To Be The Very Best: Pokémon Enters Into Augmented Reality
Halfway through your walk to school, a wild Charmander appears. Just a few throws of a Pokéball, and it could be yours. Will you stop to catch it?
Nintendo is betting you will. Not just that, they're betting that you've waited most of your life to see a Pokémon in the real world.
The challenge for the app's developers, according to Will Mason, co-founder of the virtual reality industry website Upload, is "normalizing the linkage between digital and physical."
Like Ingress, Pokémon Go will create interactions based on users' locations. If it sounds like a fantasy version of Google Maps, that's because it is: Hanke was involved in developing Google Maps, Google Earth and Street View, and he wanted to apply those technologies in new ways.
Rather than the linear adventure narrative of the core games (like Pokémon Red and Blue, or Diamond and Pearl), Go at times resembles a game of capture-the-flag. Players pledge allegiance to one of three teams, and battle with Pokémon to gain control of Gyms.
The central conceit should ring familiar, though. Wander anywhere outside, and the app will alert you when you come near a Pokémon — either through an alert on your phone, or on the forthcoming Pokémon Go Plus, a Bluetooth-connected device that looks and works like a tricked-out Fitbit.
"We try to be true to the canon of Pokémon and the way things should work in that world," Hanke says.
That is, Pokémon will appear, behave and fight the way they do in the games and TV shows. Water-types, for instance, will appear only near bodies of water like rivers or lakes. Rare Pokémon in the games will similarly be scarce in the Go version.
While using AR in public — like wearing Google Glass— may currently be distracting or even awkward, society could get used to the notion. Proto-AR products like Pokémon Go, its developers believe, may pave the way to a world where that tech becomes ingrained in people's daily lives.
See the full story here: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/06/30/483857216/in-pokemon-go-an-app-to-become-the-very-best