John Hanke, CEO of American software company Ninantic Inc., is pictured in Tokyo's Minato Ward in this file photo taken on Oct. 16, 2018. (Mainichi/Naotsune Umemura)

       While the risk of smartphone addiction has attracted attention, films have depicted futures in which people have shut themselves inside virtual worlds. Meanwhile, games like Pokemon Go, which became a social phenomenon, have adopted augmented reality, which superimposes computer-generated information on real-world environments. In an interview with the Mainichi Shimbun, John Hanke, founder and CEO of Niantic Inc., creator of Pokemon Go, digs into the possibilities of technology and the future of games in line with the release of the company's newest latest augmented-reality game, Pikmin Bloom featuring plantlike characters called Pikmin. Excerpts from the interview follow.

       * * *

       Mainichi: Pikmin Bloom was released in Japan on Nov. 1 What kind of game is it?

       John Hanke: I would describe it as an application, a companion, that is designed to make your time outdoors and exploring the real world more fun and interesting. ... You get to journey through the world with Pikmin as your companions. You're able to grow your Pikmin from seedlings and incubate them as you walk and then pluck them. Then they become part of a tribe of Pikmin that accompany you as you walk through the world. Importantly, they can lead you to interesting places through the map, which is very colorful and styled, and you can actually change the world for yourself and for everyone else by planting flowers in the trail behind you as you walk. Your path down the street is transformed by flowers, and everybody else who is playing is also adding their trail of flowers to the world.

       M: How does the game differ from Pokemon Go?

       JH: It's a bit of a different experience. The intent of the game is to make walking more fun, and to inspire you to walk more. The game is really designed to unfold for you and allow you to progress, based on your walking through the world. Pokemon Go requires more of your attention all the time in order to catch Pokemon and progress in the game. Pikmin Bloom is a little more organic, and is designed to allow you to play when you want to, but you can also put the phone in your pocket and continue to plant flowers and continue to incubate your Pikmin even without actively looking at your phone.

       This image shows the mobile game Pikmin Bloom. (Image courtesy of Niantic Inc.)

       For example, if you met your friend in Kyoto, and you're both playing Pikmin Bloom, you might take out your phone and you might feed your Pikmin some honey balls to make sure they're strong, and you might harvest some flower petals from them. Then you might join together so that the two of you can plant together as you walk through the streets of Kyoto, and you can put your phone away as you walk and look around and talk. Then, if you stop later to have a cup of tea or coffee, you might take your phone out and you can see all of the places that you've planted together. ... It makes it really easy to feel like the Pikmin are with you, but not to have to look at the phone all the time.

       M: A former Facebook employee recently spoke out in the U.S. following reports on how Instagram could be harmful for children's mental health, and there is a lot of news about the negative impact of games and social networks. What do you think about the negative impact caused by games and social networking?

       JH: Many people right now are asking if big technology companies are working for them or if they are working for the big technology companies. Does this technology serve us or do we serve technology? At Niantic, we believe that our mission -- to encourage people to get out of the house and get more exercise and to enjoy the public spaces in their city -- is really a very important mission, because most kids and most adults in the world don't get enough exercise, and it causes serious disease in the world.

       We think our mission and our products are part of the solution, and are how technology should be used. I think that's very different than the effects of some social network applications that simply encourage people to stay put and stay focused on their screen, and don't encourage you to go outside and move, and, importantly, to play together with other people in real life, which we also think is very healthy from a mental health point of view, as well as from a societal point of view.

       Allowing people to play together and form stronger bonds, with families playing together, or friends, or even meeting new people through the game -- we think these are positive impacts on society which technology can achieve.

       M: What do you think about other companies' business models, which insert advertising into products?

       Visitors to the Tottori sand dunes in Tottori Prefecture enjoy playing Pokemon Go in this photo taken on Nov. 24, 2017. (Mainichi/Ayami Abe)

       JH: I can speak about our business model better than I can speak about their business models. We allow in-app purchases within our game, but we are very moderate with this feature. The entire game is playable without buying anything, so we don't try to block you from enjoying the game to force you to purchase things. This allows us to make money and allows users to have additional benefits if they desire, but anybody can enjoy the game for free.

