Speaker 1: Get technology. With tex Stuff comes stuff stock Coom. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tex Stuff. I am your host, Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: and today is the day that I talked about the
Speaker 1: game that took the world by storm. Everyone was either
Speaker 1: playing it, knew someone who was playing it, or at
Speaker 1: least was wondering what the heck was going on. Pokemon Go.
Speaker 1: It's a thing. It's a big thing. So I want
Speaker 1: to talk today about where it came from, how it works,
Speaker 1: where it's going. What are some of the other weird
Speaker 1: stories around it. You've probably heard quite a few of
Speaker 1: them already. I'm going to kind of cover a lot
Speaker 1: of that in today's episode. And yes, I have played
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go. I am of an age that is over
Speaker 1: the age of forty, which means that I was too old,
Speaker 1: or rather too old is probably the wrong way of
Speaker 1: putting it. I was not the right age demographic for
Speaker 1: Pokemon when it first debuted, so it missed me. I
Speaker 1: found myself mostly mystified by what Pokemon was, didn't really
Speaker 1: understand when, uh, you know, the kids on the lawns
Speaker 1: started talking about pokemons, which I understand they think is
Speaker 1: not at all funny, which is the reason why we
Speaker 1: old people keep saying it that way. Um, I wasn't
Speaker 1: really in that age group, so I didn't get it.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like magic the gathering. I didn't
Speaker 1: get into that. So people who were really into it,
Speaker 1: I it was like talking a different language whenever I
Speaker 1: chatted with them. But now I played Pokemon Go a bit,
Speaker 1: I'm starting to understand. I obviously, UH don't have the
Speaker 1: depth of knowledge of the players who have been with
Speaker 1: it since the very beginning, but I'm I'm starting to
Speaker 1: actually understand what it is they're talking about now, which
Speaker 1: is interesting. Uh. It is an interesting game, and I
Speaker 1: see where the appeal is now. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: a history of Pokemon itself before we get into Pokemon
Speaker 1: Go and the company that created it. Uh. That goes
Speaker 1: back to it's when a young man named Satoshi to
Speaker 1: Jerry came up with an idea that would evolve into Pokemon. Evolution,
Speaker 1: by the way, plays a big part in the Pokemon universe,
Speaker 1: but I just happened to have chosen the word evolve
Speaker 1: there to Jerry had already founded a video game magazine
Speaker 1: earlier in the eighties with a couple of friends. That
Speaker 1: magazine was called game freak, and he had even pitched
Speaker 1: a few ideas to different game companies in the past.
Speaker 1: He won a competition, I believe for Sega to pitch
Speaker 1: a game idea in the early eighties. So he had
Speaker 1: really loved video games for quite some time, to the
Speaker 1: point where his his academic performance was suffering back when
Speaker 1: he was in school, and had always been at least
Speaker 1: wanted to be part of the video game culture and industry.
Speaker 1: Now to Jerry, also, as a kid loved to catch
Speaker 1: things like tadpoles and insects. He loved to catch and
Speaker 1: collect them, and uh, he began to think about maybe
Speaker 1: making a video game that had a similar kind of
Speaker 1: purpose to it, like the idea of catching and collecting things.
Speaker 1: And he had also seen the game Boy mobile device,
Speaker 1: the handheld gaming console, as well as the game Link
Speaker 1: cable which allowed two game boys to link together for
Speaker 1: competitive or cooperative play, and it got the ball rolling.
Speaker 1: He started thinking, well, what if I created a game
Speaker 1: in which players seek out creatures to collect, then they
Speaker 1: could also maybe trade creatures with each other. So let's
Speaker 1: say I catch two of the same thing, and I
Speaker 1: have two of them, but my friend doesn't have any
Speaker 1: of them, but my friend does have another creature I
Speaker 1: do not have. Maybe we can make a trade happen.
Speaker 1: And then he thought, well, what if we could also
Speaker 1: have these creatures compete against each other create a competitive
Speaker 1: gameplay element, And so he pitched this idea to Nintendo.
Speaker 1: At the time, he was calling it Capsule Monsters, the
Speaker 1: idea being that you would use these little capsules to
Speaker 1: capture the monsters themselves, and then the monsters would emerge
Speaker 1: from the capsules. This was similar to some uh uh
Speaker 1: some some Japanese shows that he liked a lot where
Speaker 1: monsters and and creatures could pop out of seemingly impossibly
Speaker 1: small containers. So you've got this tight little container that
Speaker 1: suddenly pops open, and a creature much too large to
Speaker 1: fit that container is there. He wanted to have that
Speaker 1: element in it as well too. Jerry initially met with
Speaker 1: some resistance from Nintendo when he was pitching this idea,
Speaker 1: but eventually he got the green light to develop the game.
Speaker 1: So over the next six years he refined his idea
Speaker 1: and worked with the video game studio Creatures to create it.
Speaker 1: They changed the name from Capsule Monsters to pocket Monsters
Speaker 1: or Pokemon after in honoring a trademark Hurdle with the
Speaker 1: original name, and the game launched in Japan in February
Speaker 1: nine six. It's a very simple game, where you're simple
Speaker 1: is being too dismissive. It was simple in concept. You
Speaker 1: would capture these creatures and train them and and have
Speaker 1: them battle other creatures and earned badges, and it was
Speaker 1: really compelling gameplay. It struck a nerve, became extremely popular,
Speaker 1: and two years later in it would come over to
Speaker 1: North America and also find a lot of popularity here.
Speaker 1: Now again that basic idea is simple. Player takes on
Speaker 1: the role of a trainer. A trainer can seek out
Speaker 1: and catch Pokemon. There's several broad categories of Pokemon, and
Speaker 1: some are more effective at battling one type of creature
Speaker 1: over a different type of creature. It's like a really
Speaker 1: complicated version of paper rock scissors. So you've got a
Speaker 1: Pokemon that's of a certain type. It's more effect of
Speaker 1: against creatures that belong to a different type, and less
Speaker 1: effective against creatures who belong to a third type. So
Speaker 1: you want to make strategic use of your Pokemon to
Speaker 1: maximize your ability to beat your opponent. Now you're not
Speaker 1: guaranteed to win or lose just because the type of
Speaker 1: Pokemon you use is matched well or poorly against another one.
Speaker 1: There are other elements at play here. It's not just
Speaker 1: the type, but the type has a big influence. It
Speaker 1: is definitely much easier to win if your type of
Speaker 1: Pokemon is better suited against your opponent's type. So not
Speaker 1: a guarantee, but definitely easier. Now, this idea became a
Speaker 1: bit more complicated with the game mechanic of evolving Pokemon
Speaker 1: into more advanced versions of that creature. Uh. In other words,
Speaker 1: you could end up having your Pokemon transform, kind of
Speaker 1: like going from caterpillar to butterfly. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: several Pokemon that have a transformation that is similar to that,
Speaker 1: and when they evolve, they typically are more powerful, their
Speaker 1: attacks are different, uh, and generally speaking, they are better
Speaker 1: than they were before. It's a little more complicated than that,
Speaker 1: but that's the general idea now. The initial attraction is
Speaker 1: that concept of collecting. To Jerry knew that lots of
Speaker 1: people find satisfaction and seeking out and obtaining stuff like
Speaker 1: almost like a scavenger hunt or treasure hunt. This was
Speaker 1: one that had randomness inserted into it, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: that you were absolutely certain to run into a specific
Speaker 1: type of Pokemon at a specific point in the game.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of chance that was involved as well,
Speaker 1: and that led to that phrase that has been associated
Speaker 1: with Pokemon ever since. I got to Catch them All.
Speaker 1: You had to catch all the different types of Pokemon
Speaker 1: out there. And in that initial Pokemon game that came
Speaker 1: out for the Game Boy or games, I should say,
Speaker 1: there were about a hundred and fifty one of them.
