Pokemon Go & Designing Interactive Games for the Real World

[Music] hello wow there are many of you here uh first thanks so much for uh coming to this session um my name is Dennis hang I'm the director of uh interaction and visual design at Niantic um yes it's funny standing here because uh a while ago I used to work at Google and uh back then I used to like sneaking into GDC because I was so curious about I so excited about the games industry and uh wanted to be part of the the excitement um so I'm very grateful to be standing on stage today uh getting to talk to you guys um so uh just a brief uh introduction so U my my team at nanch were responsible for most of the visual things uh that that we do so all the all across uh user experience and uh visual design

uh 3dr 2dr graphic design you name it anything that's kind of visual um uh our small crew has to handle um and uh our our company still pretty small we were only recently uh founded in 2011 uh uh within Google we're what's called an autonomous unit so we're kind of like a startup that was being incubated within Google uh but we um spun out uh in uh 2015 near the end uh but just to give you a quick overview uh the company was founded by John hanky who is the uh uh the founder of Keyhole which became Google Earth and later he oversaw all of the Geo initiatives at Google so Google Maps and Google Earth those are some of uh his uh well-known accomplishments and the the main goal for uh the company's founding we we had

this pet peeve that was kind of common across the team we wanted to change how people were interacting with their cell phones around us uh so you know you go to a beautiful beach or a beautiful hiking trail and inevitably you see like a family that has children and the parents are just looking at their uh phones and the kids are like begging for attention or you know the parents are just reading news or checking email so Niantic we looked at smartphones and said hey these are uh really powerful Computing devices in virtually everyone's pockets and guess what they have tons of sensors they have audio capability they have um a nice size screen incredible amount of processing power so and of course GPS among other sensors so we said hey can we change the relationship that people have with their surroundings uh using these devices um

uh so that that was the core mission of the uh the company and you'll see that theme of kind of location based games and user experiences that require movement be kind of a common theme uh throughout uh my presentation so after the spin out around October 2015 uh we launched Pokémon go and uh we saw saw this happen

so this was a player organized what was called the Pokémon go crawl it kind of a pub crawl mixed with location based gaming and thousands of people showed up and this wasn't just in San Francisco but it was all around the world including uh in Sydney and and uh just just tons of places around the world is kind of happening simultaneously so meanwhile at dantic headquarters uh we were all pretty uh shocked and in awe um uh and it was just it was just something that we were like totally not expecting and and not uh really prepared for but it was like amazing it was like this moment of almost like a utopian you know it didn't matter what gender what class you're from what uh ethnicity or any demographics it was uh Pokemon was this kind of common bond that uh people were sharing and and in the Parks you would see hundreds of people and somebody could just yell out Pokémon and

the whole park would just cheer so it was this like really idealistic like uh amazing experience that uh even the dev team were in awe of and very grateful for we're uh just so glad that um uh the players were responding in such a positive way um but of course behind the scenes uh this chart kind of gives you an idea of what was happening so the the orange line was kind of our best guess estimate of traffic expectations uh to our servers the red line was the maximum that we kind of pinned and said okay this is the red line amount of traffic um that uh we should worry about so is the estimated worst case scenario the green line is what ended up happening so you can you can imagine our poor server Engineers uh who are working around the clock trying to uh keep the service alive uh but uh we're we're still you know just um amazed and and uh grateful

at the world's response so uh just a quick overview at Pokémon go before we start talking about uh some of the behind the scenes stuff so so far um the apps been downloaded over 650 million times um and Pokémon go players have collectively walked uh 8.7 billion kilometers as of December last year so it's probably a higher figure we just haven't done the number crunching yet and uh in that same period uh trainers uh What uh the Pokémon go players have caught 88 billion uh Pokemon in that period so when Pokémon go first launched um the the conversation was all about AR um the the capture mechanic that we designed had uh utilized the smartphones uh camera feature and it was just piping the camera phones video feed and uh you guys are probably familiar with some of

the the game mechanics already but um for us uh it was kind of an happy accident I mean at the time AR was a topic uh but not really to the mainstream uh like Hardware like um uh the Microsoft Holo lens was being talked about being part of Google earlier we knew about things like Project Tango and Magic leap was starting to kind of make rumbles so people when when you think of AR most people thought of Hardware like some sort of like futuristic device that was still in the labs but for Niantic it was slightly different um you know our founder CEO John uh he um always made the argument that AR was already here and it was already in our pockets um part of it was the navigation experience like Google Maps was in a way if you think about it a map application is kind of giving you guidance in the real world and it's taking you from point A to point B in a in a kind of a timely

