With Pokemon Go, It's The Top Of The Second Inning For Augmented Reality
In the video above, serial entrepreneur Matt Galligan shares an early prototype for an augmented reality game that his company developed in 2009. For those who have caught on to the Pokemon craze, some of the game play may look a little familiar.
Pokemon Go is the most explosive technology launch ever. In just over a week, the game is being used each day more than some of the biggest social apps in the world like Tinder and Twitter. In its first seven days, it garnered more tweets than Brexit and about double the number of tweets than Euro 2016. It has approximately doubled Nintendo’s Market Cap to north of $42 billion.
Yet, if companies like Galligan’s were experimenting with similar gameplay all the way back in 2009 and Pokemon Go’s own parent company Niantic Labs had already released Ingress, a game with extremely similar play, more than a year before, what accounts for the breakout today?
The answer lies in a combination of technology, intellectual property, and culture.
From a technological perspective, Pokemon Go is based on very sophisticated maps and lightweight augmented or mixed reality. As users race around capturing Pokemon, they’re actually following real world maps. The team at Niantic was the team that founded Google Earth, and as such spent years developing the infrastructure that allows a game on our mobile phones to accurately peg itself to real world locations. At various points on the map, users can interact with digital objects and characters overlaid onto the physical world, an example of lightweight Augmented Reality (or Mixed Reality, depending on who you talk to).
The last aspect that allowed Pokemon to break out when it did is a shifted cultural relationship with technology. At this point, we have firmly traded the convenience of always on, geo-located mobile devices for the potential security and privacy risks they represent. Even hoopla around what access Pokemon was giving Niantic to users’ Google accounts and fear mongering around the safety of kids using the app couldn’t stop the rise.
All together, this led to a breakout technology phenomenon, with some already unexpected effects.
For businesses small and large, Pokemon Go has already become a major topic of focus. Retailers are buying Lures to bring more Pokemon to their location, which in turn is bringing in more customers. The game’s makers have also flipped the switch on sponsored locations, allowing brands to pay on a per customer basis for the users that come to the sponsored areas as part of game play. There is evidence that the first major deal may be with McDonald’s.
Of course, as they do with any new cultural force, marketers are trying to understand how to leverage the trend. This runs the gamut from ham fisted social media all the way to serious conversations about what the game means for the practice of creative agencies.
It’s not just business feeling the impact however. Early reports are suggesting that the game is having significant positive impacts on both physical and mental health.
From a physical perspective, the average user time of 43 minutes per day means that people are burning an average of 1500-1800 calories a week…roughly the same as climbing the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building 5 times.
Maybe even more unexpected are the early reports of positive impact on people suffering from autism spectrum disorders. The internet is awash with anecdotes like this one featured on Today.com of Pokemon Go play leading to unexpected socialization and new behaviors that people spent years of therapy to achieve. While it’s important to take each of these as what they are – a single data point – there are enough of them across news outlets, Facebook posts, and other places that it’s worth paying attention to.
With Pokemon Go, It's The Top Of The Second Inning For Augmented Reality
In the video above, serial entrepreneur Matt Galligan shares an early prototype for an augmented reality game that his company developed in 2009. For those who have caught on to the Pokemon craze, some of the game play may look a little familiar.
Pokemon Go is the most explosive technology launch ever. In just over a week, the game is being used each day more than some of the biggest social apps in the world like Tinder and Twitter. In its first seven days, it garnered more tweets than Brexit and about double the number of tweets than Euro 2016. It has approximately doubled Nintendo’s Market Cap to north of $42 billion.
Yet, if companies like Galligan’s were experimenting with similar gameplay all the way back in 2009 and Pokemon Go’s own parent company Niantic Labs had already released Ingress, a game with extremely similar play, more than a year before, what accounts for the breakout today?
The answer lies in a combination of technology, intellectual property, and culture.
From a technological perspective, Pokemon Go is based on very sophisticated maps and lightweight augmented or mixed reality. As users race around capturing Pokemon, they’re actually following real world maps. The team at Niantic was the team that founded Google Earth, and as such spent years developing the infrastructure that allows a game on our mobile phones to accurately peg itself to real world locations. At various points on the map, users can interact with digital objects and characters overlaid onto the physical world, an example of lightweight Augmented Reality (or Mixed Reality, depending on who you talk to).
The last aspect that allowed Pokemon to break out when it did is a shifted cultural relationship with technology. At this point, we have firmly traded the convenience of always on, geo-located mobile devices for the potential security and privacy risks they represent. Even hoopla around what access Pokemon was giving Niantic to users’ Google accounts and fear mongering around the safety of kids using the app couldn’t stop the rise.
All together, this led to a breakout technology phenomenon, with some already unexpected effects.
For businesses small and large, Pokemon Go has already become a major topic of focus. Retailers are buying Lures to bring more Pokemon to their location, which in turn is bringing in more customers. The game’s makers have also flipped the switch on sponsored locations, allowing brands to pay on a per customer basis for the users that come to the sponsored areas as part of game play. There is evidence that the first major deal may be with McDonald’s.
Of course, as they do with any new cultural force, marketers are trying to understand how to leverage the trend. This runs the gamut from ham fisted social media all the way to serious conversations about what the game means for the practice of creative agencies.
It’s not just business feeling the impact however. Early reports are suggesting that the game is having significant positive impacts on both physical and mental health.
From a physical perspective, the average user time of 43 minutes per day means that people are burning an average of 1500-1800 calories a week…roughly the same as climbing the stairs to the top of the Empire State Building 5 times.
Maybe even more unexpected are the early reports of positive impact on people suffering from autism spectrum disorders. The internet is awash with anecdotes like this one featured on Today.com of Pokemon Go play leading to unexpected socialization and new behaviors that people spent years of therapy to achieve. While it’s important to take each of these as what they are – a single data point – there are enough of them across news outlets, Facebook posts, and other places that it’s worth paying attention to.
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