Speaker 1: Hundred and fifty of them were published before the game
Speaker 1: even came out, or announced before the game came out.
Speaker 1: The hundred fifty first, which was Mew, was kept as
Speaker 1: a secret until after the game came out, and the
Speaker 1: games were insanely popular. They inspired manga and anime series,
Speaker 1: They inspired toys, they inspired a trading card game as
Speaker 1: well as other merchandise, and there have been multiple games
Speaker 1: in the series. Typically, later games would add even more
Speaker 1: Pokemon and more evolutions to the world, so you would
Speaker 1: get a lot more with the various uh additional versions
Speaker 1: of the game that came out. So that's the history
Speaker 1: of Pokemon in a nutshell, a very short version. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about the technological foundation for Pokemon Go. So you've
Speaker 1: got Pokemon that's going like gangbusters. It's incredibly popular across
Speaker 1: multiple forms of media. Uh, it is right for a
Speaker 1: new implementation into a game. Meanwhile, around the same time,
Speaker 1: you have a technological development and augmented reality that is
Speaker 1: creating the opportunity for this game. But that that opportunity
Speaker 1: didn't just spontaneously happen to To look at the development
Speaker 1: of Pokemon Go, you have to look at a company
Speaker 1: called key Hole Incorporated. Now Keyhole started in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: It was a private startup company in Silicon Valley, and
Speaker 1: it received financial backing from lots of investors, you know,
Speaker 1: like Sony was a big investor. Also a big investor
Speaker 1: was a venture capital fund that was connected to the
Speaker 1: c i A, the Central Intelligence Agency. So you probably
Speaker 1: have heard that Pokemon Go was created by a guy
Speaker 1: who got funding from the c i A. That's an oversimplification,
Speaker 1: but the CIA was interested in fun Keyhole. And what
Speaker 1: was Keyhole doing. They were creating detailed maps with geospatial
Speaker 1: data incorporated directly into those digital maps. In other words,
Speaker 1: you would be able to create a digital globe that
Speaker 1: had an accurate representation of what was in any specific region. Um.
Speaker 1: And as you've got more data about stuff that was
Speaker 1: in that region, you could add it to the map
Speaker 1: and make it more accurate. Uh. And so you have
Speaker 1: think of like a a very accurate local map and
Speaker 1: then just expand that to be for the entire globe.
Speaker 1: It was not a small undertaking, but Keyhole went after it.
Speaker 1: One of their early products was called Earth Viewer, which
Speaker 1: looked like a primitive version of Google Earth. You probably
Speaker 1: have seen Google Earth. In fact, it became the basis
Speaker 1: for Google Earth. The company gained recognition in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands as news programs ranging from CNN to ABC
Speaker 1: and CBS. We're using the software to create visualizations of
Speaker 1: different cities around the world, particular pularly for wartime footage.
Speaker 1: So you have this very dramatic look as a camera
Speaker 1: seemed to zoom in on a virtual globe all the
Speaker 1: way down to a level where you could see specific buildings. UM.
Speaker 1: It is very effective in that way, very dramatic, especially
Speaker 1: for the early two thousands. Now, the CEO for a
Speaker 1: Keyhole Incorporated it was a guy named John Hank who
Speaker 1: has continued to be a very important part of this
Speaker 1: entire process. Now in two thousand four, Google purchased Keyhole
Speaker 1: Incorporated for a cool thirty five million dollars. Google was
Speaker 1: busy trying to create the Google Earth product and saw
Speaker 1: the value of acquiring the Keyhole software and expertise. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've never used Google Earth, it is an interactive
Speaker 1: digital globe. You can zoom in as if you're descending
Speaker 1: an altitude over the Earth, so you can look at
Speaker 1: it from a view of your looking at Earth from space,
Speaker 1: and then you can zoom in closer, so you start
Speaker 1: getting details. And those details originally as you descend will
Speaker 1: be from satellite imagery. As you continue to zoom in,
Speaker 1: that will give way to images that were created through
Speaker 1: aerial photography, so you get better detail and definition. And
Speaker 1: then if you continue to zoom in, you start seeing
Speaker 1: three dimensional representations of landmarks and buildings. Um So, for example,
Speaker 1: I took a look at a three dimensional version of
Speaker 1: the office building we work in, which is at six
Speaker 1: seven five Constantly and Avenue. If you want to take
Speaker 1: a look at that in Atlanta, Georgia, and open Google Earth,
Speaker 1: you can pull up a view of the building we
Speaker 1: work in. It is enormous. We have a very small
Speaker 1: space in that very large building. Um it's not a
Speaker 1: very small space to us. To us, it's large, but
Speaker 1: in the context of the building it's very small. Anyway,
Speaker 1: you can get these three dimensional views, so it's like
Speaker 1: you are virtually at that location. You can even uh
Speaker 1: do navigation from one point to another and it'll be
Speaker 1: as if you are going through the streets to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point B, making all the turns necessary.
Speaker 1: And this sort of stuff has been built up in
Speaker 1: Google Earth over time. It's not like Keyhole came in
Speaker 1: and created Google her Google Earth, um uh the way
Speaker 1: it is now right off the gate. It has been
Speaker 1: a process, so things like that three dimensional representation of
Speaker 1: buildings that took time to develop. And over the years,
Speaker 1: Google offered a few different versions of Google Earth, including
Speaker 1: a commercial version that businesses would pay for in order
Speaker 1: to incorporate Google Earth capabilities into websites or programs of
Speaker 1: some sort. So, in other words, if you were a
Speaker 1: company and you are creating a a program to show
Speaker 1: the effects of your business. Maybe you're a construction company
Speaker 1: and you want to show off some of the buildings
Speaker 1: that your construction company has built in the past, that
Speaker 1: might be a good implementation of it and Google actually
Speaker 1: sold a commercial product, which these days is free, but
Speaker 1: at the time you had to pay something like four
Speaker 1: hundred bucks for a copy. So when Keyhole came over,
Speaker 1: Hank remained on board and continue to work on Google products.
Speaker 1: In Hank created a department within Google itself called Nyantic.
Speaker 1: So this was a startup company kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: it was within Google itself, so it wasn't a separate company.
Speaker 1: It operated kind of like a company, but under the
Speaker 1: corporate identity of Google itself, so it's sort of a
Speaker 1: division slash startup. The group took its name from a
Speaker 1: whaling ship that operated out of San Francisco during the
Speaker 1: gold rush days. At one point that ship was dragged
Speaker 1: onto shore and eventually it was built over. And Hank said,
Speaker 1: you know, San Francisco is like this. You've got all
Speaker 1: these ships that were eventually just kind of incorporated into
Speaker 1: the landscape of San Francisco, or or are underneath San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And he said that gave him the idea that the
Speaker 1: world around us often has a lot of treasures that
Speaker 1: are not evident just upon first glance, that you know,
Speaker 1: you would have to have this revealed to you. And
Speaker 1: so he liked the idea of creating technologies that would
Speaker 1: augment reality so that we could reveal those things to us,
Speaker 1: or even appear to reveal things that were not actually there.
