WEBVTT - The Rise of Niantic 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.200 --> 0:00:14.960 He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.080 --> 0:00:17.959 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:22.520 and I love all things tech and listener Charlie Kniehouse 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:25.160 tweeted to the show a couple of weeks back, asking 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:29.200 that I do an episode covering the company Niantic, which 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:32.879 is arguably most famous for bringing the game Pokemon Go 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:35.800 to the world. And that's a great idea. In fact, 0:00:35.840 --> 0:00:38.080 it's so good that it's going to be two episodes. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.279 This is just episode one. Now. I'm pretty sure that 0:00:41.320 --> 0:00:44.280 tech Stuff way back in the day covered Pokemon Go 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:46.960 when it first came out, But there is a lot 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.040 more to talk about now. Plus now I actually know 0:00:50.120 --> 0:00:53.360 what Pokemon's are and as they say, you got to 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:57.200 get all of them. But I kid the millennials, This 0:00:57.240 --> 0:01:00.680 old Gen X podcaster is gonna die into the story 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:04.039 of Niantic, the games that has produced, and the tech 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.759 that makes it all possible. We'll talk a bit about 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:12.640 augmented reality, GEO location and combining online in real world experiences, 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:15.520 and in the next episode will also cover stuff like 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:19.120 micro transactions too, because those will also come into play, 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.960 and they're incredibly important. But first, let's learn the history 0:01:24.200 --> 0:01:29.520 of the company. Our story begins in eighteen forty nine. Okay, 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:32.680 not really, but I do want to cover the origin 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.720 of the name, which actually comes fairly late in our story. 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:39.160 But I want to talk about the origin itself first 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.680 because it's a neat story that I did not know 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.319 until I looked into this, you know topic. So back 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:50.600 in the mid nineteenth century, the gold rush was in 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.920 full swing out in California, and it brought people from 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:57.840 all over North and Central America and beyond, and nearly 0:01:57.920 --> 0:02:02.320 two hundred fifty fortune hunters from Panama boarded a ship 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:06.680 named the Niantic. Now the Niantic was originally built in 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:11.240 Connecticut and was quickly finding that this would be a 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:17.600 very lucrative business transporting people to California. So this ship 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:21.600 was originating out of Panama bound for San Francisco, and 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.160 the ship made it to San Francisco safely, and all 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.360 the passengers jumped on out to search for gold, and 0:02:28.000 --> 0:02:31.080 shortly after that most of the crew left as well. 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:33.960 In fact, each day that passed more crew were deserting 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:36.640 the ship, and the crew were just convinced they had 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:39.280 a better chance of making their fortune if they looked 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.600 for gold rather than, you know, try and sail on 0:02:42.600 --> 0:02:46.480 a boat. So they the owners had a couple of choices. 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.120 They could try to recruit a new crew, but that 0:02:49.240 --> 0:02:52.320 was hard to do. Everyone wanted to go search for gold. 0:02:52.840 --> 0:02:55.560 Or they could just say, yeah, how about we look 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:58.440 for gold too, So they made the decision to beach 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:01.480 the vessel at the corner of Clay and Sandso Streets. 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:05.800 Now these days that intersection is about five blocks away 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.960 from the piers at San Francisco. However, back in eighty 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:13.040 nine they were part of the shoreline for the city. 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.320 The Niantic became a store for a little while. Then 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.280 it was built into a hotel, like you had the 0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:23.480 front of a boat sticking out of this hotel. But 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:27.200 the Great Fire of eighteen fifty one burned the ship 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:31.160 down to the waterline, along with much of San Francisco. 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:34.200 The city rebuilt, and they used a lot of the 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:37.800 debris and rubble to create a landfill, and they built 0:03:37.880 --> 0:03:41.560 the shoreline out. It extended out several blocks from where 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:44.400 it had been, and the remains of the Niantic were 0:03:44.440 --> 0:03:48.760 buried underneath the new Land. So under that intersection there 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:52.600 are the remains of the ship Niantic. What does this 0:03:52.680 --> 0:03:55.120 have to do with the company, Well, it's you know 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.360 where the name came from. But otherwise I admit that 0:03:57.400 --> 0:03:59.480 this was a tangent. However, I thought it was way 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.480 too knee to pass up. Why should Nolan Ben get 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.520 all the fun over at