Currently, it's possible to add a lure module to a Pokéstop to attract Pokémon, but extra capabilities are in the pipeline. In particular, there are plans to develop Pokéstops and gyms to add depth to game play. Hanke has plans to add new, immersive features to Pokémon Go. The future of Pokémon Go and augmented reality "We're trying to strike a good balance," he added. Hanke said Niantic hopes to encourage people to stay safe, while also building a game that gets people off the couch. "We encourage people to keep their heads up and be aware of what's going on around them," Hanke stressed. When the app is opened, it launches with a warning message for users to keep their wits about them. "It is something that you would have with exercise apps, or geo-caching apps, or mapping apps, where people are moving about," he added. Of course, having your head permanently bent over your smartphone is not the safest way to walk the streets. You don't have to go any further than where you already are - the assumption being that you are safe." "Once a Pokémon spawns, you can tap on it and start interacting with it. "We also try to limit the spawning of the Pokémon - not to roadways, or in the vicinity of the user so that they don't have to do anything out of the ordinary," Hanke said. "The goal is they are places that are pedestrian-safe," he explained. There have been reports of Ingress players running into trouble with the authorities for lurking in odd locations, however.Īs for Pokémon, players shouldn't have to go out of their way to capture them. One of the criteria for Ingress portals, which are now Pokéstops and gyms, is that they be safe and publicly accessible. Since Pokémon Go launched, there's been plenty of hype on social media about players going to extremes to capture the elusive creatures.Īccording to Hanke, however, safety has always been a priority. and we utilise that to map Pokémon species to appropriate habitats," he explained. That means, for the most part, water-type Pokémon like Magikarp and Squirtles should appear near water.Īlthough he could not disclose its origins, another data set used in the game is drawn from the geographic classification of an area based on climate, vegetation and soil or rock type. "We assign values based on whether there is a water body in an area - so a stream, a river, a pond - whether areas are designated as zoos or parks, or other kinds of mapping designations," Hanke said. Geographic markers in the map created for Pokémon Go help determine Pokémon habitat.
"There are portals in Antartica and the North Pole, and most points in between."ĭeciding which Pokémon would appear where required a whole extra set of mapping data. "We had essentially two and a half years of people going to all the places where they thought they should be able to play Ingress, so it's some pretty remote places. "The Pokéstops are submitted by users, so obviously they're based on places people go," Hanke said. Thanks to the efforts of Ingress users, you should be able to find Pokéstops almost anywhere, although you may have trouble in some of the more remote corners of Australia. The Ingress portal data set became so robust, it was chosen as the starting point for Pokémon Go. Some of the most popular Ingress portals within a certain geographic location are gyms in the new game, while the next most popular have become Pokéstops.
"There have been about 15 million submissions, and we've approved in the order of 5 million of these locations worldwide," Hanke said. The team then asked Ingress players to submit places they thought were worthy of being portals. "Things that were public artwork, that were historical sites, that were buildings with some unique architectural history or characteristic, or a unique local businesses." In the early days of Ingress, Niantic formed a beginning pool of portal locations for the game based on historical markers, as well as a data set of public artwork mined from geo-tagged photos on Google. "We basically defined the kinds of places that we wanted to be part of the game," Hanke said. Its users are responsible for helping create the data pool that determines where Pokéstops and gyms appear in Pokémon Go. Ingress, the augmented-reality multiplayer game, was launched in beta by Niantic in 2011. How Pokéstop and gyms locations were chosenĪll those Pokémon Go obsessives out there owe some serious thanks to a whole other set of gamers. "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. The company spun off from Google's parent company Alphabet in 2015.įor Hanke, accurate mapping was integral to Pokémon Go. John Hanke, the CEO and founder of Niantic, is a Google veteran. He was one of the founders of Keyhole, the company Google bought to start Google Earth, and had a hand in Google Maps before forming Niantic.
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