Speaker 1: In other words, imagine having an app that can transform
Speaker 1: the space around you so that it looks like a
Speaker 1: fantasy medieval setting. That's the sort of stuff that you
Speaker 1: could do. Or just an app that allows you to
Speaker 1: walk down a city street and take a look at
Speaker 1: what it was like a century ago. That's the sort
Speaker 1: of stuff he was thinking of. Niantic, by the way,
Speaker 1: is also the name, or at least the Anglicized name,
Speaker 1: of the Nhantucket tribe, who are Native Americans that lived
Speaker 1: in New England. Presumably, I would, uh say, that's the
Speaker 1: source of the whaling ship's name. So Niantic Labs takes
Speaker 1: its name from a whaling ship, which in turn took
Speaker 1: its name I assume at least from a Native American tribe. Now,
Speaker 1: Niantic labs first product was called field Trip, which was
Speaker 1: a mobile app that provides tips for stuff to do
Speaker 1: based upon your location. Actually had this on my phone
Speaker 1: for a while. Uh I felt that it was a
Speaker 1: little limited in its use, but the idea is kind
Speaker 1: of cool. Like let's say you're walking down a street
Speaker 1: that you haven't been down before. Maybe it's even in
Speaker 1: a city that you're visiting for the first time. Field
Speaker 1: trip might point out cool places for you to go to,
Speaker 1: like museums or theaters that you might be interested in,
Speaker 1: or maybe even that a music group you happen to
Speaker 1: like also happens to be play being at a venue
Speaker 1: near you at that time, or it might show you
Speaker 1: like restaurants you would enjoy based upon your preferences, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. In two thousand and twelve, Nyantick would
Speaker 1: publish its first augmented reality game, and that was Ingress.
Speaker 1: So you may have heard that Pokemon Go was kind
Speaker 1: of built upon the foundation of Ingress, and a large
Speaker 1: part that's true. We actually covered Ingress back on uh
Speaker 1: an episode of tech Stuff way back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, So you can go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that classic episode of tech Stuff and listen to what
Speaker 1: we thought Ingress would be like at that time. It
Speaker 1: was still i think in beta when it we did
Speaker 1: that episode. At any rate, the game requires players to
Speaker 1: visit real world locations in order to participate. Inside the game,
Speaker 1: you have to walk around the real environment and use
Speaker 1: your app to interact inside a virtual environment that's overlaid
Speaker 1: on top of the real environment. That's the augmented reality thing.
Speaker 1: It enjoyed modest success among certain population. On the whole,
Speaker 1: I would say that Ingress was rather a niche game.
Speaker 1: Um people in the tech industry were more likely to
Speaker 1: play it, I imagine, than folks who are outside of it.
Speaker 1: It didn't have as broad an appeal as something like Pokemon. Now,
Speaker 1: important locations within the game Ingress are mapped to real
Speaker 1: world locations, and you have to go to those real
Speaker 1: world locations in order to interact with the game, at
Speaker 1: least if you're as long as you're not like gaming
Speaker 1: the system by spoofing your phones geolocation, which is something
Speaker 1: that technically you could do, but it's not with the
Speaker 1: spirit of the game. So Nyantick was tapping into Google's
Speaker 1: massive database of geotagged photos in order to populate the
Speaker 1: game with initial locations. So let's say that there's a
Speaker 1: famous outdoor sculpture and there's been tons of photos that
Speaker 1: are geo tagged that have been uploaded into Google's databases
Speaker 1: Google Photos, or something along those lines. Google could say
Speaker 1: all right, well, this sculpture is at this particular location,
Speaker 1: it is of cultural value. We're going to create a
Speaker 1: portal inside the game that is tagged to that location,
Speaker 1: and in order to interact with that portal, you have
Speaker 1: to go to where that sculpture is. The idea being
Speaker 1: that this will encourage people not just to play the game,
Speaker 1: but to explore their environments, to go to places that
Speaker 1: they might not go to before, and to encounter things
Speaker 1: of historical and cultural significance, and and get a better
Speaker 1: connection to their the world around them. That's kind of idealistic.
Speaker 1: You may be thinking, well, whenever I see people playing
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go, they're just staring at their their phones. They're
Speaker 1: not looking at anything else around them. But it's not
Speaker 1: for lack of trying anyway. Niantic also allowed players to
Speaker 1: take GEO tagged photos of locations that they thought should
Speaker 1: be in the game. So let's say that you're walking
Speaker 1: down the street and you see this amazing mural that's
Speaker 1: painted on the side of the building, and you pull
Speaker 1: up Ingress and you look at Ingress and there's no
Speaker 1: portal associated with that mural, and you're thinking, well, that's
Speaker 1: a shame. This should really be in the game so
Speaker 1: that people can see it and appreciate it, and also
Speaker 1: just so it can you know, be part of the game. Well.
Speaker 1: Ingress would allow you to take a photo of that
Speaker 1: mural and upload it so that the team over at
Speaker 1: Niantic Labs could review it and decide whether or not
Speaker 1: that merited inclusion in the game, and if they thought
Speaker 1: it did, they would then create a portal inside the
Speaker 1: game that would be tagged to that physical location. So
Speaker 1: part of the game was created through the data mining
Speaker 1: of Google's photos, part of the game was created through
Speaker 1: crowdsourced information from the players themselves, and all of that
Speaker 1: data that groundwork that ends up being the basis for
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go later on. So if you're wondering how did
Speaker 1: they come up with the idea for these partic or
Speaker 1: pocus stops or gems, those came from Ingress the work
Speaker 1: that was done previously on Ingress UH. And so we
Speaker 1: should be thankful to Ingress players for creating that, or
Speaker 1: in some cases we should probably be upset at them
Speaker 1: because there have been some issues with trespassing UH and
Speaker 1: some UH some overcrowding in certain areas that have irritated
Speaker 1: certain folks. So both good and bad has come out
Speaker 1: of that ingress experiment. Also, I should point out that
Speaker 1: in some cases the sites that have been included are
Speaker 1: kind of temporary art exhibitions that get replaced occasionally. So
Speaker 1: often I will see a pokas stop, pull it up,
Speaker 1: and I'll think, well, that's what this used to be,
Speaker 1: but it's not what it is right now. In fact,
Speaker 1: a theater I go to all the time used to
Speaker 1: be a church, and in Pokemon Go it still comes
Speaker 1: up as a church. It's not coming up as the theater.
Speaker 1: But that's, you know, that's to be understood. It's there's
Speaker 1: The world is a big place, and Niantic keeping everything
Speaker 1: up to date would be uh, that's all they would
Speaker 1: be able to do. And even then they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to do it. They'd just be making a tiny
Speaker 1: dent in an enormous, enormous shield. So Niantic in two
Speaker 1: thousand and fifteen would leave Google. Google was restructuring at
Speaker 1: that time. You may remember we did an episode about
Speaker 1: this about Google becoming Alphabet or creating Alphabet as a
Speaker 1: parent company and Google being underneath it. During that restructuring,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff changed, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that changed was Niantic got spun off as its own individual,
Speaker 1: independent company. A month after it was spun off, Niantic
Speaker 1: Labs announced that it was working on a game called
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go. So it wasn't long after Niantic became its
Speaker 1: own independent entity that said we're gonna make a game
Speaker 1: in the Pokemon universe that is an augmented reality the game.
Speaker 1: A month after they announced Pokemon Go, they held a
Speaker 1: round of funding and raised twenty million dollars from lots
Speaker 1: of different sources, including Pokemon, Google, and Nintendo. In early July,
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go entered beta testing with a relatively small group
Speaker 1: of users, and they wanted to test out the various
Speaker 1: features of the game, make sure that the stuff was
Speaker 1: working the way they intended it, and also to kind
Speaker 1: of measure server load. And then they went and opened
Speaker 1: it up region by regions, so some regions like got
Speaker 1: the roll out a week or two after others. Nantick
Speaker 1: noticed that the demand for the game was way beyond
Speaker 1: what they expected, causing lots of server issues. Early on,
Speaker 1: there was such a demand on servers that, at least
Speaker 1: for some of us, more frequently than not, you saw
Speaker 1: the game was not working, You couldn't connect to a
Speaker 1: server at all. Very frustrating if you happen to be
Speaker 1: someone who walks to and from work, and you think,
Speaker 1: I walk all the time anyway, Now I'm going to
Speaker 1: get rewarded for it, you know, besides that being outdoors
Speaker 1: fresh air exercise thing. Who needs that? I want my pokemons.