concurrent basis through through all of its Computing capabilities and its sensors so um for us uh uh even many years ago when we um we uh working on uh this game Ingress we were trying to solve the question of how do you get people to move so if you're not familiar with Ingress uh I thought i' just play the trailer really quick to give you some what we're L upter what was the net effect of the Niantic Project we had crossed a threshold in which Global Security could be at risk decrypting the data was the mistake this is not psychosis or some cognitive break but an actual takeover of the Mind much of the public sculpture found in our cities is based on design seated in the human mind certain places have an energy that not only attracts people but attracts

events the mission of 13 Magnus is to monitor the effects of Mind hacking obviously this will be done with the highest of security to make sure that the ideas do not contaminate or threaten Humanity this all leads to Niantic I know that many tools will be needed to fight this battle you just have to know where to look and know what you're seeing portals emit exotic matter into our world and that matter has certain effects on our world I started noticing that there were energy Fields anomalies on Earth all around me a few of them exhibit properties that are as yet unexplained I know that there are others out there what if they're already among us but we don't realize it and I must be prepared to work with them or fight them they are coming something's wrong out there in the world this doesn't feel like a scientific study the one hope lies in understanding what happened in Niantic

not all Mysteries are solvable but the joy comes in the pursuit so Ingress um had this like thick layer of like conspiracy theory and science fiction U but it was really kind of an expression of niantic's thoughts about augmented reality and in like a in 2011 kind of form uh it was more of an alternate reality game where you have to actually physically move and in like a Pac-Man kind of f fashion you kind of vacuum up these energy globules that are scattered all around the planet and uh and any game action required that energy so you're constantly required to walk and move in the real world and these locations weren't just like map-based uh just random you know we the game wasn't just a game on a map we actually uh spent an incredible amount

of uh energy trying to build up a database of these uh uh point of interest uh locations where you know uh we millions of players would submit uh interesting places uh that either had artistic or cultural or historical Merit um so our goals are pretty modest initially with Ingress uh all we wanted uh really was if we can change someone's habit so take like a typical like office worker and if we can change that person's habit uh during the commute route where they walked like an extra few blocks we would have you know been totally happy uh cuz we knew how hard it was to motivate someone to actually get off the chair and move due to some app or some game uh what you're seeing on the screen is uh an image that somebody posted and

the image on the left is their normal commute route the straight red line and the image on the right is going to work while playing Ingress uh image and you can see the person decided to walk in in the park and stop by all these interesting points so in a sense uh uh we really started to feel like there's uh a ton of potential with real world um uh location based gaming and the way we achieved this kind of change uh uh Behavior pattern uh was using all kinds of classic game mechanics like collection game Loops um uh there's a heavy dose of social interaction because you inevitably end up meeting other players when you play a real world game um and there's this emerging gameplay based on territory capture uh so we're we considered Ingress um you know already pretty successful in what we wanted to achieve but then we started noticing that the social dynamics of the

game was really just taking on a life of its own so all around the world uh every once in a while thousands and thousands of players uh come together and Duke it out all day and what's called like an Ingress Anomaly this event pictures from cologne uh but Tokyo Soul Korea all all over the uh World these events are happening right now and as I mentioned inevitably when you're uh playing these location based games you end up running into other players you might battle it out all day long and then go for a drink afterwards get to know each other better so we started seeing Ingress marriages um and Ingress babies uh which is pretty awesome and people are also uh losing weight uh playing our game because of all of our game requires you to walk uh people are clocking tens of kilometers in some cases hundreds of kilometers uh in distance walk just from playing this mobile app uh so we actually ran a survey where 60%

of our users uh reported having lost weight so that was pretty awesome and to give you an idea of how uh connected our players were to the game uh what you're seeing on the screen are the faction logos so Ingress has two teams uh The Blue Team resistance and the Green Team enlightened and uh even when we're at beta um we uh started seeing this uh phenomena which which you never expected which is people getting tattoos of our game icons and Paul Martini Who U one of the designers and I we we looked at each other and said oh no we can't ever change this uh logo again um and we were still in beta so we were always like saying oh yeah yeah we'll come back and polish the the icons later but so it was it was really amazing experience U helping build Ingress um we

learned a lot about how AR games have the how it has so much potential to change real world behavior of players in positive and meaningful ways the social interaction component was uh greater than we ever imagined like like I said earlier the the marriages the countless uh Ingress babies was uh uh quite impressive and then encouraging exploration people were renting helicopters airplanes people are tra traveling across continents um Ingress players are pretty hardcore when it comes to uh exploration and uh as part of that exploration of course physical exercise and um um increase activity so these are all uh really interesting to us and that's when we set out to build Pokémon go as you can see from this awesome concept art uh that kroski one of our um