ridiculous history? The story of 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.680 the company itself, you could argue, would begin with Google 0:04:08.920 --> 0:04:11.480 right around twenty ten. And I should add that there 0:04:11.480 --> 0:04:14.640 are a series of articles on tech Crunch written by 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:19.719 Greg Komparek that were absolutely pivotal for my research. Komparek 0:04:19.880 --> 0:04:24.359 did an amazing job and I'm just gonna lightly skimmed 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.720 the surface of some of the stuff he covered, So 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.040 I highly recommend checking out those articles if you want 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.359 to learn more. They are behind a paywall, but you know, 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.039 good content is worth paying for anyway. I also should 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:39.760 add I don't have any affiliation with him. I don't 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:42.920 know him, never met him, but I really like these articles. 0:04:43.480 --> 0:04:46.440 Let's get back to it. The Google of twenty ten 0:04:46.600 --> 0:04:49.560 was a bit different from the Google of today. It 0:04:49.640 --> 0:04:52.000 was well on its way to being a mega corporation 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:55.960 that was already in the cards. It had already launched Android, 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:59.799 it had already released Google Chrome, it had purchased YouTube, 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.839 but Eric Schmidt was still CEO back then, and the 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.320 company had incentives in place to encourage employees to innovate 0:05:07.400 --> 0:05:11.000 and work on things outside their normal work projects. In fact, 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.920 until Google had an official policy that said employees could 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:18.479 use up to twenty percent of their work hours to 0:05:18.560 --> 0:05:21.719 work on their own projects, many of which would evolve 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:26.039 into official Google projects or get incorporated into existing ones. 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:30.240 The company also encouraged employees to come up with startup ideas, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.520 turning Google into a sort of incubator for startups. It 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.159 gave employees who had ideas the support they needed to 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:39.280 experiment and see if their concepts could be viable businesses, 0:05:39.560 --> 0:05:43.360 and most importantly, it kept them at Google. They wouldn't just, 0:05:43.520 --> 0:05:46.400 you know, leave to go and do it themselves. One 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:50.520 of those employees was John Hank, who, spoiler alert, would 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.440 go on to found Niantic. And Hank's story is a 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:56.320 bit more complicated than just saying he was a Google employee. 0:05:56.640 --> 0:06:00.200 He actually worked for a different company that got fired 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.440 by Google several years earlier. In fact, let's spend some 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:07.080 time to learn about Hank. He was born in nineteen 0:06:08.240 --> 0:06:11.599 and he grew up in Texas. He attended Cross Plains 0:06:11.680 --> 0:06:14.680 High School. He enrolled at the University of Texas at 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.560 Austin to get his undergrad degree, and a few years 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:21.760 later he enrolled in grad school at the University of California, Berkeley. 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:24.440 That's where he earned his m b a. He also 0:06:24.480 --> 0:06:27.039 worked at three d O as a producer for a 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:30.120 couple of years. I did a full episode about three 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:33.440 d O last year titled The Tragedy of three d OH. 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:35.640 So I'm not going to go into a full rundown 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.480 of what happened at that company here, However, I'll give 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.440 you a quick overview the three d O. The console 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:45.400 was really more of a set of specifications, which meant 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:48.640 that the company behind it created the design for how 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:52.160 the console would work from a functional standpoint, but then 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:55.520 they licensed that out to manufacturers who would then make 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.520 their own version of that console. Ideally, this would mean 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:01.920 you could buy I in a version of the three 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:04.960 d O console form you could buy it from like 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:09.280 LG or Pana Sonic or whatever, and each version would 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:11.320 have its own look to it based on what the 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:14.360 manufacturer made, but they should all be able to play 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:16.440 the same games that have been made for the three 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:21.080 D O platform. Unfortunately, this business approach failed to catch on, 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:23.960 and not long after Hank joined the team, the company 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.920 was all but extinct, but Hank co founded a new 0:07:28.000 --> 0:07:31.680 company called The Big Network and served as its chief 0:07:31.720 --> 0:07:34.720 operating officer. The Big Network served as sort of a 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:39.280 nexus of casual games online stuff like you know, puzzle games, 0:07:39.320 --> 0:07:41.960 card games, trivia games, that kind of thing. It was 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.320 meant to appeal to a wide spectrum of people, not 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.720 just those who refer to themselves as gamers. The