Pokemon Go - Pokemon locations/Future plans
In a Mashable interview with John Hanke, the CEO and founder of Niantic had this to say on Pokemon GO:
How Pokéstop and gyms locations were chosen:
"We basically defined the kinds of places that we wanted to be part of the game. Things that were public artwork, that were historical sites, that were buildings with some unique architectural history or characteristic, or a unique local businesses. There have been about 15 million submissions, and we've approved in the order of 5 million of these locations worldwide.
The Pokéstops are submitted by users, so obviously they're based on places people go. We had essentially two and a half years of people going to all the places where they thought they should be able to play Ingress, so it's some pretty remote places. There are portals in Antartica and the North Pole, and most points in between."
Which Pokémon appear where:
"We assign values based on whether there is a water body in an area — so a stream, a river, a pond — whether areas are designated as zoos or parks, or other kinds of mapping designations That gets into more [geographic information system]-type of data ... and we utilise that to map Pokémon species to appropriate habitats. The goal is they are places that are pedestrian-safe. We also try to limit the spawning of the Pokémon — not to roadways, or in the vicinity of the user so that they don't have to do anything out of the ordinary. Once a Pokémon spawns, you can tap on it and start interacting with it. You don't have to go any further than where you already are — the assumption being that you are safe."
We encourage people to keep their heads up and be aware of what's going on around them. It is something that you would have with exercise apps, or geo-caching apps, or mapping apps, where people are moving about. We're trying to strike a good balance."
The future of Pokémon Go and augmented reality:
"We imagine teams building up their gyms and Pokéstops in certain ways and tailoring them to their tastes. We think that that in particular is going to drive a lot of cooperation, competition and social interactions between people. Some of the game design features that we have in mind for Pokéstops and gyms are designed with the idea of encouraging cooperation and gameplay between players on the same team.
A lot of those systems will probably only work well indoors in the beginning," he said. "But I think certainly within a decade we'll see that kind of immersive visual eye wear that you could wear outside and play games like Pokémon Go, and see Pokémon appear in a three-dimensional context."
