John Hanke: Niantic and the Future of Mixed Reality

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I’m Charlie Melcher, founder of the Future of Storytelling. Welcome to the FoST podcast. Today’s episode of the podcast is a special one. I’m sitting down with my friend John Hanke, CEO of Niantic. Niantic is one of the world’s best known and most successful augmented reality game companies. They are the creators behind Pokemon Go, the location-based AR game that was released in 2016 and has become a global phenomenon with over a billion downloads and 40 million active users. Niantic approach is to use augmented reality to get people outdoors, exploring, exercising and socializing. Niantic belief that technology should make the world a better place is exactly why. John was the first person I called when we decided to create an augmented reality app for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. The library, which aims to further TRS values ask for our help inspiring the next generation of conservationists.

 

As an avid outdoorsman, John was quick to get behind the project, and with Niantic we created a new game Rangers wanted. In this fun app, tr is your guide as you help animals survive and thrive while playing for points and badges. Given Niantic amazing track record, it was a true honor to collaborate with them on an AR game that would get kids outside playing Rangers Wanted is now available to download for free on iOS and Android. John has been a tremendous inspiration to me personally and I can’t wait to share our conversation with you. Please join me in welcoming John. Hanky. John, it is such a pleasure and an honor to have you on the future of Storytelling podcast.

John Hanke:

Welcome, Charlie. Thrilled to be here.

Charlie Melcher:

I thought we would start by my asking you a little bit about the origins of your company of Niantic and how that came about almost from a personal level.

John Hanke:

We started Niantic when I was still back at Google, and this was after having worked building up Google Earth and Google Maps for a number of years, and my oldest son was kind of a preteen. I think he was maybe 11 or 12 at the time, and I just noticed how much time he was spending on the computer and as somebody who loves technology who grew up with it, it’s something that’s been a passion my whole life. I always encouraged him to kind of dive in and learn a little bit of programming, use all the apps, but I was more and more trying to get him to go outside and do stuff with me and go out and do things as a family, and he just kept getting in the way, and so it caused me to really think that maybe we’ve just made this stuff too compelling, maybe we’ve made it too good.

 

And I tried to flip that around and start thinking about, well, maybe we could design the apps and the technology a little bit differently so that they actually were encouraging more engagement with the real physical world and it was kind of trying to turn lemons into lemonade and think about how to use tech in a positive way. So that started some thinking about where computing was going, where the future of devices and maybe wearable devices or glasses in the future, and really thinking about how we could build apps that would tie together the physical world with a digital world and just make it more fun and interesting. So we started building some games and other kinds of apps really just as experiments with that. That was the main idea though.

Charlie Melcher:

That’s amazing because the sort of thing that a lot of parents go through, they’re trying to find that right balance between technology and getting their kids outside playing and feeling sometimes that maybe the technology is too much or too pervasive, and your response to that rather than pulling away the tech was to think about how can I create a different kind of technology experience, one that would get people outdoors and playing and being social and having an adventure in the world.

John Hanke:

I think there are two sides of any technology. It really depends on your intentionality, how you design and what you’re thinking about when you’re building it. I do think that we, in the tech industry, we’re building this stuff. We have to really take responsibility for how it’s going to be used and what kind of an impact ultimately it’s going to have. But yeah, we did hit this wall where even a great experience like Minecraft, which I love, it’s like when it’s a beautiful sunny day in California, we’ve got redwoods and beaches and all the things that you can do. Kind of wanted him to have a taste of that. So we built a game called Ingress, was kind of our first major experiment to try to build a game that was really about turning the real world into a game board. So if you think about board games, pulling one off the shelf, throwing it down on the kitchen table, moving all the pieces around, the idea was pretty simple.

 

It was what if that game board was just the planet? So that was kind of the genesis was to think about that as the starting point. That map is the starting point, and then rather than moving the characters around with the joystick, the idea was you are the character. So if you went around the game board, you do that by walking around your neighborhood or walking across town or as it turned out with Ingress, we had people flying across the country going to the far reaches of Siberia and the South Pole and Alaska to play the game. So we took all the learnings from that and then rolled that into Pokemon Go. So we had the benefit of running ingress for several years and building up that global game board, having our players help find the interesting places in their neighborhoods around the world and baking those into the map. And then we were able to launch Pokemon Go with a pretty fully formed idea of what a real world game would be. The map was fully built out, so we’re able to launch in a hundred plus countries. So the very first day when the Pokemon were unleashed, they showed up everywhere. They showed up in Taiwan and Kenya and Paris and Helsinki and Buenos Aires and everywhere in between. So I think that was part of the real magic of that summer and that launch was that it just kind of happened everywhere all at once.