concept artists created um we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted out of Pokémon go it's not too hard to uh relate to this age-old archetype that you are the game's hero like I don't want to be just twitching my fingers to control some external thing I want to be the one slaying the dragon or fighting the aliens and moving about in the real world so we kind of took that concept and uh tried to apply it to this amazing IP called Pokemon and we wanted a more accessible version compared to Ingress we wanted to appeal to a wider demographics wider age group uh across gender and uh so we made a lot of Concepts uh concept designs and uh try to move forward and uh building a greater sense of immersion but we we ran into a lot of challenges and I want to kind of give you this a definition of the term cognitive

dissonance and that cognitive dissonance is something that the design team at Niantic the art team we fought with a lot so anytime your brain is like struggling to make sense of these two things that are clashing together that that's kind of cognitive dissonance and for us what that means is if you're out in the real world and let's say your screen is showing this beautiful snow mountain but you're in a on a beach with on a sunny day that kind of separation of what you're being shown and where you're at physically that is the cognitive dissonance that um uh Team Niantic was uh uh struggling to to solve so in Ingress we have these um point of Interest locations called portals and as I told you earlier we collected uh data all around Point points to all around the world actually like five or 10 million points around the world and uh and and they were

player submitted um with photos so Eiffel Tower for example would have a screen like this so we knew that being in front of Eiffel Tower seeing Eiffel Tower and on your phone seeing the photo of Eiffel Tower was this kind of way to connect uh the game to where you're standing so that kind of immersion is something that we really wanted to repeat but in a greater way in go so at first we started looking at photos spheres so think like Google street view um where it's like a static uh uh 360 view of of a location so we started looking at is there a way to get a little bit fancier than Ingress not just a photo but something feeling a little bit more immersive so we started just mocking Up characters um kind of in a photosphere and we weren't quite sure um if the camera technology on phones and

all of this stuff was good enough to actually do the true AR that we always wanted from science fiction so this was kind of a compromise approach that we uh started looking at first but as you guys as you guys can guess um the Photosphere introduces a lot of problems if you just plop down a model on a static uh texture map sphere and uh and if if that placement doesn't have any awareness of like where it is in the real perspective depending on you know the height of where it's placed like Pikachu can look like a giant you know Monster like Godzilla sized or it can it can uh look like really tiny um and and actually one of the big bigger issue was that um a lot of the Photosphere data tended to be uh car Centric so when we wanted this walk friendly gaml to have lots of Roads

everywhere in the in the Photosphere data wasn't uh compelling to us so that's when um we started prototyping and we have this Tech artist a fellow named David Holland who was a godsend he he's just started using uh his Unity skills to just try out ideas that uh we weren't quite sure about uh from just a tech point of view we weren't sure if this the mobile CPU and the GPU could handle um kind of the the augmented reality uh experience that we wanted but the device limitations uh suddenly seemed surmountable when uh David came up with this oops sorry so this is his backyard at home

and uh this is the very first uh prototype of the capture mechanic using the the camera so it's pretty close to what we ended up launching with uh but when the team saw this uh you know we're pretty much all in and this is the battle mechanic that he prototyped so he's sitting on the floor to kind of get himself uh a pretty good uh canvas to work with so you know as you guys know this is kind of a slight of hand it's not true awareness of the environment so it's not true um augmented reality in that sense but the experience when we tested it out in our prototypes it was just so compelling um you know the team just really went all in uh and launching with this that sense of immersion and that connection to the the actual location that you're standing in uh was really something uh uh special so once that was

sort of uh kind ofct in we we started looking at the map experience next which is a very important part of location based gaming and the map has this kind of conflicting goal and on one hand it needs to function like a a functional map application a navigation application so it has to just present information in a clear way it has to show your bearings in a clear way um it needs to be like Google Maps uh but on the other hand it needs to be you know for Pokémon go it needs to be fun and um needs to function as part of a game element and like fun visuals tends to be uh a little bit harder to to see uh you know the if you have lots of VFX for example it can obscure uh those functional information so when our team started at looking at the map Styles uh on one

extreme we started at the very virtual end like the pure functional really clean map uh kind of like what you see on the map uh on the screen uh and just highlighting uh the point of interest um in a in a very pop kind of uh colors that are quite popping and we kind of went further in that direction um and uh we started noticing that uh the map was starting to feel a little bit too cold I was getting a little bit too far from uh the Pokemon IP so then we pulled back our team uh started looking at okay well is there a better kind of more natural texture that's still somewhat abstracted that doesn't cause uh too much of a cognitive dissonance um and uh this was another mock that M Hutchins our concept artist created so when you start putting like trees and grass and uh birds that aren't really