company 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:51.520 aimed to create an interactive online space where people could 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.080 get together and play these games. Not long after they 0:07:55.160 --> 0:07:58.440 founded The Big Network, another company came around with an 0:07:58.440 --> 0:08:03.160 acquisition offer. That company was e Universe, a retail company 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:07.120 that mainly sold music and video media. The company would 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:11.640 go on to become Intermix Media, Incorporated, which would arguably 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:13.680 be best known for being part of one of the 0:08:13.720 --> 0:08:17.720 worst acquisitions in tech history. That would be when Rupert 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:21.240 Murdock's News Corporation acquired Intermix for more than half a 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:25.720 billion dollars around two thousand five, and that was mostly 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.960 because Intermix happened to own a little social media site 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:32.679 called MySpace. But of course we know that deal didn't 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:35.160 work out so well for dus core, but this isn't 0:08:35.160 --> 0:08:38.079 a story about them. And anyway, the e Universe acquisition 0:08:38.080 --> 0:08:40.640 of Big Network meant Hank, as a co founder, came 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.840 into a decent amount of money. His next venture was 0:08:43.880 --> 0:08:48.000 to co found a new company called Keyhole, and even 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:51.440 that is oversimplifying things a bit, as Keyhole itself grew 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.880 out of a separate company called Intrinsic Graphics. And I 0:08:55.920 --> 0:09:01.000 know stories are complicated, all right, So Intrinsic Ethics existed 0:09:01.120 --> 0:09:04.560 independently before John Hank got involved. It was a pre 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.679 existing company and the company's main goal was to create 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:11.080 a cross platform video game engine. So, in other words, 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:14.680 it would be an underlying technology that would allow game 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:17.920 developers to create games on top of it, and those 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.280 games could run on different types of machines like Mac 0:09:21.320 --> 0:09:24.760 and PC and game consoles, which would mean that game 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.120 developers would be able to create games, or at least 0:09:27.160 --> 0:09:30.000 the foundation of games that would then be able to 0:09:30.080 --> 0:09:32.560 run on all these different systems in a more efficient 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.960 way than just contracting the job out to some other 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:39.480 company to make a port of their video game. Well, 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.520 one of the things that Intrinsic Graphics made was a 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.839 demo in which you could see a zoom dealt view 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.679 of the Earth and then you could zoom into it 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:53.360 like a lot. You could go from an orbital altitude 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.679 to a satellite view of your home. And the demo 0:09:56.800 --> 0:09:58.679 was a really big hit. In fact, it was big 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:02.400 enough that Intrinsic Games decided to spin off the demo 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.080 as the cornerstone of a new company. That company would 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.400 be Keyhole, the one that John Hank would join right 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:12.040 at the start in two thousands, so he was a 0:10:12.080 --> 0:10:15.280 co founder. Though he came into the team, he was 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:19.880 not part of the Intrinsic Graphics group. So Intrinsic Graphics 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.680 made tools that could work on multiple platforms, but that 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:27.120 tool was really expensive and it was ahead of its time. 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.440 Other companies would later make this their core business, but 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.319 at the time in two thousand it was really untenable, 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.679 and Intrinsic Graphics faltered and shut down in two thousand 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:40.400 three and sold off its assets. But the leaders at 0:10:40.480 --> 0:10:43.720 Keyhole were able to spin off from Intrinsic Graphics and 0:10:43.720 --> 0:10:47.240 they were able to keep things moving by themselves. However, 0:10:47.400 --> 0:10:50.720 it wasn't easy. The company was not generating a ton 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:54.120 of revenue, and from the sound of things, was flirting 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:59.000 with following in intrinsic Graphics footsteps and shutting down prematurely. 0:10:59.520 --> 0:11:03.400 Keyhole landed a few contracts that kept things moving, including 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:07.200 one with the US Central Intelligence Agency or c i A. 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:10.640 But it was really touch and go for a while, 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:14.680 and then Google decided it just had to have Keyhole, 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.240 and Google pounced on it in two thousand and four, 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:22.839 and that is how John Hank became a Googler. He 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:26.080 went along with Keyhole to Google. Now. According to Hank, 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:28.800 he thought he would be at the company for about 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:31.520 six months, and it turned out it was more like 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:35.360 a decade. Keyhole would become the core of the Google 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.520 Earth product, and Hank, over time would go on to 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:42.720 oversee Google's GEO products, so stuff like Google Maps and 0:11:42.720 --> 0:11:45.160 Google Earth. And that brings us back up to the 0:11:45.240 --> 0:11:48.880 year twenty ten. That was the year that Google CEO 0:11:49.080 --> 0:11:53.320 Schmidt announced that Marissa Meyer would shift her focus from 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:57.720 the search division at Google to the GEO division, and 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:00.000 Hank felt like he was in a bit of a squeeze. 