Charlie Melcher:

I love this idea that you come obviously with a passion for gaming, but this very strong grounding as a cartographer, having helped Google with Google Earth, Google Maps and that really what you’re talking about is a kind of social gaming cartography. Cartography is both science and art. You’re trying to really study the world and then you’re trying to create maps of it. But really to me, cartography is about empowering adventure. There’s this way where you through these games are creating a kind of modern day exploration of the real world, or at least a digital layer on top of the real world that makes it very social and fun and playable.

John Hanke:

I feel very fortunate that I have been able to combine two things that have fascinated me virtually my entire life. One being games, computer games, and the other being maps. My introduction into working on maps was with this company Keyhole that ultimately became part of Google, but we were really trying to turn maps into video games. The idea with that effort was to create a map of the world to create a digital globe that you could fly through with the speed and fluidity of a game that did prove to be a really compelling and fun experience where you could just pick a point anywhere in the world that you’ve dreamed about or read about or were curious about and just fly down to it. People did such amazing things with it that we certainly never anticipated. Scientists ended up using it to explore little valleys that people really hadn’t been to before. New species ended up getting discovered by clues that they first picked up. Yeah, it has been a lot of fun to kind of bring the worlds of games and maps together. And I guess that would be one way of describing Niantic is we have a foot firmly in both of those worlds if mapping and creating entertainment experiences,

Charlie Melcher:

You’ve written about AI’s ability to get people outside interacting face-to-face making these local social communities. Do you really believe that augmented reality games can be this kind of positive influence on the world?

John Hanke:

A hundred percent. What we discovered was that these apps had that capability. We saw these local communities form all around the world at one point. It surpassed 4,000 local player groups in various cities and countries around the world. And what’s different about this is that because the gameplay is local and it’s about being out in your local city and exploring your local parks or your favorite shopping districts, you have it in common with people that actually do live near you and that play near you. So people end up getting together in real life and making those face-to-face connections, and people are kind of hungry for more local connection, for more ways to meet people, an excuse really to interact and hang out with people and make new friends. So there was an attraction to it. We saw it early with Ingress. We’ve really leaned into it with Pokemon Go culminating in, we do these big festivals now Pokemon Go Fests.

 

We’ve had as many as a hundred thousand people in a single day attend, and that was too many. We actually try to plan it now so that we stretch it out over three days and we have a smaller number each day because it’s actually very hard to support these from an infrastructure point of view with the cell tower networks because everybody is using their apps and sending a lot of data. So we have to plan that very carefully. It has this amazing longevity to it, and it remains in the top echelon, the top 10 of games around the world. We really view it as our responsibility to take care of the game and to nurture and support the community of players.

Charlie Melcher:

John, a couple of years ago you wrote a piece called The Metaverse is a dystopian nightmare. Let’s Build a Better Reality. I thought that was a great provocation and you sort of suggest that you really believe in leaning into the reality side of augmented reality and encouraging everyone to get up and go outside and engage with the real world. But talk to me a little more about why you wrote that and what you were really going for.

John Hanke:

Well, it’s right at a time when there was this huge collective enthusiasm for this thing that people were calling the metaverse and people were citing the science fiction stories like Ready Player one, Neil Stevenson’s Snow Crash. I’m a fan of that fiction, but the reality of the fiction is that the worlds that were described, there were very dystopian worlds. There were worlds where the physical place that humans inhabit had become very terrible places where you really wouldn’t want to live or raise your family, and people were escaping into these digital worlds as sort of an alternative to a reality gone terribly wrong. And I found it ironic that people were using the terminology and referencing those works and suggesting that that’s where we wanted to take society and that that’s what technology was going to do for us. It was just going to turn into a 3D world that we’d live in all the time and that’d be great, and in my own personal journey to find some peace and happiness and make my way with my own life.