there it starts to feel a little bit too much like the cognitive dissonance I was talking about like if you're in the middle of like you know fourth and fome Inter intersection and we paint this like Lush vegetation that's not quite the the balance that we wanted to achieve so we started kind of mixing the two extremes um this is an example of a little bit more of a mixed approach um and from here uh our final Maps style uh kind of came about so it is still very green and uh the textures are Lush to uh connect to the Pokemon IP but things are pretty flat and abstracted and um a little bit more vectorized uh to keep that level of cognitive dissonance from uh being too intrusive when you're walking about uh in the real world so uh so we were really happy with this look um and we started kind of wanting more immersion uh so we started

looking at uh can we pipe the real world data you know in a greater way into the map so we started uh thinking about time of day so uh even though we didn't end up having time to implement this this kind of a more Rich U time of day based uh map experience can really connect the player uh to their surroundings to their environment and this is another example of um what we were looking at so krosi just kind of put together a quick mock of different time of day encounter scenes and plop down uh a equally the same Pikachu image and you know our team is pretty small so we had to be quite Frugal with our resources and time uh so we're like hey Pikachu doesn't look so bad uh daytime or nighttime let's let's just kind of get away with both so that's where um our scheme of the characters being lit the same but the

environments changing uh that where that whole thing came from so with uh with the map um time of day stuff uh figured out uh we moved on to looking at the Avatar so Avatar of course is a very important element of the uh players's experience on in the game it's kind of your representation of the identity but the original direction that we looked at we're worried about the same cognitive dissonance concept we didn't want to kind of separate too much of who you are in the real world and what was happening on the map so this is a really old um mock so we we kind of went for this like intentionally separate like okay let's not make the Avatar too like too humanoid let's let's do like a hologram uh bust uh approach so that it still feels like a car navig ation type thing where the direction heading is really clear um and you get to customize

your character a little bit um but it wasn't quite cool looking at the end we we weren't uh that happy with um kind of the chopped bust look so we kind of went with a little bit more conventional approach with the Avatar but instead we uh even though our team was small we kind of invested a lot of energy and effort into Avatar customization so that players can uh customize um the look um and on that on that note actually uh we needed to be pretty efficient with our uh Tech guard pipeline uh because of our small team because of the mobile device limitations uh we needed to kind of plan ahead how our UV uh texture Maps were laid out and these textures aren't actually full three color all the uh necessary um we went with a a technique um called

luminous map luminous map mapping I guess um where the gray scale texture that you see on the left uh Maps the the range 0 to 256 values but that gray scale gets mapped back to a color ramp so the examples on the right you can see that just by switching that you know 3K 4K tiny ramp texture uh we can get very different looks and this was so that we use the data blobs very efficiently uh when you're even on a uh relatively slow Network and this also gave the art team ability to uh quickly iterate on on the the color swatches so similar to the avatars um for the characters the Pokémon characters themselves uh we wanted to really nail that look so even though the Pokémon IP has existed for 20 plus years

uh for Pokémon go we were given a lot of uh leway and freedom to develop kind of our own look and I really wanted the Pokemon characters on our game to feel like they were alive because of our real world connection because you were uh we were trying to suspend that disbelief that these are just virtual characters um that we spend a lot of time in the look of so again Mika Hutchins um our concept artist um did these great set of like reference uh images where we went for uh a softer look we we used um uh the Fel Shader uh kind of look heavily with a healthy dose of Rim lighting because uh we knew that uh the the image the background of the characters we we weren't going to necessarily know the light Direction so we needed to just kind of have a have a amorphous kind of even light in for our characters and this kind of lighting scheme um ended up

working out great for the AR uh camera and similar to the avatars uh we need to we needed to be efficient with how we were going to shade these guys um so uh Mike ton one of our Tech artists uh did a great job coming up with a super efficient mobile device friendly way to achieve that look using um these brdf um Shader um texture look up scheme where the rim top and bottom and uh the diffuse and um uh the ambient lights are controlled through uh a very efficiently packed texture and also with the character animations uh we used a UV offset scheme where uh we separated the uh the the UV uh we use a UV space for masking the mesh

