the user about what is around, about history, architecture, art, and of course about establishments such as restaurants and bars.
What geolocation apps do you use?
Field Trip and Ingress are definitely at the top of my list, and I also use Google Maps and Google Sky. I used to use Foursquare, but it's been quite a while since I last used it. In addition, I think we can add Uber to this list, which also uses geolocation.
How often do you play Ingress?
Several times a day.
Google services and applications already actively use geolocation, do you think it can be used in all programs? For example, in Gmail, if I don’t want mail to arrive on my smartphone when I’m home after eight in the evening.
Yes, developers have experimented with these kinds of systems that turn certain services on and off depending on where you are, at home or at work. I think this is a very young field, there is still a lot that needs to be done for it. With Field Trip, for example, we're trying to provide the user with information not only about their surroundings, but also about things like apps that might be useful to the user in a particular location.
What is the main goal of developing Field Trip?
Generally speaking, Field Trip's goal is to help people find information they previously didn't know about the places where they live. I don't know how good Field Trip's coverage is in Ukraine, but one of the program features we've focused on is history learning. People can find out interesting information about the history of the places where they live, even if it is a small village or city. The main goal of Field Trip is to increase people's appreciation for the places they live and travel to, by helping them go beyond the common knowledge and see things that are hard to discover. It could be interesting story, architecture or art. We strive to be more than just another bar and restaurant guide, but to provide people with information that only locals would know. With Field Trip, we put a lot of effort into finding bloggers in different cities who are passionate about the places where they live. At this stage of product development, we have already managed to attract more than 150 such people, and almost as many more communicate with us. We want to bring their stories to Field Trip so that when you travel, you can feel like you know someone local, giving you interesting local information that no one else might know.
That is, you get information for Field Trip exclusively from real people, and not from services like Wikipedia?
Information comes to Field Trip from publishers, and each piece of this data is tied to a specific location. We've also created a WordPress plugin that makes it easier for bloggers to submit geolocation-based posts to us. In some cases, we partner with history book publishers who scan and provide geolocation data to become part of the Field Trip. So yes, we don't use Wikipedia.
With the proliferation of applications and services that use geolocation, the question arises: how can a user protect his privacy?
Why are there only 8 levels of player development in Ingress?
There will be more. How many levels are there in World of Warcraft now? 84 or more? We didn't want to create a purely numerical promotion system, as we thought players would get bored with it over time. We will have additional levels in the game, but in order to achieve them, you will need to complete special tasks and missions. It will take us some time, but we will definitely implement it. In the meantime, many groups of players in different countries began to “reward” players with levels 9, 10 and 11. This is not built on the pure achievements of users, but on solving specific problems that local clubs create. I think it's really cool that local Ingress communities take it upon themselves to create these higher levels, they decide whether the player reaches them or not.
How many users does Ingress currently have?
The number we can name is over one million downloads of the app, and active players make up a significant portion of this number.
Do you have plans to release Ingress on other platforms? After all, the game is currently only available for Android.
Yes, we are planning to release a version for iOS, and it will be available next year. And I'm interested in doing something for wearable computing, but we're waiting for the hardware capabilities to catch up to what we imagine.
Do you think Google Glass and augmented reality apps can change the world?
I think they can change the world. The Internet and mobile devices have done a great job of connecting us to the world, people and knowledge while we are on the move. But they fail to provide us with a great user experience. real world, make interactive the things we see and touch. Usage public transport, going to a museum or buying something in a store are areas in which mobile technologies and interfaces are not yet in place. And the smartphone form factor, in my opinion, is not ideal for providing information in all cases. Imagine that you decide to visit an exhibition in a museum. You can take your phone and get information from it. However, I think Google Glass, or something passive that doesn't require you to hold the device in your hand and won't distract you, will allow you to communicate freely with people and will be a much better solution. So I think the potential for wearable computing and augmented reality is huge, and devices like Google Glass will be able to give people the same information as on a smartphone, but without isolating them from the people around them. After all, the fact that a person takes out his phone and stops paying attention to what is happening around him is a big problem. And augmented reality should save us from it. We still have to get the technology and form factors right, but the promise of being able to get the information you need without falling out of touch with your surroundings is worth the effort.
What's the next step in developing geolocation services?
There are many developments, but I think wearable computing and augmented reality will open up many new possibilities for location-based services. Much more needs to be done to improve location accuracy, as well as improve batteries. After all, if the user’s position inside buildings can be determined with an accuracy of up to a meter, this will open the way for geolocation services that do not yet exist today. And a lot of work is currently being done to make positioning technologies more energy efficient. Google is investing heavily in these areas and will continue to improve them.
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.
- Published Jul 22, 2016 at 1:05pm
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Having reached the place, the player looked through the smartphone camera, and the program added an image of the portal to the picture. Then the player made a note on his smartphone about his capture. The rules of capture varied, sometimes it was necessary to unite in groups.
The Pocket Gamer resource claims that one advanced Ingress gamer traveled 100,000 miles (about 161,000 km) in the real world while playing. In one case, a gamer was chartered a private jet so he could get to a remote portal and connect it with the portal in his hometown - his fellow gamers chipped in for the flight (“Even I was amazed,” admits Hanke). Hanke shared stories of climbing a mountain to reach a portal, and meeting and getting married through the game. As with Pokemon Go, this was one of the goals: to get people out of their home computers and onto the streets and to encourage them to communicate in the real world.
