John Hanke - the man who made the whole world catch Pokemon
Pokemon Go creator John Hanke/toru-hanai
Since the release of Pokemon Go in the US, Australia and New Zealand on July 6, Japanese video game maker Nintendo has more than doubled in capitalization. But it should be noted that Nintendo was not involved in the creation of Pokemon Go and does not own the rights to the game, writes FT. The company has only a third in the Pokemon Company, which owns the rights to the Pokemon brand, and the same in Niantic, the American startup that developed the game. Nintendo itself deals with consoles, and uses partners to break into the world of games for smartphones. For example, Japanese DeNA is currently developing five games for it.
Pokemon Go is the brainchild of American John Hanke. He is called the founder of the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) genre, thanks to him Google Earth and Google Maps were born, and now the world is going crazy because of Pokemon.
Start
Hanke was born in the town of Cross Plains, lost among the cotton fields of Texas. The entire population is about 1000 people. The town is known for the fact that the writer Robert Howard grew up there. Upon arriving at Google, Hanke hung a poster of Howard's most famous character, Conan the Barbarian, over his desk.
Hanke learned programming himself while still in junior high school (grades 6-8). After graduating from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989, Hanke got a job at the State Department and managed to work in Washington and Myanmar (Burma). The turning point in his life was the decision to enter the business school. Walter Haas at the University of California. He graduated from school in 1996, but back in 1994, he and fellow MBA student Steve Sellers founded the startup Archetype Interactive in the university's business incubator and started making an Internet game. It went down in history under the name Meridian 59 and is considered the first MMORPG that people could play over the Internet, and not a private network. This is significant, since at that time providers used online games to compete for customers. For example, access to Neverwinter Nights was opened only when the modem was connected to the AOL network.
earth discovery
A test version of Meridian 59 was posted online in December 1995. The game used three-dimensional graphics - just like modern online role-playing games. The backstory was about an empire that had portals to colonize other worlds. Then the state broke up into a metropolis and colonies, chaos ensued, a war for power began, monsters appeared - in general, the players had something to do.
The game turned out to be popular and in June 1996 it was sold to 3DO. Hanke worked on the project for another two years, and in 1998 he started a new project of his own, simpler. Startup Big Network was engaged in the creation of checkers and other casual games - i.e. games with simple rules for a wide range of users.
A year later, Hanke sold it too and abandoned the idea of creating games. At that time, he met a team of programmers who decided to make their own game and founded the startup Intrinsic Graphics. Previously, these guys worked at Silicon Graphics, a developer of software and hardware for computer graphics. On the equipment of this company, for example, Forrest Gump and Jurassic Park were made. They proudly showed Hanke their development, which allows them to play graphics with excellent quality on a regular computer. In the demo, the camera looked from space at the Earth, and then zoomed in on the surface, allowing you to view individual streets, according to Jerome Angel's book World Innovation Clusters.
Hanke was amazed. But by no means what the startups were counting on. At that time space images the surface of our planet has just begun to go on open sale. Hanke tried to convince them and their investor to forget about developing a new game and go into cartography, but was unsuccessful. Then he bought the technology that calculates the increase in scale, hired programmers - this is how the Keyhole startup was born. It was January 2000, dotcom companies were predicted to have a bright future, and Hanke easily got funding from Sony. "Our goal is simple - to put the whole world at the disposal of our customers," wrote Hanke in a 2001 press release. Three-dimensional images appeared in the maps of his Earth Viewer program. But by no means all parts of the Earth, but only those for which it was possible to buy satellite images and aerial photography. The picture was tied to geographic coordinates, various data were indicated on it: the borders of regions and states, addresses and phone numbers of local firms, etc.
The project was actively growing - but then the dot-com bubble burst. There was a question of survival. The war in Iraq helped. Even before the bombs began to fall, funding poured into Keyhole, wrote The Mercury News. The money was given by the developer of graphics accelerators and processors NVIDIA and the venture fund In-Q-Tel, which invests in developments that can be used by intelligence services. Hanke's maps were of interest not only to the CIA. Earth Viewer has happily used CNN, ABC, CBS and other TV channels to illustrate stories about the Gulf War.
The TV picture attracted the attention of investors. In 2004, Keyhole was ready to close its B funding round. But a few days earlier, Hanke had received a call from Google. At that time, the brainchild of Sergey Brin and Larry Page was a notable company, but not such a monster as it is now. Google did not seek to disclose its financial capabilities, has not yet held a high-profile IPO, has not captured the smartphone software market. A manager from Google's business development division asked Hanke to give a presentation, especially since their offices were located nearby. Less than 24 hours after the meeting, Keyhole received a $35 million offer from Google and canceled the funding round.
Under the shadow of Google
Google resources have played a crucial role in the development of the project. In 2002, an annual subscription to Earth Viewer cost $1200. Once the money was no longer needed, the price was reduced to $30, and when the project was released under the name Google Earth in June 2005, it was free. The book Clusters of Innovation in the World gives this example: Hanke asked Brin for permission to purchase some of the satellite imagery for sale. Brin ordered to buy everything that comes across.