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:03.600 He was already overseeing that division and felt that there 0:12:03.640 --> 0:12:08.079 really wasn't enough room from a leadership standpoint for both 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:11.000 Meyer and himself. And one of these days I'll have 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.720 to do a full episode about Marissa Meyer, because she 0:12:13.840 --> 0:12:17.080 is a very important person in technology. She's been involved 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.640 in some pretty massive stories, some of them really rocky ones. 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.000 But I should also add that Hank never criticized Meyer. 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:27.040 He said he actually thought she was a really good leader, 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:29.920 a good boss, and he liked her. But his concern 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:33.360 was that her job and his job would overlap so 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:37.000 much that he would largely be made redundant, like there 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.080 wouldn't be enough work for the two of them. So 0:12:40.200 --> 0:12:43.880 Hank announced in January eleven that he was going to 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:48.400 depart Google and the GEO division. So his original plan 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:51.640 was to resign from Google and concentrate on creating some 0:12:51.720 --> 0:12:55.360 sort of new business. Larry Page Over at Google didn't 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.320 want to see Hank leave. Google never wants to see 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.360 people leave if they can help it, unless it's on 0:13:01.440 --> 0:13:05.280 Google's terms, So the two set down to talk things over. 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.160 Hank spoke about an idea he had that would marry 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:10.200 two of the things he had worked on in the past, 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:15.880 gameplay and geolocation features, so this conversation would include elements 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:19.000 that would ultimately find their way into the game. Ingress 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:21.440 and we'll talk more about that in a little bit. 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:26.079 Page convinced Hank to do that work to create geolocation 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:29.640 games with an element of augmented reality to them. Within 0:13:29.800 --> 0:13:33.200 Google itself. The company would create the environment within which 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.920 Hank could develop his idea. So Hank agreed to stay 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:39.880 on with Google. This coincided with work being done by 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:42.480 others at Google who had been trying to create that 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:46.920 incubator program I mentioned earlier. See Google had this problem 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.120 with developers leaving to go and do their own thing. 0:13:50.200 --> 0:13:53.000 After a while, people would get experience, they would build 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.840 up some wealth at Google. Then they would resign and 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:58.760 go found startups so that they could do whatever it 0:13:58.800 --> 0:14:01.720 was they were passionate about, and they would be totally 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.600 independent from the old company. And losing talent is always tough. 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:09.320 The vacuum that's left behind is hard to fill. So 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:12.480 Google had a vested interest in creating ways for people 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.840 to pursue startup ideas without you know, actually leaving the company. 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:20.440 Hank's project would be one of the early ones. Hank 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.240 got a budget, and a deadline of two years to 0:14:23.280 --> 0:14:27.040 bring his startup idea to fruition. The parties agreed eventually 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:29.560 to a contract extension, so it went out a little 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:33.160 beyond two years, and Hank made certain that when the 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:37.080 time was up, when this expired, no matter what state 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.200 his startup might be in, he would be the one 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:42.960 who would have the authority to say if the group 0:14:43.000 --> 0:14:45.480 we're going to stay with Google, or if it would 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:48.040 spin off to become its own thing. He was able 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:52.160 to get that assurance. His project included people who had 0:14:52.200 --> 0:14:54.920 worked with him way back in the Keyhole days, but 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:57.720 it also included lots of other people as well, people 0:14:57.720 --> 0:14:59.920 who found the idea of creating a company that may 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.800 games that mixed augmented reality and geolocation applications together to 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:08.760 be really compelling. So Nanti Labs came together, but it 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:12.680 did not have that name yet. One of the earliest 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:15.400 projects the team worked on was a proof of concept 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.960 game they called Battle s f As in San Francisco, 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.360 and the idea was