 

The physicality of existence, the walks hikes being in nature have been integral to sort of finding some peace of mind. But we’re really deeply stimulated by movement through the world, and I’ve since sort of read everything I can get my hands on around walking and thinking and the physiological and psychological effects I’ve been shown to be as effective as a prescription antidepressant in terms of our mood. Many great thinkers through the ages have turned to walks as a way to stimulate their minds to think about and solve hard problems, and there’s now clinical evidence that in fact, it does energize and supercharge our thought process when we’re in motion. We also get physiological feedback when we’re around other people meeting. If you and I were sitting in a room together and we’re doing this with each of us on different coasts, which is wonderful, but if we were sitting in a room together, we would be synchronizing brainwaves and reacting to one another at a physical physiological level. The idea of turning away from that and saying we could just substitute some sort of electronic existence for that, I think really is ignorant of what we need to going to be happy as humans.

Charlie Melcher:

I couldn’t agree more. I’m a huge believer that the direction we’re heading is actually taking us back to something more core to who we were originally as an oral cultures hunter and gatherers, moving in small groups, social and interacting with nature. It’s one of the reasons why I’m such a fan of what Niantic does and the sort of values that you have and the direction that you are trying to encourage our use of technology to not replace the real world or disconnect us from our bodies, but just to the contrary, to reconnect us to our bodies, to the physical world and to each other, which is a great segue to this wonderful project that we’ve had the honor of working on together called Rangers Wanted. And for our listeners, I’m just so honored to have been able to work on this with you, John, my team and I at the future of storytelling have been the executive storytellers for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library for four years now, helping them to make that important institution a reality.

 

And when I approached you with the idea for an augmented reality game that would encourage the next generation of conservationists, you got so excited. And with your generous support and collaboration, we now have this wonderful augmented reality game that’s available for download on the app store. And the Google Play Store Rangers wanted is a smartphone game geared towards kids aged eight to 12 that has them working alongside a Theodore Roosevelt in the game. You learn about keystone species while you help them to survive earning points and badges along the way. It really encourages players to get outside. In fact, to complete the game, you have to spend time playing outdoors. You can do some of it indoors and some of it outdoors. You’re learning about nature, you’re helping to preserve it, and you’re playing a fun game all at the same time. I’m so excited that it’s finally released so we can share it with the world.

John Hanke:

Yeah, I was so excited when you brought the project to us, Charlie. A lot of the places that you visit in Pokemon Go are actually historical markers. So that was one of the pieces of data that we pulled in to sort of make this game board of the world so that as people were out playing, we wanted to kind of lead them to historical sites and things in their neighborhood to help people just stumble on that stuff. So I’ve always loved this idea of accidental learning by having fun and TR is such a fascinating figure. But yeah, I’m really proud of the app. It’s fun, it’s very approachable. It really lets you interact with nature through ar. You can do it in your backyard if freezing cold outside. You can also do the experiences in your living room, but it lets you interact with various kinds of wildlife to work on a beaver dam or honeybee pollination or helping a woodpecker find food. And it recreates these virtual environments in ar, so you see them in 3D, they’re right there with you. You kind of feel like you’re in this environment and you’re getting to interact with these charismatic species, these characters, and it’s slightly gamified, so there’s a game to it. You can earn badges as you play it. So I think it’s great. Thank you so much for letting us work on that with you.

Charlie Melcher:

No, no, thank you. And you also directed us to the development team trigger that we worked with and they did a beautiful job and it was their suggestion to bring in the Rewilding feature so that even if you’re just in your living room, you can sort of lay a field of wild flowers across your living room or a series of trees for the woodpeckers to look for food on and bringing nature into your home with the power of augmented reality to lay a digital layer on top of the real world. The fact that we can also bring in a young this amazing figure who himself wanted to be a adventurer, a naturalist went on so many incredible adventures himself, but then when he became president, was actually responsible for putting something like 230 million acres into conservation. I mean, a tremendous amount of the public wild spaces that we have available to us today in this country are because of the work Theodore Roosevelt did and his willingness to look into the future and his belief that those were the public resources, like in a democracy, everyone should have access to those parks and natural wonders.