Speaker 1: But often I found myself unable to connect to the servers,
Speaker 1: and then I thought, well, there's no point in me
Speaker 1: walking anyway because I'm a sour pus. But what is
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go? What is the game? Well, currently the game
Speaker 1: focuses almost almost entirely on collecting Pokemon creatures. That's the
Speaker 1: I would argue, the largest part of the game. There
Speaker 1: are other elements too, but this I think takes the
Speaker 1: precedent like it's the top priority, and you collect characters
Speaker 1: by walking around the real world with the app open
Speaker 1: on your mobile device and active. That is an issue
Speaker 1: for some people because there's a bit of a bad
Speaker 1: redrain with Pokemon Go. And you can turn some battery
Speaker 1: save features on and you can turn off augmented reality
Speaker 1: if you want to help extend your battery life on
Speaker 1: your mobile device, but you have to have the app
Speaker 1: open and active in order for you to encounter Pokemon
Speaker 1: and to interact with Pokus stops and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So when you come into range of a Pokemon critter,
Speaker 1: typically you get a little sound effect and maybe your
Speaker 1: phone vibrates if you've set that on your on your device,
Speaker 1: and it alerts you. You pull up your phone, you
Speaker 1: see it represented on the map, and you push the
Speaker 1: screen in order to activate the sequence that would allow
Speaker 1: you to attempt to catch it and add it to
Speaker 1: your collection. If you do collect it, and you had
Speaker 1: never collected one of that Pokemon ever before, you add
Speaker 1: it to your Poka Dex, your lexicon and Pokemon creatures,
Speaker 1: so you've added it to your Poka Dex. After you
Speaker 1: encounter it and capture it for the first time, you
Speaker 1: get a little bit of an experienens bonus with that,
Speaker 1: so you can level up a little faster if you
Speaker 1: start encountering new Pokemon. And of course the more new
Speaker 1: ones you encounter, the fewer there are left for you
Speaker 1: to encounter, and that that kind of adds into that
Speaker 1: feeling that you have to go out and find the
Speaker 1: ones that you have not yet tracked down. Catching a
Speaker 1: Pokemon in the first place involves swiping a poke ball.
Speaker 1: These are those capsules I was talking about that can
Speaker 1: encapsulate a Pokemon, even though the ball is much smaller
Speaker 1: than the creature you're using it on, typically in some
Speaker 1: cases way smaller. If you read up on the various
Speaker 1: sizes of the of the monsters, and the ball appears
Speaker 1: at the bottom of your screen, you swipe your screen
Speaker 1: so that you throw the ball at the Pokemon, and
Speaker 1: if your a R mode is turned on, the Pokemon
Speaker 1: is superimposed on the environment around you. Your your phone's
Speaker 1: camera will be on and the screen you look at
Speaker 1: will actually be a video like a not quite it's
Speaker 1: not like it's recording, but it'll it'll be a live
Speaker 1: view of whatever the camera's pointed at, and the Pokemon
Speaker 1: will be super imposed on top of that. If you
Speaker 1: turn a R mode off, it's just a little cartoon environment.
Speaker 1: And then either way you start swiping the ball toward
Speaker 1: the Pokemon and the Pokemon needs to hit the monster.
Speaker 1: There's a little circle that will appear on the monster,
Speaker 1: and it will be a different color depending upon the ability,
Speaker 1: the strength of that Pokemon, and how hard it is
Speaker 1: to catch. So a green circle means and relatively easy catch,
Speaker 1: and the circle gets smaller until it gets down to
Speaker 1: until it shrinks down to you know nothing, and it
Speaker 1: starts over again at the larger size. If you throw
Speaker 1: the ball in such a way that lands in the
Speaker 1: middle of the circle, you get a bonus, and depending
Speaker 1: on how big the circle is, the bonus can go
Speaker 1: higher or lower, like if it's a smaller circle and
Speaker 1: you hit the center, you get more points, more more
Speaker 1: bonus experience points. Just because you hit the a the
Speaker 1: pokemon with the ball doesn't mean you capture it, though.
Speaker 1: The pokemon can have an attempt to escape, and if
Speaker 1: it does you have to keep on trying. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: can actually just get away and you're just left with nothing.
Speaker 1: Um it could be kind of tricky to catch some
Speaker 1: of these pokemon, even if they are relatively easy you
Speaker 1: know to catch, like if the circle is green, particularly
Speaker 1: if you're walking a dog, because my dog Timble doesn't
Speaker 1: understand that he needs to be still when an ev
Speaker 1: is in the area. He hasn't feared that part out yet. Um.
Speaker 1: So you can actually increase your chances now catching pokemon
Speaker 1: within the game by using various items. There are berries
Speaker 1: that will decrease the pokemon's um desire to escape. There
Speaker 1: are better poke balls that have a better chance of
Speaker 1: keeping a Pokemon captured, but that's the basic idea is
Speaker 1: just collect as many of them as you can. Now,
Speaker 1: once you collect them, you can also upgrade them. You
Speaker 1: can spend some points called star dust and some pieces
Speaker 1: of in game currency called candy that are specific to
Speaker 1: each type of Pokemon, So you can use those points
Speaker 1: and candy to increase your Pokemon's ability to to do
Speaker 1: more damage in combat or to withstand more damage in
Speaker 1: combat as well. Uh you can also use that candy
Speaker 1: to evolve a Pokemon if you have enough of them,
Speaker 1: and if that Pokemon in fact has an evolved form.
Speaker 1: Not all of them do, but they do, you can
Speaker 1: continue to collect those candy and use them to evolve
Speaker 1: your Pokemon. Typically, you get three candies of a specific
Speaker 1: type every time you catch up pokemon. So if I
Speaker 1: caught a Rotata, which are one of the most common
Speaker 1: types here in Atlanta, then I would get three Ratatta
Speaker 1: candies for capturing the Rotata, and if I transfer the rotata,
Speaker 1: if I trade it in because I don't need it
Speaker 1: and I already got a billion other retatas then I
Speaker 1: get one more piece of candy in return for that trade.
Speaker 1: If you save up enough pieces of candy, then you
Speaker 1: can you can evolve your retata to its next form.
Speaker 1: As the general idea and as of this recording, the
Speaker 1: creatures from the original Pokemon game are the only ones
Speaker 1: that you can find in Pokemon Go. And also some
Speaker 1: of those are legendary and will only be available during
Speaker 1: special times of the year, at specific events or particular locations,
Speaker 1: so they will be exceedingly rare. It will be very
Speaker 1: like you have to be in the right place at
Speaker 1: the right time, and you have to be lucky to
Speaker 1: catch them. So, for example, in North America, there are
Speaker 1: one two of the hundred and fifty one Pokemon that
Speaker 1: are available. If you wanted to catch any of the others,
Speaker 1: you would have to travel to other continents. It's a
Speaker 1: little complicated. A few players in North America have already
Speaker 1: caught all of the ones that are available in North America. Um,
Speaker 1: it is not easy to do. Niantic did have some
Speaker 1: legendary Pokemon get out in the wild by accident. It
Speaker 1: was a coding thing. They shouldn't have been there, and
Speaker 1: some of them were caught. So some people caught legendary
Speaker 1: Pokemon before it was supposed to officially be possible to
Speaker 1: do so, so what did Niantic do? They erased them.
Speaker 1: Those Pokemon are no more. If they were in someone's collection,
Speaker 1: they are no longer there. And that raised the ire
Speaker 1: of some players. Why are you punishing me for a
Speaker 1: mistake you made? And niantics response was, well, it it
Speaker 1: kind of breaks the game. They're not supposed to be
Speaker 1: out there, so we we erased them. That was a mistake.
Speaker 1: We're sorry for it, but they're not supposed to be there.