that you would go visit physical 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:25.720 locations in the city of San Francisco, and you would 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.840 use this game to link your physical location to your 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:32.680 in game location, and you would use a virtual military 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:35.400 force to try and take over the area you were in. 0:15:36.000 --> 0:15:39.200 Your physical location determined where within the game you were, 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.760 so after a successful attack, you might walk a few 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:46.440 blocks and try to take over that neighboring region. Other 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:49.040 players could try to take over your territory, so you 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.120 had to revisit locations to defend yourself or shore up 0:15:52.120 --> 0:15:55.880 your forces. As a game, it was fairly bare bones, 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.840 but it was really interesting and the team felt reas 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:03.280 heard that they were onto something. But Battle SF was 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:06.800 far too limited to be a viable public release. I mean, 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.360 I just checked. Uh. It turns out that there are 0:16:10.360 --> 0:16:13.320 a lot of people, um most of them, as it 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:17.160 turns out, they don't even live in San Francisco. But 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:20.520 the group was just getting started. I've got a lot 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:31.360 more to say, but let's take a quick break. One 0:16:31.480 --> 0:16:34.080 fun story that compart It covers in his piece about 0:16:34.120 --> 0:16:39.320 Neantic is that the internal gain that Battle SF also 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:43.280 gave rise to neantics first cheater, and the story goes 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.760 that one employee figured out how to trick his phone 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.320 into thinking he was at a different physical location than 0:16:50.440 --> 0:16:54.240 his real one. It's called spoofing, or it's a type 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:56.840 of spoofing. There's actually lots of different types of spoofing. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.360 It all involves tricking technology and to think you are 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.480 somewhere or someone else than you really are, and this 0:17:04.520 --> 0:17:06.680 would be something that Meantick would have to deal with 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:10.800 further down the road. It's a common issue with games 0:17:10.800 --> 0:17:13.680 that involve geolocation elements, and there are a lot of 0:17:13.720 --> 0:17:16.600 different ways to do this, to use tricks that convince 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:19.439 your device that you're actually somewhere other than where you 0:17:19.480 --> 0:17:22.720 really are. In fact, I even did this myself way 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:24.280 back in the day. It was so that I could 0:17:24.320 --> 0:17:28.119 participate in a game connected to the J J Abrams 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:31.440 Star Trek reboot. That game required you to visit real 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:36.359 world locations in places that were, let's say, inconvenient to 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:40.480 my home in Atlanta, So I cheated because I wanted 0:17:40.480 --> 0:17:43.200 to see what else the game had to offer. Otherwise 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.080 I would have had to travel out to California a lot, 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.680 and while I like California, I don't like it enough 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.760 to jump on intercontinental flights multiple times if I don't 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:57.000 have to do it. Anyway, this employee was spoofing in 0:17:57.119 --> 0:17:59.239 order to play the game late at night, but not 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.600 actually going to location, so this person wasn't getting up 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:05.840 at one in the morning to go across town. They 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:09.760 were just using different tricks to have their phone think 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:13.120 they were across town. And that was an early queue 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:15.359 to Niantic that this could be something they would have 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.239 to keep in mind in the future. Next on the 0:18:18.280 --> 0:18:23.080 timeline was a game project called field Trip. This idea 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.320 was to locate places that might be interesting. Perhaps they 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:29.280 could be an art installment, or it could be a 0:18:29.280 --> 0:18:32.760 historic building. You know, it could be anything that is 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.879 worth looking at and knowing about. But they would be 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:39.199 kind of like hidden gems, stuff that you might not 0:18:39.240 --> 0:18:41.879 be aware of because you never happened to look that way. 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:45.640 And then they wanted to map that data against users 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:50.200 typical routes. So let's use my typical route as an example. 