 

And so I think he would be very pleased with the game and excited to be playing it and encouraging others to do it and use it as a tool to get you outside. So I

John Hanke:

Would hope so. And by the way, yes, great shout out. Trigger did an amazing job. We provided the platform some of the technology and you and your team and the library provided a lot of ideas and trigger built a beautiful app and did an amazing job. And I think it’s, I mean, it’s a V one, there’s so much more we can do with it, and I hope we will be able to continue to work on and evolve that and develop it as the library itself comes to completion.

Charlie Melcher:

So let’s talk about where Niantic is headed. As you are focusing moving forward, what really are the priorities?

John Hanke:

So on the tech side, we’ve been really focused at continue to support the evolution of bringing our original vision for Niantic to life where we could build these games and experiences and see them have the digital creations really feel like they’re part of the physical world and the tech has been evolving over the past few years. A key part of making that work is building the map that connects the digital stuff to the real world so that if you see a Pokemon or a Teddy Roosevelt’s honeybees, that you could have those anchor it in a park and have that be persistent and shared so that multiple people can interact and perceive them as if they were really there and have a shared experience. And we’re working with our user base to continue to map out the world so that as we get those AR glasses, which we’re dreaming about, and maybe we’re a little bit closer too, maybe slightly closer too, with Apple’s Vision Pro Launch and Meta Quest launch and Meta RayBan’s launch and more products coming, we are building out that map so that as we get there, these experiences will be able to be realized with the fidelity and with all of the attributes that we want as creators that we’ve dreamed about.

 

So we’re working towards that vision.

Charlie Melcher:

And let me just clarify again for our listeners who might not realize, when you say building out that map, what you mean is the three dimensional building, right? It’s not talking two dimensional cartography, it’s the mapping of the three dimensional spaces.

John Hanke:

It is, I call it a map for computers. I call it the third generation internet map. It is different than a map in the traditional sense. I mean, we’ve had of course, 2D printed maps and then we brought those 2D printed maps online and we made them interactive and then we made them three dimensional with applications like Google Earth. So we’ve sort of taken that map for humans to a pretty extreme level where we can view the world and browse around it visually. But this map is for computers to understand the world, and by computers I mean the digital computer that would be part of AR glasses or the digital computer that would be part of maybe a robot that’s trying to navigate through the world. These digital creations, we won’t refer to them as beings yet, but these digital objects, they want to know about the world. They want to know what to do to tell you things about the world to help you navigate the world and do things in the world. But to do any of that well, they need to know where they are. So computers need a map as badly as we do. They really need to know exactly where they are so that they can overlay it with digital information and interactive capability.

Charlie Melcher:

Give me some examples of how ar you think can actually enhance the world for the better.

John Hanke:

I think first about public space, I’m drawn to cities and areas, public spaces that we share, and I think about how we use those spaces, and we do that with a lot of physical stuff. We put signs that tell you how to navigate, how to accomplish something. All that can be digital and it can be a lot better digitally. It can guide you exactly where you want to go. We can present the interfaces so that you can buy a ticket if you need to or ask any questions that you might want to ask. Know exactly how much time you have. So that’s a starting point. All the stuff that’s out there that we use to interact with could be made so much more accessible and where can we go from there? Making the world more fun and interesting and making it more like a game to be out exploring your city and going places and doing things. Maybe we should reward you. Whenever you find that new local business that just opened in a neighborhood that maybe you haven’t visited in a while and you can think of digital creations that would help guide people to new experiences like that. A new museum, a new park that opens in Manhattan, help them discover it and put it on their radar and then they’ll tell their friends about it. So

Charlie Melcher:

This new series of releases for mixed reality devices that have come out, apple Vision Pro, these are still pretty heavy devices. I mean putting them on your head, it’s not like wearing a pair of glasses and so far they seem to be really focused on indoor work or play as opposed to enabling you to run around town or out into nature into the national parks. What’s your thought about that? Is this just a temporary step on the way to something that’s more ubiquitous and lightweight?

John Hanke:

It’s great progress. You have to commend Apple. You have to commend meta for investing the money and the capital and the energy to get the innovation to actually get these devices out there, and they are marvels of technology. I think you’d have to say the Vision Pro and the Quest three as well in terms of what they’re able to do to sort of bring the bits and the atoms together to give us a sense of what the future is going to be like when that is a fluid surface, when the world can be animated and inhabited by our digital creations. They let us experience that now with high fidelity, and that’s very helpful. I think it’s going to inspire a lot of people to think about these things, and it’s going to inspire a lot of creators to put their minds to work about how we can use these for positive purpose.

