Libraries and businesses immediately took to the game as a way to increase foot traffic. “We blew through our quotas within a day or two, and it just spiraled seemingly out of control after that.” ![]() “It was probably the worst job of forecasting in my entire career,” says Hanke. They only got through release because Google Cloud helped give the game more server space - and even then getting kicked off the servers was a common player experience in the weeks surrounding the launch. ![]() John HankeĪfter launch, the number of players climbed past both the expected traffic and the predicted maximum traffic almost immediately. The orange line is what Niantic expected traffic to look like, the red line was the "worst case scenario" for maximum traffic, and the green line was the traffic that they actually received. Of course, none of that prepared Hanke for _Pokémon GO_’s overnight explosion. It was the things they learned from Ingress - how to inspire people to go outside and walk, how to host events, how to create a social gaming community in the real world, which places are cool - that formed the inspiration for Pokémon GO, says Hanke. “We began to ask ourselves, what’s motivating people to do this? It really motivated us to dig into the response people were having to getting more exercise, getting outside, being more active, and really at the core of it having an opportunity to socially go out and do something fun with other people and meet other people through the game.” It was sort of like some sort of illicit substance transfer but perfectly legal.” Players were even getting tattoos of the different factions and getting very invested, said Hanke. “Things like - commercial airline pilots that were ferrying digital objects, flying their plane commercially but using their cell phone to move these digital goods, valuable in the game from continent to continent. The team was surprised to watch the behavior of the players change, he said. “We saw the game extend to all four corners of the world - people were actually playing in Antarctica.”Įven when in Beta, Ingress started growing a cult following. “We found people of all walks of life and all ages playing this game,” Hanke said. The first experiment was Ingress - the Pokémon GO augmented reality forerunner that sent people out into the world as part of two factions to battle for control over the world. To do so, the team set out with three goals: exploration and discovery of new places, exercise, and to get people to be social in real life. Pokemon GO players meeting at Sydney Opera House over the summer. “Let’s use the stuff to try and build experiences that are going to try and motivate people to go outside that will be healthy, wholesome, play experiences,” said Hanke. They wanted to change how people interacted with games, and because they were exposed to revolutions like Google Glass and other wearable computer projects, they decided to focus on future-looking technology. ![]() Most of the original team came out of Google Maps, including Hanke after he joined Google in 2004. “ Pokémon GO was really born out of Google Maps,” said Hanke. “You may have seen it in your city, large crowds of people, carrying their phones, what are all these people doing? Oh, they’re chasing Pokémon.” “In terms of the secret history of Pokémon GO, I want to ask you to flash back to last summer,” said Hanke, while showing a video of huge crowds of people walking through the streets of Taiwan. Hanke, who seemed just a little jetlagged, regaled the crowd with the story of the mobile game’s origins, meteoric rise, and teases of the future. Niantic CEO John Hanke revealed the “secret history” of Pokémon GO as part of his keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday. No, there were just some Google Maps programmers who decided they wanted to cut down on their screen time, and in the process, fulfill the dream of the Pokémon’s original creator. Pokémon GO players hike across cities and brave tall grass in an attempt to catch ‘em all, but there weren’t any Pokémon Masters in the beginning.
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