so that like zero to one for example would control the the eye animation and one to two it control the mouth so uh what that allowed us to do was just use one uh draw pass uh to shade these characters uh very efficiently and have um uh or and get rid of the need for having like separate textures for just masking uh so it was a pretty effic way to handle um you know these hundreds of characters that you're having to uh download while you're on the road so with uh with the immersive uh you know the Avatar the map the map uh the immersive um the AR part is figured out the next uh the next thing was to um look at the interface and we just needed to not get in the way of movement based gaming so in Ingress uh back to this portal screen

um we had a lot of shortcomings so this uh was very Precision tap based kind of UI um uh and often the controls were precisely in the wrong place so you had to reach to the upper right corner of the screen to uh to get to the main uh game action menu and uh the Taps that uh were required for the main game actions also were like it's almost like a web page navigation scheme and I used to be a web guy so I was applying a past experience uh precisely in the wrong spots so this was very uh movement unfriendly why I would say I would admit um and with Pokémon go we wanted to uh change this for the better so in Pokémon go you'll notice that it's a very um

thumb friendly layout uh we did our best to move all the core essential controls down to the bottom um and if you look at the diagram that kind of Center like lower half of the screen where both the left thumb and the right thumb can reach that's really where you want to kind of keep your uh your controls at and uh personally I think swipe gestures on phones feel so satisfying because while you're swiping you have a pretty good grip on the phone so even when you're walking and playing uh uh Niantic games uh that grip on the phone is quite important so you don't want to be doing like Precision tapping like like I said earlier so uh in Pokémon go you can swipe uh to catch the characters to throw the balls you can swipe down to close various panels um you can open panels using the swipe

gesture so we try to use um the swipe quite liberally and uh the one-handed use uh was really important while we were play testing we found that uh any kind of two-handed play kind of kill the the momentum of that game session so unlike Ingress we really try to uh make the map experience one hand friendly so that's where the one thumb uh rotate kind of camera control idea came from and most uh game actions you can get away with just using one hand and and you know if you live in a really cold country uh last thing you want is to have to take both hands out and cold weather um and in terms of the yeah so that's where we ended up with the interaction design um it ended up uh appealing to a really wide array of uh uh demographics like my 70 plus year old mother is an avid high level player

and this kind of Pokemon Poké stop uh interaction uh with the regular daily Rhythm Of The Daily bonuses uh Poké stops that change color to Pink it kind of acts as like a breadcrumb when you're uh walking and moving about um all these elements uh were designed to keep you moving and keep you motivated uh while playing in the real world so with this achieved uh we had a lot of surprising side benefits after we launch uh we realized that people were using Pokémon go to help fight anxiety uh people were uh getting their marriages helped I guess and uh autism was also an aspect that apparently Pokémon go players um found uh beneficial effects like we were getting letters from parents who had autistic children and and they were like just thanking us that for the first time in a long time their

uh autistic children were uh uh be able to interact with others in a very healthy way uh when when they were out in the park for example um you know everybody was welcoming them uh because they're all out there playing Pokémon go together so we got a lot of touching letters from all around the world um uh along these lines it was it was quite moving and uh this was interesting too like there's a children's hospital that was using Pokémon go for physical therapy so because it requires real world movement I can say hey the guy is a little bit lower can you reach down and get him and that's just a really tricky way that physical therapy or occupational therapy can get a kid to do the exercises that he was screaming and crying about 5 minutes ago that he didn't want to do kind of raises the general atmosphere of Happiness here in the it's a

technology that's only going to get better and can to be more exciting so yeah the technology is only going to get better and we're pretty excited about uh what's next um there's there are so many ideas that uh that we wanted to to build that we didn't have time for what kind of end ended up going out to the public uh was probably like 10% of all the ideas that that Niantic Dev members had um so for example one of the things that we want to go back to is just continuing to increase the real world connection and the immersiveness with the player um so this kind of beautiful uh sunset uh type thing is just a small example of of um what we mocked up but didn't get to implement someday hopefully we'll get to do like more weather kind of effects um and and the social aspect is something that uh

we're continuing to look forward to uh with Ingress we already have this massive Ingress anomalies where uh for example in uh July of last year we had 12,000 people Gather in Tokyo uh to play Ingress together as a community so these kind of Epic events uh we hope to be able to design features into Pokémon go uh so that we can uh replicate uh this kind of amazing social experiences and last but not least uh hope we'll see more tattoos and uh finally I'd like to thank um um the small but Scrappy uh design and art crew at Niantic um Paul Mika Chris David now kayin Mako they're they're just I'm so lucky to uh work with these amazing talented people and we're hiring uh so we're uh always uh looking we're kind of in a