Speaker 1: Niantics made a few updates to the game that have
Speaker 1: upset people. I'll get more into that in a second. Well,
Speaker 1: one of them I can talk about right now. There
Speaker 1: used to be a an indicator on your screen that
Speaker 1: would show which Pokemon are closest to you, and there
Speaker 1: were a little acts that appeared below them, and the
Speaker 1: tracks were supposed to get be an indicator of how
Speaker 1: close or far away are those Pokemon, and the tracks
Speaker 1: were supposed to range from one to three, one track
Speaker 1: presumably meaning that it's closer to you, and three tracks
Speaker 1: meaning that you have to walk a little bit a
Speaker 1: bit further to find them, but it's wasn't really working.
Speaker 1: All the tracks would show up as three, or you
Speaker 1: wouldn't get any change in the number of tracks, So
Speaker 1: you'd start walking in a direction, but you couldn't tell
Speaker 1: if you're getting closer or further away from the ones
Speaker 1: you were looking for. So eventually Niantic removed the tracks entirely.
Speaker 1: You still have an indicator that shows which pokemon or
Speaker 1: in your general area, but you have no way of
Speaker 1: knowing what direction to go in. Another thing that Niantick
Speaker 1: removed was the ability of third party sites to help
Speaker 1: you track specific Pokemon. There were some third party applications
Speaker 1: that would give you a notice saying, hey, there's this
Speaker 1: particular type of Pokemon at this particular spot that's not
Speaker 1: too far from you. You should go there and try
Speaker 1: and catch it. Those capabilities have been removed now, and
Speaker 1: Niantic has had a lot of backlash from that as well.
Speaker 1: Their argument was that it kind of allowed people to cheat,
Speaker 1: that they weren't really going out and exploring the way
Speaker 1: Niantic had intended the game to uh to cause people
Speaker 1: to do. Never mind the fact that a lot of people,
Speaker 1: even when they are out and about and quote unquote
Speaker 1: exploring they're really just looking at their phones and not
Speaker 1: looking around them. To replenish your supply of poke balls,
Speaker 1: those are the things you're using to catch the Pokemon Pokemon, Pokemon.
Speaker 1: I knew it was a matter of time before I
Speaker 1: said it accidentally without irony, and there you go. But
Speaker 1: if you wanted to replenish your supply of poke balls
Speaker 1: or other in game items, one of the ways of
Speaker 1: doing that is to visit pokas stops. Now, these are
Speaker 1: associated with those real world locations to have some sort
Speaker 1: of cultural or historic significance, like public art or historic sites, landmarks,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. These are the same sort of
Speaker 1: locations that you found the poor les in Ingress. It
Speaker 1: was built on that same foundation. Uh. And you would
Speaker 1: visit these and spin a little graphic in your in
Speaker 1: your app, and that would generate the items that you
Speaker 1: would collect at. So, if you are in an area
Speaker 1: that has a lot of these places, it's pretty easy
Speaker 1: to very quickly fill up your inventory with all those items.
Speaker 1: If you aren't in an area that has a lot
Speaker 1: of those locations, it gets pretty frustrating pretty quickly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are other items in the game that do
Speaker 1: things like increase the number of monsters you'll encounter within
Speaker 1: a certain amount of time or in a certain area,
Speaker 1: or the amount of experience you gain for each in
Speaker 1: game action you take uh little things that tweak the
Speaker 1: the experience of the game. And of course, as you play,
Speaker 1: your character levels up. Once you hit level five, you
Speaker 1: can pick one of three teams. They are Team Instinct,
Speaker 1: Valor and mystic Um Team Mystic if you must know,
Speaker 1: go Blue. The team's really only come into play when
Speaker 1: the games are other mechanics pops up. That's Gym battles
Speaker 1: Gem as in g y M. That's the only other time.
Speaker 1: That really the only time that the team identity matters
Speaker 1: right now as of the recording of this podcast. So
Speaker 1: at certain real world locations there are Pokemon gems. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they're actually associated with real gems. One of the ones
Speaker 1: that's close to my neck of the woods is at
Speaker 1: a yoga studio, So it's kind of funny to see
Speaker 1: people fiercely competing outside of a place where other folks
Speaker 1: are saying the musta and very hushed and relaxed tones. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if a gym is unclaimed, it shows up as gray
Speaker 1: and you can claim it on behalf of your team,
Speaker 1: whichever team you have chosen, and then you would choose
Speaker 1: a Pokemon from your collection to guard the gym and
Speaker 1: hold it. Holding a gym for a certain length of
Speaker 1: time will start to get you prizes. I have never
Speaker 1: ever had a Pokemon hold a gym long enough to
Speaker 1: earn any of those prizes I have. I have claimed
Speaker 1: a couple of gyms in my time, but they have
Speaker 1: not lasted very long. So if a gym is already
Speaker 1: owned by another team, it'll show up in that team's color.
Speaker 1: You can battle for control of that gym, and the
Speaker 1: opponent will be an AI controlled version of whatever Pokemon
Speaker 1: the gym owner chose to guard that spot. You will
Speaker 1: have six Pokemon to try and take the gym, and
Speaker 1: there can be more than one guard, so you might
Speaker 1: spend all of your six guys defeating one guard, and
Speaker 1: then a second guard shows up and wipes you out.
Speaker 1: You'll still get experience for defeating the first one, but
Speaker 1: you are kind of stuck. You know you you you
Speaker 1: won't win the gym. You win the battle, but not
Speaker 1: the war. In other words, if you do win the gym,
Speaker 1: then you designate which of your Pokemon will stay there
Speaker 1: and guard the spot so that other people can't just
Speaker 1: take it away. And if you come across a gym
Speaker 1: that already owned by your team, you can train your monsters.
Speaker 1: You still have to defeat the one that's in that place,
Speaker 1: um and maybe even take its place and and beef
Speaker 1: up the defense of that gem. But uh, you aren't.
Speaker 1: You aren't resting control for your team. Your team already
Speaker 1: has control of that one. Oh and h. Then there
Speaker 1: are the eggs. Once in a while, you'll find an egg,
Speaker 1: and you can place an egg in an incubator. You
Speaker 1: have one incubator automatically that has an unlimited number of uses,
Speaker 1: and then you can find or buy other incubators that
Speaker 1: have a limited number. So you can put one egg
Speaker 1: in an incubator at a time, and eggs will hatch
Speaker 1: when you hit a specific distance, so that will depend
Speaker 1: upon the egg. There are two kilometer eggs, five kilometer eggs,
Speaker 1: ten kilometer eggs, that kind of thing, and as you
Speaker 1: walk that distance, you hatch those eggs. So if you
Speaker 1: have a ten kilometer egg in an incubator, you walk
Speaker 1: ten kilometers, that egg will hatch hopefully into something thing
Speaker 1: really useful. So I'm guessing that I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: direct confirmation, but to me, it looks like the game
Speaker 1: relies both on GPS and predometer like accelerometer type stuff
Speaker 1: and smartphones to figure out how far and how much
Speaker 1: you walk. Some people have said that they have placed
Speaker 1: their phone on a turntable, an old vinyl turntable, and
Speaker 1: been able to simulate walking by just having the phone
Speaker 1: spin round and round with Pokemon go open, and it
Speaker 1: thinks that they're walking and they've hatched eggs that way,
Speaker 1: I call that cheating. But I've also noticed that if
Speaker 1: I walk with my phone and I'm not and the
Speaker 1: app is open but I'm not particularly walking in a
Speaker 1: way that jostles the phone too much, I often don't
Speaker 1: see the distance reflected accurately in the app. It seems
Speaker 1: like I've walked much further than the app will grant me.