       In Pokemon Go, we do have advertising with businesses. For example, in the past, McDonald's and 7-Eleven have been sponsors of our games, and that means that if you visit one of their locations in the real world, you can obtain extra items, extra energy, special things. This fits with our mission of encouraging people to be out and to walk and explore, and the sponsored locations are organically part of the world already, so we feel this is a way of advertising that is not intrusive and not harmful to the user.

       M: It's a great mission to bring people outside. But at the same time, some people are too enthusiastic about games (like Pokemon Go), and this has led to accidents. What are your thoughts about that?

       JH: I think the initial enthusiasm around Pokemon Go was a global phenomenon that was unexpected. It was the first time, I think, this kind of game had been introduced to the world, and the level of excitement was obviously beyond what anyone anticipated. Since that launch time, we have continued to evolve our products to try to make sure that people can enjoy being outside and enjoy playing with their friends, but also in a way that's safe. For example, with Pikmin, there's nothing you can do in the game where you feel like you can't put the phone away in your pocket.

       M: Regarding the most recent technology, it seems that the Niantic approach of using augmented reality is a counter to the idea of creating a virtual world. Can you elaborate on that?

       JH: Yes, I think that the metaverse, for many people, is something that we've seen in science fiction in films like "The Matrix," and it's fun to read about, but I don't think that's the world that we want to live in. Usually it means, in the future, that the world has become polluted, that society has collapsed, and people's only escape, their only source of happiness, is to block out the world and go into a virtual reality. We are saying that we want the opposite to happen. We want to encourage people to be out in the world and to work with one another to make the world a better place, to make reality better, and that is the experience that we, as human beings, will be most happy with. The world of virtual reality is a poor substitute for reality.

       M: You have emphasized that augmented reality is just a method to make the world more interesting. Can you share your ideas around that?

       JH: Yes, I think that human civilization has always attempted to make the world more beautiful and more functional for ourselves. This, of course, is at the root of what we build -- our architecture, the way we design our cities, something as simple as planting a garden. Maybe trying to make a beautiful garden. This is a way that we alter our environment to make it more pleasant to us in many ways, and I think augmented reality is just the evolution of that human desire in the digital realm. Rather than raking stones in a garden we can put a virtual artwork in this place. Rather than painting the facade of a building, we can put a digital image across it. Rather than constructing a physical Gundam in the park in Odaiba, we can make a digital army of Gundams that walk around and fly away. It's taking something that we already do -- that we're just driven to do as human beings -- and making it more powerful and unleashing creativity, because we have more flexibility to do that with a digital art form.

       M: How do you see the future of gaming for the entire industry and also for Niantic?

       JH: I think around the world people have been forced to shelter inside during COVID to protect ourselves, and we've had to entertain ourselves by watching movies and by playing video games and by getting our food delivered to us. We haven't been able to visit our favorite parks and our favorite restaurants. We haven't been able to see our families and our friends. We would love for people to go out into the world and rediscover their favorite places, their favorite bars and restaurants and parks and amusement parks with Pikmin Bloom as a companion, and to do that together with their real-life friends. That's our highest ambition for the product over the next year -- that we can globally go back out and start reclaiming our world together hopefully transforming it digitally into a more beautiful world with our Pikmin, and with the flowers that we plant together to make the world more beautiful and interesting.

       For the industry, I hope that others will join us in thinking about the whole world as the game board, the whole world as the surface for a game, and work with us to invent whole new kinds of games that we can play while being active and outdoors with our friends. We think this is a new genre of games that's really important and we welcome everyone across the industry to explore this with us.

       * * *

       Profile: John Hanke

       John Hanke was born in Texas in 1966. After working for the U.S. State Department, he co-founded the map information venture company "Keyhole" in 2000, and created a service that formed the basis for "Google Earth," which uses aerial photography. After the company was acquired by Google LLC, he became the vice president of product management for Google's Geo division and was involved in the development of Street View, among other projects. He established Niantic's predecessor "Niantic Labs" as an internal Google startup in 2011, and the startup went independent in 2015. Niantic's smartphone 2016 game app Pokemon Go, which uses location information, became a global hit.

       (Japanese original by Tsuyoshi Goto, Business News Department)

       Font Size S M L Print Timeline 0