growth sport stage right now it's a great time to join Niantic we're still like a small Scrappy startup but uh we're hope we have big dreams and we're hoping to achieve a lot so Unity uh artists 3D artists 3D animators um and and uh Niantic we're we're building these platforms these real world location bled platforms so that game developers like you can take your amazing ideas and build uh a real world version of x uh whatever you know insert game idea here like that kind of concept um using niantic's great location based platform so hope that in the future um our paths will cross and we can see uh even more amazing things happen uh throughout the world thank you very [Applause] much so I left a little bit of time for

questions in case um any of you uh was curious about any of the material that I presented so uh please come to the mic and let me know hi there so I just like to know what's it like swimming in a screee MCD Money Pit I'm sorry can you repeat the question what's it like swimming in a scroe MC duck Money Pit uh so the so the question [Laughter] was yeah it's we were we did end up um uh with the overwhelming response from all around the world uh you know a revenue stream um you is quite healthy uh but uh our Ambitions are also equally big we're we're not looking ourselves as just like

a small game shop game Studio but we really want to build out this platform and uh we want to continue kind of encouraging the healthy habits that we triggered with Pokémon go and Ingress where people are walking extra spending more time with their family uh with a shared game experience enjoying their local surroundings so uh we have big Ambitions so hopefully we can put those resources to good use uh I was wondering early on you had a slide about uh changing player Behavior changing someone's route to work I was curious if you could speak more about uh how big a change you were seeing from the average person and how long that would last was it permanent or would they start kind of revert to their normal route after a while I think a lot of that uh depends on the person and it still remains to be seen what the true potential is um just to repeat the question uh the question was about uh what what kind of uh player habit change uh you know going more detail into the

types of player habit changes that we've seen um English players so far have astounded Us in how hardcore how engaged they've been with the game uh we've seen people um just completely changed their life around from being a sedentary uh you know kind of typical uh you know techie to like a totally fit like always going out uh to to meet with Ingress players like a lot of communities Ingress communities around the world have like these weekly Gatherings where they'll meet at a local pub and then go on a group walk uh lasting many you know many hours um or they'll kind of farm the the game locations the game board um we've we've seen uh you know people like go out to like really remote

locations like in Alaska like there's Tales of their battle stories where U they rented a plane and there's like a winter storm coming and the pilot was like we got to take off now and the player wasn't getting GPS signals so they're like five more minutes and we have to leave now and they like create these cross-continental links so um the extremes are definitely out there um with Pokémon go um you know like I mentioned earlier the billions of kilometers walked that's definitely you know material distances that people are walking um and uh you know the game Dynamic elements that were constantly thinking of starting with egg hatching and the Poké stop colors changing these bright crumbs um and these rewards for walking the game mechanic actually having rewards for walking is uh something that will keep doing so I I can only expect uh more of this uh in

the future yes please hi uh thanks very much for the talk when you talked about Ingress uh you talked about how you had a lot of experience provoking these massive kind of rallies and real world social events when Pokémon go came out there was A Rush of news stories about the the sort of geography that you had layered over the real world leading people to kind of run up against the difficult geography of the actual world so there were people finding bodies or there was an issue with national parks in Milwaukee um there was a I think there was a government in Southeast Asia that was worried that it might lead people to trespass into military bases I was wondering how much how how ready were you for that how surprised Were You by it and how much planning and thinking did you do beforehand about what might happen when this was Unleashed on the world sure uh so the question is how prepared or how much did we anticipate some of the uh side effects of having such a massive uh location based game

takeoff in terms of uh uh trespassing or uh unsafe areas um you know having run Niantic I I mean uh having run Ingress as part of the company uh we did we did anticipate a lot of those issues um but in a much smaller scale we didn't quite anticipate the the massive the explosion of uh player activity that Pokémon go triggered and we were making adjustments uh you saw the game ad uh speed limit detection warning uh to players to make sure that they're paying attention to their surroundings those are really important changes and we you know constantly continue to remind players about safety and uh the issues of location based gaming um with governments uh we actually have a pretty healthy uh Rel relationship with like part Park operators or uh various um uh

authorities where uh uh we're kind of in a continuous dialogue uh about uh you know working together to make these experiences uh safer and better for the player community so uh so for example um in Japan uh the local government is actually uh kind of coordinated with us and uh you know they'll do these like Lapras like uh kind of spawning events to kind of kind of move people throughout their cities where they wanted more like tourism or uh more Community Building kind of activity so that's kind of a a direction that we're really uh interested in uh going thank you yes please thank you for sharing um I was wondering you spoke about Unity can you speak a little bit more about um how you use Unity for for the game and was it part of was it real time rendering or you said that it