Speaker 1: I find that if I hold my phone in my
Speaker 1: hand and I swing my arm while I walk, it
Speaker 1: ends up being far more accurate. So I think it's
Speaker 1: both that's both GPS and predomin at least to some extent,
Speaker 1: to mark how far you've walked, and once you do
Speaker 1: reach that distance and the egg hatches you're like yay,
Speaker 1: and then you have to do it all over again,
Speaker 1: so you're just gonna keep on walking. Ultimately, the game
Speaker 1: is supposed to be about exploring the world around you,
Speaker 1: not that that sucks people from keeping their head down
Speaker 1: and walking into traffic or into a telephone pole, which
Speaker 1: I have almost done a couple of times myself. I'm
Speaker 1: not being super snarky here. I am as guilty, if
Speaker 1: not more so, as anyone else. One thing I can say,
Speaker 1: I have never ever looked at my phone while going
Speaker 1: across a crosswalk. Whenever I'm crossing a street, I do
Speaker 1: not look at the phone because I've seen too many
Speaker 1: near miss accidents and I don't want to be one
Speaker 1: of them or worse right, So just be safe out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, the phone tells you, like, if you don't
Speaker 1: pay attention, you will get eaten by a water dragon.
Speaker 1: It happens. It's on the screen and when you open
Speaker 1: the game. Now, there's some planned expansions that should be
Speaker 1: coming out over the next few months, maybe further, depending
Speaker 1: upon how long it takes Niantic to develop the gameplay.
Speaker 1: One of those expansions are one of those features that
Speaker 1: should be coming in the future is trading. A big
Speaker 1: part of earlier Pokemon games was trading trading Pokemon too
Speaker 1: to beef up your own collection, but that's not part
Speaker 1: of Pokemon Go. As of the recording of this episode,
Speaker 1: Niantick has said that it's a planned future feature, assuming
Speaker 1: they can find a good way to implement it so
Speaker 1: that you're not you're not finding a way to game
Speaker 1: the system or just make the game less enjoyable. A
Speaker 1: lot of people really like the idea of catching each
Speaker 1: of the Pokemon, although I can get very frustrating if
Speaker 1: you've been looking for a specific type and just cannot
Speaker 1: seem to find it, or whenever you find it, it
Speaker 1: gets away. Uh. But some folks are worried that with trading,
Speaker 1: it would just all the accomplishment would go out the window.
Speaker 1: That's the fear. I honestly don't know how I feel
Speaker 1: about it, because this is my first time experiencing anything
Speaker 1: with Pokemon, and at that right now, I'm not terribly
Speaker 1: social with it. I am not one of those folks
Speaker 1: who goes out with a big group of people. It's
Speaker 1: just that I happen to have a lot of walking
Speaker 1: because I don't drive, so I've been playing it as well,
Speaker 1: just to kind of pass the time while I walk
Speaker 1: and to make the walk more interesting. But I have
Speaker 1: not really been socializing with folks. I have battled a
Speaker 1: couple of folks for a control of a gem. There's
Speaker 1: one time where some Team Valor folks were fighting a
Speaker 1: with me while I was trying to take over a
Speaker 1: Team instinct Jim. That was lovely, but that's about as
Speaker 1: close as it got. And even then they were across
Speaker 1: the street from me, so it didn't get that close.
Speaker 1: So John Hank also said that there will be new
Speaker 1: ways to interact with the locations that you visit, so
Speaker 1: stuff like pocus stops and gems. Right now they have
Speaker 1: a very specific way that you can interact with them,
Speaker 1: but he says in the future there will be more ways,
Speaker 1: including customizable ways. I don't know what that means, uh,
Speaker 1: And he wasn't really elaborating, he was just saying that
Speaker 1: look out for that kind of stuff. Niantic Labs also
Speaker 1: said that they want to improve the a our nature
Speaker 1: of the game so that Pokemon will be more naturally
Speaker 1: incorporated into your real environment. So you hold up your phone,
Speaker 1: you've got the camera active right now, Pokemon just kind
Speaker 1: of are superimposed on top of whatever you're pointing them too.
Speaker 1: When the future, they would like to use some uh,
Speaker 1: machine learning and artificial intelligence so that the pokemon can
Speaker 1: interact in the environment in a way that makes sense,
Speaker 1: Like they might be walking down the sidewalk or sitting
Speaker 1: on a park bench, or trying to cross a busy street,
Speaker 1: could be any of those things, and they want to
Speaker 1: be able to use augmented reality to enhance that. No
Speaker 1: telling on when that might happen, or you know, it
Speaker 1: may be one of those things that is gradually improved
Speaker 1: upon and it's hard to define exactly when things changed. Now,
Speaker 1: you might wonder, how does this app how does this
Speaker 1: game make money? Where's the angle, where's the money coming from?
Speaker 1: And the answer to that is micro transactions. This is
Speaker 1: where you make small purchases within a game. The game
Speaker 1: itself is free, but if you want to accelerate the
Speaker 1: development of your character or get certain items without having
Speaker 1: to visit pocas stops, this is the way you could
Speaker 1: do it. And essentially what you do is you spend
Speaker 1: real money to buy in game currency and use that
Speaker 1: in game currency to purchase in game items. So let's
Speaker 1: say you need to replenish your supply of poke balls.
Speaker 1: You could spend real money to buy coins within the
Speaker 1: game and then use those coins to buy the poke
Speaker 1: balls and not have to go to a dozen pocas
Speaker 1: stops instead. So there you know. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: a pay to win the way some other games are,
Speaker 1: but it definitely can help you get an advantage since
Speaker 1: you can't actually play against other players. You cannot do
Speaker 1: a battle between two players as of yet, no telling
Speaker 1: if that will come out in the future, but you
Speaker 1: can't do it right now. It might be one of
Speaker 1: those things where people aren't going to be too up
Speaker 1: in arms about micro transactions, because why get upset if
Speaker 1: if your enjoyment of the game isn't dependent upon trying
Speaker 1: to beat someone else, and they that person can't get
Speaker 1: an unfair advantage just by spending more money. Uh, micro
Speaker 1: transactions make a lot of sense once you get to
Speaker 1: a point where you do have truly competitive head to
Speaker 1: head play. If there's an advantage by spending money on
Speaker 1: items within a game, it breaks the game pretty quickly
Speaker 1: because people will point out, well, this isn't fair because
Speaker 1: I don't have enough money to play this game. The way,
Speaker 1: everyone else is playing it, so I'm always going to
Speaker 1: be last, and that's not fun. Games don't survive if
Speaker 1: they take that model. In my experience, they might survive
Speaker 1: among a small elite few who will continue to play
Speaker 1: the game, but everyone else will just get sick of
Speaker 1: it and leave. Uh So, how much money does Pokemon
Speaker 1: Go make? Well, we don't really have a full understanding
Speaker 1: of that. It's not like it's revealed uh and made
Speaker 1: public information. But according to Techno Buffalo as of August fourth,
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen, and it earned a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty million dollars in revenue. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: um if that's like verifiable information, but a hundred sixty
Speaker 1: million dollars in that short amount of time is pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, it had boosted the market value of Nintendo
Speaker 1: briefly to the tune of more than seven billion dollars. However,
Speaker 1: then Nintendo came out and said, hey, we didn't really
Speaker 1: have anything to do with Pokemon Go, and then its
Speaker 1: market value dropped significantly. But it's interesting that something as
Speaker 1: simple as an a R smartphone app could have had
Speaker 1: that significant of an impact on a company's market value. Also,
Speaker 1: kudos to Nintendo for coming up and saying, hey, um,
Speaker 1: don't make such big assumptions because that could in the
Speaker 1: long term hurt our company. It was the responsible thing
Speaker 1: to do. Probably not the easiest thing to do when
Speaker 1: you look at your company and say, wow, we are
Speaker 1: worth seven billion more dollars today, Um, we need to
Speaker 1: address that. That probably was not easy. The average usage
Speaker 1: time for Pokemon Go players, according to Censor Tower, is
Speaker 1: around twenty six minutes and five seconds per day, which
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a lot maybe, but keep in mind
Speaker 1: that Facebook, which is one of the real time sucks
Speaker 1: out there, is on average twenty two minutes forty six
Speaker 1: seconds of daily use for the average user. So people
Speaker 1: are using Pokemon Go longer per day than they our Facebook. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's pretty pretty powerful stuff. I mean, if you are
Speaker 1: able to show that to an investor, then that is
Speaker 1: going to get a lot of attention. Uh So a
Speaker 1: hundred sixty million dollars is nothing to sneeze as, especially
Speaker 1: when you consider that you know, they raised that twenty
Speaker 1: million in funding before they started to develop the game. Uh,
Speaker 1: not a bad not a bad start at all. So
Speaker 1: beyond those micro transactions, what kind of impact and beyond
Speaker 1: the the the brief but impressive inflation of Nintendo's market value,
Speaker 1: what impact has the game had? A lot? Uh? There
Speaker 1: there are a ton of users out there. You probably
Speaker 1: have heard that the the number of daily users quickly
Speaker 1: outstripped things like Twitter and Tender, very very popular apps.