Ingress launched in beta in November 2012. In early 2013, Hanke realized that players were calling for diversification—getting together in the real world. They came up with the idea of making these meetings part of the game, writes The Independent. In February 2013, such a gathering, formalized as a mission in the game, was assigned to the territory historical monument Cahokia – groups of 109 mounds North American Indians in Illinois. As luck would have it, the day turned out to be cold and rainy, and it was not very close from the city to the mounds. The game's creators 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 attract crowds of thousands not only in the United States, but also in Japan and Spain.
Ingress players were given the opportunity to suggest portal locations 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 space. “We have approved about 5 million of them worldwide,” Hanke told the media portal Mashable. Last year, Niantic employed 41 people, they physically could not 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 - the next game, Pokemon Go, was built on the basis of this information.
Pokemon are coming
Pokemon Go was created as a joke. In 2014, on April Fool's Day on April 1, 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 gave Hanke pause. The rights to Pokemon are owned by The Pokemon Company, a joint venture between 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 unexpectedly it turned out that Ishihara and his wife are passionate Ingress players. Their heroes are more pumped up than the character of Hanke himself. This made the negotiations much easier.
Why Hanke named his startup Niantic Labs
Hanke chose a name for the startup that would show that there are a lot of interesting things hidden around us, says The Mercury News. Niantic is the name of a whaling schooner launched in 1832. In 1849, she had the misfortune of sailing to California at the height of the gold rush. Almost the entire crew escaped from the ship to the gold mines. No new sailors could be found, so the ship was pulled ashore and converted into a hotel. This was a common practice back 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 discovered in 1978 while digging a pit next to the 260-meter Transamerica skyscraper in San Francisco.
In 2015, another important event occurred for the developer. Google planned to reorganize its business into the Alphabet holding, which was completed in October last year. Various areas were separated into separate companies. Previously, Google developed its services like Google Maps as a horizontal, low-level platform, Hanke complained to Business Insider. In other words, Niantic did not have the right to cooperate with other developers if their joint product used Google's developments. Now he has found freedom.
In November 2015, Niantic led a Series A funding round, receiving $20 million from The Pokemon Company Group, Google and Nintendo. “We haven’t gone far from the nest. We’re only five minutes away,” Hanke told VentureBeat. “But it’s very important to us that we’re outside the Google mothership.” This is our universe"
In February of this year, Niantic received another $5 million investment from Fuji Television Corporation's venture capital fund and the Alsop Louie fund. Not only money was important, but also knowledge. The Japanese TV corporation understands Asian marketing. And Alsop Louie founder Louis Gilman is a brand specialist, Hanke explained on the Niantic blog. He knows Gilman firsthand - he was the co-founder and first CEO of the In-Q-Tel fund, which invested 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 filmed our streets, but was unable to look inside the buildings. Games like Ingress and Pokemon Go have solved this problem. Now it’s enough to send a rare Pokemon to the right 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. Various fitness apps leave an aftertaste like you’re an athlete who screwed up at the Olympics, Hanke sneers. Pokemon Go doesn't insist that you have to run so many miles or burn so many calories or you'll lose. On the contrary, the game offers a tasty prize, a Pokemon, if you still pull yourself together. There is a quest in the game: find an egg and walk a certain distance with it. Then a Pokémon will hatch from it.
The second is to look at the world with a new look. Many points in the game are tied to historical or simply beautiful places, so even your hometown can be rediscovered.
And finally, the game encourages people to communicate. Whether chasing Pokémon or training in stadiums, people meet in the real world. And at a certain stage, according to the conditions of the game, they are simply forced to unite in order to win.
The game itself consists of several parts. First you search for and catch Pokemon. 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 into battles on special sites, and then fight team against team. The locations of these actions were determined precisely thanks to the Ingress portals. “For two and a half years, people visited places where, in their opinion, it was more convenient to play Ingress, so among them there are quite remote locations. There are portals in Antarctica and the North Pole,” Hanke stated in an interview with Lazygamer.net.
But mixing the game with the real world also creates some difficulties, Hanke admits in The Time: “Our instructions to players are not only about how to play, but also about the need to obey the law and respect private property, and communicate politely with other users. We try to instill the latter in our users in every possible way. The design of the product itself is specially tailored for this. This is not a game about beating someone up. Gameplay (scenario computer game. - Vedomosti) is friendly and, I think, promotes positive social interaction."
Stunning Interest
“We expected success and prepared the infrastructure for this. But, to be honest, we were a little 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 wanting to play.” A Russian gamer complained to Vedomosti that as soon as morning comes in the United States, problems arise with access to the game server.
Pokemon Go is a free game, but for money, users can make their lives easier by purchasing services and artifacts, for example, for speeding up monsters. King Digital, which released the smartphone hit Candy Crush in 2012, had a similar strategy, writes FT. In 2013, it admitted that 96% of users don't pay a cent. True, the remaining 4% made it possible to show such financial results that in 2015 King Digital was sold to Activision Blizzard, the manufacturer of World of Warcraft, for $5.9 billion.
In both Ingress and Pokemon Go, for a certain amount of money, any company can make their store or office a place for a portal and the appearance of rare Pokemon. Ingress partners include McDonald's, the telecommunications and media corporation SoftBank, and the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. When Pokémon appear in Russia, this list will apparently also 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 http://youtu.be/UzqEMp12teQ 2016-07-12T23:39:04.000Z
John Hanke grew up in Texas, and he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin.
From there, he attended the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, progressing 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 a 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.”