At Google, Hanke served as vice president of product development for the Geo division. He developed one interesting project after another: Google Earth, Google Maps, Local, Street View, SketchUp (a program for modeling simple three-dimensional objects, bought by Google in 2006), Panoramio (a photo service that links images to geographic coordinates). Under the leadership of Hanke there were more than one hundred employees, but there was no former freedom. In 2010, he decided to drop everything and start his own business again. But Google didn't want to let go of a valuable employee. The parties agreed that Hanke would launch his startup inside Google.
The new project was dubbed Niantic Labs (see sidebar). The first project was mobile app field trip. It tracks where the user is walking and tells him interesting events from the history that took place on this street, advises him to take a detour and take a look at one or another attraction - and along the way go to a restaurant or shop.
The next brainchild of Niantic was the game Ingress, built on the principle of augmented reality. You turn on the video camera on the gadget and look at the image on the screen. But the program adds fictitious objects to real landscapes and objects.
“I have a feeling that we are present at the birth of a new genre<...>as is the case with Flight Simulator and Doom, ”Hanke is quoted by The Independent. Ingress was not the first game with augmented reality, but Flight Simulator and Doom were not pioneers either, but in many ways they laid down the laws of the genre.
There are two factions in Ingress - "enlightened" and "resistance". The former help a certain mysterious mind - shapers - to penetrate our world. Allegedly, they will bring with them a new era of enlightenment. The Resistance believes that the goal of the shapers is to enslave people. Both factions are fighting, taking over the portals. The difference from ordinary computer games is that portals are real objects. As a rule, cultural - from historical monuments to graffiti on the wall.
The biggest problem with the game was getting the player to get to the first portal. “Many downloaded the game, not realizing that it needs to get to different places. [People asked] where are the control buttons? How to make the character move? Hanke told The Independent. Then it dawned on them that you have to turn on the GPS and move yourself so that your character starts moving. True, and here it was not without cheating. Programs have been written that tell the game incorrect GPS coordinates. With their help, it was possible to travel around the city without leaving the apartment, like on Google Earth. But if the deception was revealed, the lazy person was banned.
Having reached the place, the player looked through the camera of the smartphone, and the program added the image of the portal to the picture. Then the player made a mark on his smartphone about his capture. The rules for capturing varied, sometimes for this it was necessary to unite in groups.
Resource Pocket Gamer assures that one advanced gamer Ingress overcame playing in the real world 100,000 miles (about 161,000 km). There was a case where a gamer was hired by a private jet to fly to a remote portal and link it to the portal in his hometown - his game mates chipped in to fly (“Even I was amazed,” Hanke admits). Hanke shared stories of climbing a mountain to get to the portal and getting to know each other and getting married through the game. As with Pokemon Go, that was one of the goals: to get people out of their home computers and into the streets and into real-world communication.
Ingress launched in beta in November 2012. In early 2013, Hanke realized that players were assigning divertializations—getting together in the real world. They had the idea to make these meetings part of the game, writes The Independent. In February 2013, such a gathering, designed as a mission in the game, was appointed on the territory of the Cahokia Historical Site, a group of 109 North American Indian mounds in the state of Illinois. Unfortunately, the day turned out to be cold and rainy, and it was not very close from the city to the barrows. The creators of the game decided that the meeting failed. Imagine their surprise when about 60 people spent almost the whole day running between the mounds and playing Ingress. Over time, such events began to gather crowds of thousands not only in the United States, but also in Japan and Spain.
Ingress players were given the opportunity to suggest places for portals themselves. The main criterion was that it had to be a crowded, remarkable or beautiful place. Hanke did not take into account one thing - only in the first two years the game was downloaded 8 million times. So his team received about 15 million applications for space for portals. "We've approved about 5 million of them worldwide," Hanke told Mashable. Last year, Niantic employed 41 people, they were physically unable to cope with the flow of proposals and removed the opportunity to apply from the game. But the portal network and player movement statistics played a crucial role in another project - based on this information, the next game, Pokemon Go, was built.
Pokémon are coming
Pokemon Go was born out of a joke. In 2014, April Fool's Day, Google and the Pokemon Company teamed up, hid in different places on mobile Google versions Maps Pokémon and prompted users to find them. The success of the action made Hanke think. The Pokémon rights are owned by The Pokemon Company, a joint venture owned equally by Pokémon game developer Game Freak, toy manufacturer Creatures, and Nintendo. Hanke went to negotiate with The Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekatsu Ishihara about a new game with his animals and augmented reality, and it suddenly turned out that Ishihara and his wife are passionate players in Ingress. Their heroes are more pumped than the character of Hanke himself. This greatly facilitated the negotiations.
Why Hanke named his startup Niantic Labs
Hanke chose a name for the startup that would show that there is a lot of interesting things hidden around us, says The Mercury News. Niantic is the name of a whaling schooner launched in 1832. In 1849, she was not fortunate enough to sail to California during the height of the gold rush. Almost the entire crew fled the ship to the gold mines. New sailors could not be found, so the ship was pulled ashore and converted into a hotel. It was a common practice back then. The hotel burned several times, then rebuilt again, the cultural layer increased - and over time, the ship literally grew into the street. His remains were stumbled upon in 1978 while digging a foundation pit near the 260-meter Transamerica skyscraper in San Francisco.