really made a big difference and just want to explore that a little bit more sure yeah Unity so the question is uh how do we use Unity Unity 3D is our main game engine uh it it as many of you guys know the crossplatform capabilities really helped us launch um on both IOS and Android and uh yeah it just offers a lot of hooks uh for the artists to iterate quickly with without uh too much engineering help uh but having a healthy Tech artist team we found was really important to act as that glue between uh more traditional artists and uh Engineers um and yes it is a real time Graphics running on the phones U and unity offers a lot of hooks to get at Those sensors and uh the camera feed data and things like that so it's been pretty indispensable for uh our projects yes please hi um I'm a bit curious about the philosophy behind the geographical

distribution of spawns because uh I think that if you live in downtown San Francisco you have a very different opportunity to play the game than if you're like in a rural Village in Kazakhstan or something right yeah and we Dev at Niantic we share that view we really are desperately wanting more gameplay opportunities in rural areas uh we're heavily reliant on player submitted location data um you know for many reasons player safety being one of them um so uh we're starting uh like in Ingress for example we have a an online tool where players can submit and rate each other's location uh you know photos and the description about that place and um you know how interesting is it culturally or artistically so I'm optimistic that over time we'll uh be able to grow that

database so that rural areas can also have a rich gameplay experience thanks hello I'm curious about why you launched with a gym system you did and as opposed to allowing like players to battle their friends head-to-head in real time yeah we have a lot of game feature ideas that we want to continue building in the future like PVP or um a a better tune gym system uh so the game Loop is something that we're continuing to uh evolve um but uh initially the roll out focused really on the collection mechanic and wanted to uh you know test the waters and if there is something interesting here and and and there was uh so we're the dev team is really hard at work uh building up the game features so I can say yeah please look forward to uh more fun engaging game mechanics in the

future um hi I want to ask about you talked a lot about the textures and how that was kept small um I was curious how what the restrictions were on 3D models and the variety of complexities with character models of so many numbers in a game like that yeah luckily um so the the question was U about the complexities of of uh the character data um luckily we had a great partner the Pokemon company um and uh creatures Inc they um gave us the base uh mesh data that that we were able to massage and process uh in our pipeline um from from the original game series I'm not quite sure which platform maybe the DS uh games um so we had a good starting point but of course taking that to a smartphone like Unity kind of uh model um it was quite difficult so uh it just

took a ton of effort writing smart tools to automate um as much as possible and minimize manual tuning and things like that but we were able to um Mike ton and kayn those guys were the tech artists were really able to um massage the data so that uh uh the uh yeah not just the vertex data but the texture data um came over pretty good but it is it it was still a very subjective uh thing for the look Dev part uh there was a lot of directions we could have gone in terms of shading the character so our concept artists really had to go model by model and tune the AO layers or um get the colors right it was a a pretty tough process but we're getting better at it thank you hi hi um so you spoke a little bit about the iteration process for the player Avatar um models and the style design behind that uh I noticed in your earlier some

of the earlier Concepts there was more of an anime style sort of in line with the original Ip uh why did you guys choose to go from slightly more realistic look for the Avatar was that more immersion sort of that AR yeah definitely it was a very conscious decision on our part um we wanted to have a version of Pokemon that wasn't uh well so the original Ip the the trainers have a much younger look uh and the target audience tends to skew younger ages uh but for us the avatars we wanted to kind of elevate them to an older generation slightly um and for that lessening that cognitive dissonance that I mentioned earlier we didn't want some super stylized like bigheaded but small-bodied kind of characters running around on a map when like you're the you're the real game hero we kind of wanted to match the virtual with the

physical as much as possible so uh in a way we achieved that we're already seeing people like make their you know kind of costumes to match what's in the game and kind of where that while they're playing Pokémon go so that's kind of cute um and uh and also the the and and we're going to try to push that further we want you know more hairstyles and more you know hopefully more age uh different ages that you can choose from different skin colors so uh we're hoping to push the envelope a little bit more there thanks hello hi um you talked about the tattoos and how you could never ever change that again um how did you approach your design process did you think about things that you couldn't pull back on uh in terms of anchoring the community if you were afraid of that or do you release them and are open to pulls back on on certain designs uh are you talking about the graphic design specifically or just

designs generally just designs in general gameplay as well yeah maybe because of Ingress and the whole tattoo kind of experience we were a little bit more cognizant of what's possible out there like so the question was um you know did did the team feel uh or how did the team deal with the fact that once you put out something it's like permanent basically um so certainly with the faction symbols and Pokémon go um you know team Balor and team Instinct that kind of thing we we we iterated quite a long time cuz the whole time the artist and I were going these are going to be tattoos like we know it it's going to happen so let's make sure that it works well as a tattoo so um so we put in a lot of time and energy specifically on the graphic design but you're you're right that and generally um the game got so much attention that anything that we