Speaker 1: As the game continued to get rolled out across the world,
Speaker 1: that number changed even more in Pokemon favor. So it
Speaker 1: was one of those games that got a lot of
Speaker 1: people curious, even folks who were completely unfamiliar with Pokemon
Speaker 1: and I was not. While not completely unfamiliar, I'd put
Speaker 1: myself more in that category than anything else. Uh, you
Speaker 1: know that those folks got into the game. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: proof of it. I had never played any other Pokemon game,
Speaker 1: but I'm playing Pokemon Go and I'm enjoying it all
Speaker 1: the way down to the folks who were hardcore Pokemon fans,
Speaker 1: They're really into the game too. To some extent, obviously,
Speaker 1: are individuals different. There may be some hardcore fans who
Speaker 1: are like I refused to play this game because it
Speaker 1: is not reflective of the Pokemon I love, perfectly legitimate
Speaker 1: for that person, I'm not going to argue it, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, there is a huge, huge amount of
Speaker 1: Pokemon players out there. That means that while there are
Speaker 1: some great stories about Pokemon, there's some bad ones too.
Speaker 1: On the great you may have heard stories like a
Speaker 1: police officer coming up and asking why people are gathering
Speaker 1: in a location, being told about Pokemon, and then downloading
Speaker 1: the game and joining in. That's a great story. Stories
Speaker 1: that aren't so great might be that a teenagers playing
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go and then as they're playing the game, they
Speaker 1: happened to encounter a dead body. That happened back in
Speaker 1: July of twenty sixteen, so not long after the game started. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was an issue where a teenage lady was playing
Speaker 1: um Pokemon Go uh around Big Wind River and as
Speaker 1: what she was playing, she spotted us some something unusual
Speaker 1: near the river bank and UH that unusual thing ended
Speaker 1: up being a body. She actually didn't notice it right away,
Speaker 1: according to the news reports. She said that she was
Speaker 1: only paying attention to her phone and where she was walking,
Speaker 1: didn't even notice the body until she was practically right
Speaker 1: next to it. Um. She called the police, and the
Speaker 1: police showed up and then started an investigation into the
Speaker 1: man's death. Ah, So that was, you know, pretty dramatic,
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm guessing a fairly traumatizing event. I don't
Speaker 1: know how I would have felt about that, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's just one of the negative stories from Pokemon.
Speaker 1: Another one, which is a little concerning, where that armed
Speaker 1: muggers were using Pokemon Go in order to find victims.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier that there are items within Pokemon
Speaker 1: Go to increase your chances of encountering Pokemon. One of
Speaker 1: those things is called a lure, and a lure is
Speaker 1: something you can associate with a Pocus stop. You can
Speaker 1: add a lure to a poke a stop, and that
Speaker 1: poke a Stop will attract more Pokemon monsters for the
Speaker 1: duration of half an hour. And this is effective for
Speaker 1: anyone in the game. It's not just the person who
Speaker 1: set the lure. Anyone in the game can benefit from this.
Speaker 1: So imagine you're a mugger and there's a Pocus stop
Speaker 1: that's in a fairly secluded area, maybe an area that
Speaker 1: doesn't tend to get a lot of traffic. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: late at night, and you set a lure to that
Speaker 1: Poka stop and you start waiting and you wait for
Speaker 1: people to show up, and then if people show up
Speaker 1: and there's not a lot of them and they look
Speaker 1: like they got some cash on them, your mug them
Speaker 1: and you take their money. I would argue that that
Speaker 1: is a not the the not a smart move. First
Speaker 1: of all, coming in crime is never a smart move period.
Speaker 1: Crime doesn't pay kids. But I would, knowing the way
Speaker 1: technology works, if you're using your phone, if you've got
Speaker 1: a phone, you've got the game on your phone, it's
Speaker 1: register stirred to you in some way, and then you
Speaker 1: add a lure. My guess is that on the server side,
Speaker 1: on Pokemon Go, they could probably figure out who set
Speaker 1: that lure and thus give police at least a lead
Speaker 1: to work with. So if you got mugged at a
Speaker 1: particular Pokast stop at a particular time, you might be
Speaker 1: able to work backwards and say, well, at that time,
Speaker 1: the lure was set by so and so. Let's go
Speaker 1: and ask so and so some pretty tough questions. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, it would make way more sense if
Speaker 1: you're a mugger to find places that already have lures
Speaker 1: and not set them yourself. Not that you should do that,
Speaker 1: you totally shouldn't, but don't set lures, You're just gonna
Speaker 1: get caught. Wow. I'm not advocating mugging at all. By
Speaker 1: the way, Honestly, if I were you guys and I
Speaker 1: was playing Pokemon Go late at night, I would definitely
Speaker 1: be doing so with a big group of people, because
Speaker 1: you never know what kind of folks you'll encounter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an issue though, because you could create this beacon,
Speaker 1: this literal beacon within the game and lure people to
Speaker 1: go there, not just Pokemon but actual players. So be
Speaker 1: aware of your surroundings, be aware of, uh, what is
Speaker 1: going on. Don't just take it as a sign that
Speaker 1: someone has really been nice in that spot. It could
Speaker 1: be that there are people who are willing to pray
Speaker 1: upon the less fortunate or the less observant. Ah. I
Speaker 1: honestly think that this is obviously a rare occurrence, not
Speaker 1: something that happens that frequently. But one thing we have
Speaker 1: seen that has happened fairly frequently is that players have
Speaker 1: used the game to or have while playing the game,
Speaker 1: have gone to places that perhaps they shouldn't have, places
Speaker 1: that maybe have a certain reverence associated with them that
Speaker 1: is interrupted by bowl staring at phones and trumping all
Speaker 1: over the place like Arlington National Cemetery or the Holocaust Museum,
Speaker 1: places that definitely have cultural or historical or both significance
Speaker 1: and are important in places that people really should go
Speaker 1: to and experience, but perhaps not while holding a phone
Speaker 1: and trying to play a game where they're trying to
Speaker 1: catch a little rat like creature. Uh. It shows a
Speaker 1: lack awareness and respect. And it also means that people
Speaker 1: who are at those places and are trying to either
Speaker 1: have a meaningful moment or they're soaking it in there
Speaker 1: just they're there for the site itself, not for a
Speaker 1: game it is. It can come across at best as
Speaker 1: distracting and at worst as being disrespectful. So that has
Speaker 1: been an issue in multiple places. I think this one
Speaker 1: that could very easily be solved, and in fact, I've
Speaker 1: heard about Niantic Labs taking steps on this already. There's
Speaker 1: a thing you can do called geo fencing. Geo fencing
Speaker 1: is just when you designate a specific area market with
Speaker 1: like a set of coordinates, several sets of coordinates, and
Speaker 1: you define a region and say all right that that
Speaker 1: region is just off limits. There are apps that use
Speaker 1: geo fencing so that the apps will not work within
Speaker 1: those limits. For example, there are several apps that have
Speaker 1: schools GEO fenced off, so that if you are on
Speaker 1: school grounds, the apps won't work because they would otherwise
Speaker 1: be either distracting or even potentially harmful towards students. You
Speaker 1: can use a similar um strategy with Pokemon Go and
Speaker 1: mark off certain areas is saying all right, anything that
Speaker 1: is within this region, there are no Pokus stops, and
Speaker 1: no Pokemon will show up, and maybe even a message
Speaker 1: will pop up on the phone saying as much so
Speaker 1: that players don't invade that space and disrupt things that
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be. That's something that's entirely possible. And keep
Speaker 1: in mind again, a lot of these places were created
Speaker 1: by Ingress players, but when Ingress was Ingress still is
Speaker 1: a thing, but with Ingress players it was a much
Speaker 1: smaller number overall than there are Pokemon Go players. So
Speaker 1: you might have an occasional Ingress player coming into one
Speaker 1: of these spaces and perhaps no one notices because it's
Speaker 1: like one person every couple of weeks maybe, But with
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go it's hordes of people all the time, and
Speaker 1: it's a much different story. There have been other stories too,
Speaker 1: there was a story of a shootout in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: between some Pokemon Go players and a potential assailant um
Speaker 1: some some pretty harry stuff. Really, anything, anytime you have
Speaker 1: a game that requires people to get into the same
Speaker 1: physical space as each other, you're gonna have issues. It's
Speaker 1: not the fault of the game. That's just because people
Speaker 1: are people. Uh. Sometimes the game can facilitate that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff in ways that the game creators didn't intend.