In 2015, another important event for the developer took place. Google conceived the reorganization of its business in the Alphabet holding, which was completed in October last year. Various directions were separated into separate companies. Google used to develop its services like Google Maps as a horizontal, low-level platform, Hanke complained to Business Insider. In other words, Niantic did not have the right to cooperate with other developers if their joint product used Google developments. Now he has gained freedom.
In November 2015, Niantic raised $20 million in Series A funding from the Pokemon Company Group, Google, and Nintendo. “We have not gone far from the nest. We are only five minutes away,” Hanke told VentureBeat. “But it's very important to us that we're outside of Google's mother ship. This is our universe."
In February of this year, Niantic received another $5 million in investment from the venture capital fund of Fuji Television Corporation and the Alsop Louie fund. Not only money was important, but also knowledge. The Japanese TV corporation understands Asian marketing. And Alsop Louie founder Louis Gilman is a branding expert, Hanke explained on the Niantic blog. He knows Gilman firsthand, having co-founded and was the first CEO of In-Q-Tel to invest in Keyhole.
But working with Gilman set the stage for conspiracy theorists. In-Q-Tel works for the CIA, they grumble. Thanks to Google Maps, American intelligence filmed our streets, but could not look inside the buildings. Games like Ingress and Pokemon Go solved this problem. Now it is enough to send a rare Pokémon to the right room - and the online broadcast is ready.
Three Pokémon Challenges
In addition to being a commercial game, Pokemon Go has three important tasks, writes Business Insider.
The first is physical training. A variety of fitness apps leave an aftertaste of being an athlete who screwed up at the Olympics, Hanke sneers. Pokemon Go doesn't insist that you have to run so many miles or burn so many calories or you'll lose. On the contrary, the game offers a tasty prize, a pokemon, if you still gather your strength. There is a quest in the game: find an egg and walk a certain distance with it. Then a Pokémon will hatch from it.
The second is to look at the world with a new look. Many points in the game are tied to historical or simply beautiful places, so even hometown can be rediscovered.
And finally, the game sets people up for communication. When chasing Pokémon or in stadiums where they train, people meet in the real world. And on certain stage they are simply forced by the terms of the game to unite in order to win.
The game itself consists of several parts. First, you search and catch Pokémon. To do this, you need to throw a virtual ball at them. Pokémon can be everywhere, one was recently found on the desktop of a Vedomosti employee. But most of them are in crowded places (for example, near the Yandex office) and near the so-called Pokestops. These are points where players can replenish their supply of balls and find other useful virtual items. After a certain level, players can put their Pokémon to battles on special sites, and then fight team against team. The places of these actions were determined precisely thanks to the Ingress portals. “For two and a half years, people have been visiting places where they think it’s more convenient to play Ingress, so there are quite remote locations among them. There are portals in Antarctica and at the North Pole,” Hanke stated in an interview with Lazygamer.net.
But mixing the game with the real world creates some difficulties, Hanke admits in The Time: “Our instructions for players are not only about how to play, but also the need to abide by the law and respect private property, communicate politely with other users. We try to instill the latter in our users by all means. The design of the product itself is specially sharpened for this. This is not a game about how to beat someone. The gameplay (scenario of a computer game. - Vedomosti) is friendly and, I think, contributes to positive social interaction.”
Overwhelming interest
“We counted on success and prepared the infrastructure for this. But, to be honest, we were a little overwhelmed by the scale of interest, Hanke told The Time. “We are now trying to maintain the infrastructure so that it can cope with the influx of people who want to play.” A Russian gamer complained to Vedomosti that as soon as morning comes in the USA, there are problems with access to the game server.
Pokemon Go is a free game, but for the money, users can make their life easier by buying services and artifacts, for example, to speed up the pumping of monsters. A similar strategy was used by King Digital, which released a hit for smartphones Candy Crush in 2012, writes FT. In 2013, she admitted that 96% of users don't pay a cent. True, the remaining 4% allowed showing such financial results that in 2015 King Digital was sold to Activision Blizzard, the manufacturer of World of Warcraft, for $5.9 billion.
In both Ingress and Pokemon Go, for a certain amount, any company can make their store or office a place for the portal and the appearance of rare Pokemon. McDonald's, telecommunications and media corporation SoftBank, banking group Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group became partners of Ingress. When Pokemon appear in Russia, this list will apparently include domestic companies.
John Hanke
John Hanke is the founder and CEO of Keyhole, Inc. , which was acquired by Google in 2004 and whose flagship product was renamed to Google Earth . Hanke is currently the director of Google Earth & Google Maps.
Hanke received his bachelor's degree (Plan II Honors) from the University of Texas, Austin and his MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996. Prior to business school, he worked in "foreign affairs", according to his bio, for an unspecified branch of the US Government in Washington, DC , Myanmar and Indonesia . Upon Graduation, he subsequently helped start two successful entertainment software companies, Archetype Interactive and Big Network .
external links
* [ http://www.keyhole.com/body.php?h=about Keyhole, Inc Company Information ]
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