 

The danger is just that we get kind of distracted by this stage of the evolution of this technology, and we maybe get diverted by indoor use cases immersion that maybe is more like VR than what I would think of as ar. I think something like the meta ray bands, which aren’t as sexy as something like the Vision Pro because they don’t yet have a display. They’re audio AR devices, but they are lightweight. They are something that you can wear every day and they have a lot of value. I use mine daily when I’m biking. I can listen to podcasts, make some calls. I’ve used the camera to take photos. I’ve talked to the AI and had some kind of deep conversations with the AI on my bike ride home. I don’t know if it’s just exhaustion that’s putting me into some sort of weird mental state, but I’ve had some great conversations with the ai. So it is an exciting future, and I think it’s the one that’s more about glasses that we can wear around outside and to make those experiences better is the one that I’m most excited about and I think holds the greatest potential, even economic potential. I think that’s really where people will spend the majority of their time versus something that feels more like a home theater system or something like that.

Charlie Melcher:

So you mentioned AI, and obviously that’s the big tech that’s around us today and that has the potential to really transform so many things. Now with the opportunity that AI can create a kind of responsive character that you can have this special experience with. I’m wondering, do you feel like that has is going to have a very obvious or soon to be adopted transition into AR and into the mixed reality experiences?

John Hanke:

Well, I am very excited about it, but I want to be careful about explaining how I’m excited about it. I think with creators, we have mixed feelings about AI and the way that it wants to stand in some ways for real creators. That’s not how I would want to use it. I think there are ways to use it as a tool to extend storytelling and make it better and more tailored to a specific environment. I loved your live conference, the Future of Storytelling Conference, Charlie. It brought so many of these people that I know. You’ve curated these relationships for years. You bring these people together and you see these storytellers trying to tell stories in new ways with humans emoting and being part of that, and we’d like to bring that kind of emotional impact and that kind of storytelling to a bigger world through the use of digital technologies using AI as a kind of creative extension to start with. Great story. Certainly use AI to craft that and tailor it to make it fit for different people in different situations and different geographies. I think it will open up a new way to create Intel story, but not replacing the humans, not replacing the real story creators just giving us a new way to embed that in the world in a way that’s going to work for people everywhere.

Charlie Melcher:

I mean, I’m incredibly optimistic, and maybe that is just by nature, but I truly believe that the tools and the technologies that you and others are inventing today are going to help us develop all the benefits that come from play, right? Children play by nature, and it’s one of the ways they understand the world. Social interactions build empathy. I mean, there’s a lot of benefits to play, and there’s also tremendous value for being able to go outside, have adventures. Not everybody’s working that way, but I really do believe that you and the team at Niantic have that as your mission and that you’re helping us lead us down that path into the Redwood Forest together.

John Hanke:

That’s a great metaphor. I really appreciate that. Charlie. I won’t add anything to that. That’s perfect. Thank you.

Charlie Melcher:

Thank you so much, John, for the amazing play that you’ve offered to the world so far, and to all the exciting adventures yet to come together. So many thank yous.

John Hanke:

Hey, Charlie, thank you for having me. And thank you for all that you’ve done to support the community of creators out there that are doing amazing work and to bring us together and help us get to know one another. You’ve been instrumental in building that community, so very happy to be part of it.

Charlie Melcher:

I’m Charlie Melcher, and this has been The Future of Storytelling Podcast. Thanks for joining me. I’d like to extend a special thank you to John Hanky and the teams at Niantic Trigger XR and the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library for their support of and collaboration on Rangers wanted. You can download the game now for free on the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. To stay abreast of the latest developments and innovations in technology and storytelling. Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter FoST in Thought. If you want to go even deeper, be sure to check out our annual membership program, the FoST Explorers Club, while applications are still open. For more information, visit fost.org. The FoST podcast is produced by Melcher Media in collaboration with our talented production partners, charts and leisure. I hope to see you again soon for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please be safe, stay strong, and story on.