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.600 So when I go into the office, which admittedly I 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.919 don't do nearly as frequently these days, but when I 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.520 do go in, I walk there, and it's a three 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.560 mile walk from my house. Takes me about an hour 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:05.880 to go there. One way. My walk takes me through 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.360 a pretty funky part of Atlanta called Little Five Points, 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.639 and then I end up connecting to a big pedestrian 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:16.720 and cyclist path called the belt line, and I take 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:19.240 that up the rest of the way to Pont City Market, 0:19:19.280 --> 0:19:21.640 which is where our office is. So to go home, 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:25.000 I just walked that same path, but in reverse. Now 0:19:25.000 --> 0:19:28.639 there's some interesting things to see along my pathway, but 0:19:28.840 --> 0:19:30.679 there could be a lot of other stuff that I 0:19:30.680 --> 0:19:34.520 would find fascinating or enriching that might just be a 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.760 block out of my way, or maybe down an alternate 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:39.560 path that would still get me to work more or 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:41.879 less at the same time, but it would bring me 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.840 through areas I otherwise wouldn't see. That was the goal 0:19:45.880 --> 0:19:48.960 of Field Trip, to create a product that would encourage 0:19:49.000 --> 0:19:52.960 people to explore a bit off their normal beaten path. 0:19:53.600 --> 0:19:57.199 The team partnered with a publishing house called Arcadia to 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:01.600 create a database of interesting locations, but then they needed 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.439 to geo tag those locations. It was one thing to 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.440 know about them, it's another thing to link them too 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:11.840 physical locations in the world and have that represented within 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:17.840 the app. Ultimately, they had to manually geo tag these 0:20:17.880 --> 0:20:22.639 locations after attempts at automation fell short. That actually limited 0:20:22.680 --> 0:20:25.040 how much they could do because it is hard to 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:29.760 operate at a global scale when it's falling to manual tagging. 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:33.359 But it was in this process that they learned about 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:35.760 the Niantic, the ship I talked about at the top 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.440 of the show, so that's when they took their name 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.960 from that ship, and they officially became known as Niantic Labs. 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:47.600 Field Trip would launch as a smartphone app in although 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.679 originally it was supposed to be a Google Glass app, 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.320 but Google Glass obviously did not take off quite in 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.920 the way that people had hoped, so they were able 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:01.880 to pivot and make it a smart phone application. However, 0:21:02.080 --> 0:21:07.240 the user experience wasn't um It wasn't particularly well designed 0:21:07.240 --> 0:21:09.600 because users found that as they were just trying to 0:21:10.040 --> 0:21:12.440 go from one place to another in their daily lives, 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:16.680 their phone notifications kept going off to say things like, hey, 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:18.840 you should really go this way a couple of blocks, 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.000 and that became more disruptive than interesting. So while people 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:27.160 thought the idea was cool, the actual experience became something 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.720 of an irritation, and folks would tend to turn the 0:21:29.800 --> 0:21:31.960 app off after they lived with it for just a 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:35.520 little bit. But this was a learning experience for Niantic. 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:38.760 Field Trip, like I said, launched in twelve It was 0:21:38.840 --> 0:21:42.280 by most estimates of failure, but the team learned a lot, 0:21:42.440 --> 0:21:45.959 and they realized that by combining elements of Battle SF 0:21:46.520 --> 0:21:49.640 and things they had built into Field Trip, they might 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:53.879 make a compelling game that reaches beyond San Francisco. So 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:56.800 the idea was that it would be a real world 0:21:57.160 --> 0:22:01.600 multiplayer game played through smart phones. The game would have 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.840 two factions, and players would have a choice of joining 0:22:04.880 --> 0:22:08.119 one or the other and try to swing control of 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:12.520 regions in the real world to their own faction that 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:17.840 would be represented in fiction through the smartphone, so both 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:21.679 an augmented reality and an alternate reality style game. The 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.760 control points where you would actually try and do this 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.400 would center around interesting places in the real world, kind 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:31.520 of like Field Trip. So in other words, the real 0:22:31.520 --> 0:22:34.640 world exploration elements of Field Trip would match with the 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:39.040 regional control gameplay of BATTLESF. And the result was a 0:22:39.080 --> 0:22:43.119 new project of the group titled Ingress. The plot behind 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.240 Ingress sounds like it comes from a Neil Stevenson novel. 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:49.960 A research institute discovers a new kind of matter called 0:22:50.040 --> 0:22:54.280 exotic matter, or XM. The two factions have a fundamental 0:22:54.359 --> 0:22:58.840 disagreement about exotic matter. One side, called the Enlightened, wants 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:03.399 to exploit XM to Humanity's advantage right away. The other side, 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.600 the Resistance sees x M as a potential existential threat 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:11.800 that could lead to humanity's extinction and does not want 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:15.280 to go down that path, at least not immediately. And 0:23:15.359 --> 0:23:18.680 when I played, I played as enlightened. These days, I 0:23:18.800 --> 0:23:22.679