put out was scrutinized and analyzed and uh you know it was uh very natural to feel like once we put out something it's like anchored and we can't change it ever again but I think it's really important especially with smartphone mobile games that the devs kind of resist that impulse like uh it is this malleable thing where if something's not working well you have to be able to go in and do the surgery to change it so uh for uh you know and and and that's kind of niantic's like attitude about our current game Loop like we have a lot of ideas about how to improve uh certain things that aren't working so well and and emphasize things that are working well like the you know like hatching eggs for example really is motivating people to walk incredible distances um so that's something that uh we'll hold on to but adjust some of the other game

Loop elements so we're trying to stay flexible and stay on our toes thank you thanks yes hello hello what are some of the steps you guys took or techniques you employed to con combat people cheating by spoofing their GPS location monitoring yeah so that's probably a great question for Ed who's our engineering director uh he's actually giving a talk I think uh later this week but we have uh some really smart people uh working day and night trying to combat that but um my limited understanding of the situation is that a lot of the hardware a lot of the phones like if you kind of get underneath a certain OS level then it's just really hard for uh the the game operator to detect truly whether um you know uh that phone's been hacked or not so we have to use all kinds of other signals to uh combat uh uh cheating Behavior so it's

it's it's an ongoing thing uh but we have some really good people on it and hopefully um yeah there's not too much I can say on that topic I'm sorry I'm the AR guy so but thanks so hi uh for the tracking part did you consider using more powerful match based algorithms for the tracking at some point and if you did why did you discarded them oh I'm sorry can you repeat the yeah like uh algorithms for image based tracking like the ones that they use the camera like to do the tracking for the for the phone like I don't know slam or something like that if you consider using them and if you did why you discarded them in the end yeah we're looking at a so the question is about like image tracking Technologies and um uh what we considered uh our initial launch phase we were targeting devices that were pretty old and that's because we wanted

that accessibility so like our Target device was I think a Nexus 4 on the Android side and like an iPhone low-end iPhone uh so that's like two three generations back so that kind of limited what we could really like do uh with the game um and because of the importance of that uher and augmented reality to our titles like we are heavily um investing in various AR uh Technologies out there and looking at uh Solutions very carefully and looking you know talking to Partners and stuff like that so um uh we're pretty optimistic that AR is really uh has a bright future uh even relative to VR so uh that's where we'll keep uh taking a close look at okay thank you I think I'm way over time uh so maybe last couple questions hi um your your game is

like very rooted in a lot of like pretty technical stuff can you talk about some of the challenges of working on a product that really had these like Tech barriers that you had to cross to be able to create something sorry the uh tech tech barriers yeah um uh yeah I mean I think the the main aspect uh regarding technical challenges for us was uh given how small our team was uh I think when we spawn out from Google we were barely like 30 people so you can imagine trying to tackle a project like Pokémon go with a pretty small crew uh so a lot of at least from my side of things a lot of the technical challenges had to do with how do you take very few people and just really maximize and amplify their contribution so having again having Tech artists who can write scripts and tools and unity

you know widgets that you know speeds up the artist was uh really crucial to uh where we where we ended up being able to get to so uh like the character pipeline I think we easily double the speed of the shading kind of tuning that was happening just from a few you know days worth of tech artists like writing helper tools um so that was kind of the main example of some of the technical challenges that we had to solve on our side and and there were the optimization stuff that I mentioned already with the mobile uh data you know we were cognizant of like um other countries where mobile data is pretty expensive so uh we tried our best to kind of minimize uh the data usage there thank you thanks hi hey I'll ask one last Quick question um so you guys have had a lot of really awesome positive impacts I'm curious are

you now are you guys thinking about developing uh and maybe more as this a personal thing for you or an Niantic but uh are you trying to make games that are going to continue to do that or do you want to create games that create more communities are you focusing on health and fitness or you know I mean like some of the really incredible stuff about like marriages and things sure so the question is uh will nante continue to build games that have like a positive social and uh World impact absolutely uh we uh are talking to you know U many IP or partner po potential partners and uh I think we really do want to make our platform kind of the go-to place where game developers can take their amazing idea uh like I said earlier real world version of something and and kind of uh you know build an amazing experience that we even haven't begun to imagine yet so um I think the potential is huge

and hopefully um uh we'll continue to be able to execute on that thank you it was a great talk thank you very much