Speaker 1: But again, not really, you can't really call it the
Speaker 1: fault of the game. That's people leveraging the game to
Speaker 1: do things that the game creators didn't intend. Now the
Speaker 1: question remains, should we expect a rush of augmented reality games.
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go has been wildly successful from adoption to revenue generation,
Speaker 1: at least in the short term. Who's to say that
Speaker 1: this game is gonna have any longevity. We don't know yet.
Speaker 1: But will we see a ton of a R games
Speaker 1: come up in the future. My guess is in the
Speaker 1: short term, yes we are. But here's the problem. Pokemon
Speaker 1: is an ideal intellectual property for augmented reality. It is
Speaker 1: Taylor made for a R. I would argue because it's
Speaker 1: the Pokemon Go game is a game that already mimics
Speaker 1: real world hobbies like insect collecting, so it's already similar
Speaker 1: to something that you would do in reality. If you
Speaker 1: were playing a game Boy Pokemon game, your character in
Speaker 1: the game would have to travel around and collect Pokemon.
Speaker 1: So translating that game element from the game Boy version
Speaker 1: to a real world version not that difficult. You're you're
Speaker 1: still moving around places, physical locations to capture Pokemon. It's
Speaker 1: a very simple game mechanic too to translate. Think of
Speaker 1: other games, it's not as easy to translate that into
Speaker 1: a real world experience. Elevator action, for example, everyone gets
Speaker 1: mad when I get into the elevators that pot City
Speaker 1: marketed and I hit all the buttons, But you never
Speaker 1: know how you're gonna have to work your way through
Speaker 1: the maze. That doesn't work so well. So certain games
Speaker 1: like Pokemon our ideal for augmented reality. In fact, again
Speaker 1: i'd argue Pokemon is pretty much the perfect title for this.
Speaker 1: Niantic could not have hit upon a better idea. They
Speaker 1: didn't have to shoehorn the traditional gameplay into a different,
Speaker 1: but related real world version of the gameplay. It was
Speaker 1: a perfect translation in the sense of the point where
Speaker 1: you're going around collecting things. You could argue that the
Speaker 1: game is far from perfect, especially since there's such limited
Speaker 1: gameplay right now between collecting in gym battles. But the
Speaker 1: collecting part I think they got right honestly, and Pokemon
Speaker 1: had a huge player base already, right like Ingress did
Speaker 1: not have the benefit of an pre existing player base.
Speaker 1: Niantic had to convince people to play Ingress. But while
Speaker 1: Ingress taps into some pretty traditional science fiction themes, there
Speaker 1: wasn't a pre sisting world. It wasn't like they could
Speaker 1: go to a community and say, hey, you know that
Speaker 1: game you love, well, now here's an a R version
Speaker 1: of it. Because it was all new Pokemon, there was
Speaker 1: a huge pre existing audience. Not only was there a
Speaker 1: huge audience that audience when they were kids playing Pokemon
Speaker 1: for the first time in the nineties, they now are
Speaker 1: adults with disposed income and smartphones, so they have the
Speaker 1: money to own the material needed to play Pokemon Go
Speaker 1: and Niantic Labs could bang on both novelty, the novelty
Speaker 1: of playing an a R game and nostalgia of this
Speaker 1: game that people loved when they were kids. Is a
Speaker 1: double whammy, perfect storm for popularity. It's no shock that
Speaker 1: it got so popular so fast. In fact, people who
Speaker 1: are asking like, how can people be so interested in
Speaker 1: playing this game? I turned to say, are you are
Speaker 1: you blind? Not not that you should be interested, but
Speaker 1: do not understand how popular Pokemon was back in the nineties.
Speaker 1: That the people who played Pokemon back in the nineties
Speaker 1: are now older and have smartphones, and it's augmented reality.
Speaker 1: It's it's a new discipline that people have had very
Speaker 1: limited exposure to. How could it not be popular? Obviously
Speaker 1: it was gonna be popular. I if I had had
Speaker 1: an opportunity to be on the ground floor of investing
Speaker 1: in Pokemon Go, I absolutely would have done it, because
Speaker 1: there was it would have been very hard for it
Speaker 1: to to mess up. That's not to say that it's
Speaker 1: going to have longevity, but it would have been hard
Speaker 1: to mess up the launch unless the game was just
Speaker 1: completely unplayable, and you could argue that in those first
Speaker 1: few days where the servers were having so much trouble,
Speaker 1: it often was. Now I'm guessing there it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a lot more games coming out in augmented reality space,
Speaker 1: but they're going to have a hard time of it,
Speaker 1: because again, they're not gonna necessary lea be position the
Speaker 1: way Pokemon Go was. You can come up with an
Speaker 1: amazing game, there's a phenomenal application of augmented reality, but
Speaker 1: unless you also have that audience to tap into, it's
Speaker 1: gonna it means you have to convince people, hey, you
Speaker 1: want to try this new thing. It's also augmented reality.
Speaker 1: It's not based on an i P you love, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna be an amazing experience that's gonna attract the
Speaker 1: smaller fan base h or you're gonna end up running
Speaker 1: into the truck. The danger of having a game that
Speaker 1: is based on a beloved i P. But people are
Speaker 1: just gonna say, oh, this is just Pokemon Go, but
Speaker 1: for Transformers or Lego or some other type of of
Speaker 1: toy or uh i P. So I think we are
Speaker 1: going to see a lot more are typically in technology.
Speaker 1: If we see something as successful, copycats come out of
Speaker 1: the woodwork before long. But I don't know that uh
Speaker 1: any of them are going to have a good chance
Speaker 1: at real success compared to what Pokemon Go has already
Speaker 1: had not unless someone comes up with a really innovative, cool,
Speaker 1: compelling use of augmented reality, and that could happen, but
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna see a lot more copycats in
Speaker 1: the near future. Let's find out, shall we. Guys. That
Speaker 1: is our episode on Pokemon Go. If you have enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode and you have your own Pokemon ghost stories,
Speaker 1: I want to hear them. If you found something really funny,
Speaker 1: or you just uh, you notice something unusual about the game,
Speaker 1: or maybe maybe even you just have your own perspective
Speaker 1: on augmented reality, let me know. Or if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff or people
Speaker 1: that I should have on the show, either as a
Speaker 1: guest to interview or a guest host or an episode,
Speaker 1: send me a message email is tech Stuff at how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, or drop me a line on
Speaker 1: Twitter or Facebook. The handle at both of those is
Speaker 1: tech stuff H s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.