Good afternoon, /vp/. After seeing the announcement of Pokémon GO and the community response I was quite concerned with the assumption of AR usage in the app.
Fear not, dear friends, for I have news of the future to share with you.
For the past two years I've been working for the Google staff responsible for the real-world map documentation for Pokémon Go (currently managed by Niantic). We've been scouting locations to generate coherent Pokémon habitats for the game. I quit the project six months ago to go and serve as a missionary in Nigeria. I'll be staying in a village for the next 10 years of my life to spread the word of God, and before I do that, I'd like to share these wonderful news to make everyone as happy as I am right now. The Pokémon fans deserve to know the future. In the time I worked as a scout the project details were disclosed to the staff members.
In order to make this clear for everyone I'll split the details into sections as follows
HASE 1 - Initial Release
Pokémon Go will be released in Fall 2016, starting with a gameplay consisting of the GPS-based Pokémon hunt, which will work in a way that's quite similar to Ingress. You'll get Pokémon nodes in your map and you'll get a chance to battle and capture them as soon as you get in range. The battles are identical to the main games. The backgrounds are not AR (more on that later), but they loosely match the terrain type you're in at the moment of the battle.
To engage in battle with other players AND get prize money you'll need to see them in person. You can battle over the internet, but that doesn't generate money (it does give you XP, though). We have tested this in the campus and you run into people while looking for Pokémon so often this wouldn't be a concern at all.
Other way to get PokéDollars is through Microtransactions, but the prices are quite cheap and you don't need money that much since there's a lot of randomly generated items spawned daily for you to find across the globe.
You can also trade locally and over the internet. Local trades give you experience boosts.
There's no breeding at release, since only the Gen 1 Pokémon will be available. You'll get natures and EVs/IVs, though.
Legendary Pokémon will work like any MMO Boss fight. They'll spawn at important city landmarks and will have a time limit. You'll need to down them to zero in order to catch them. Not everyone gets the Pokémon once it is defeated. It's more like rare mounts dropping from bosses in WoW.
This is all that's available in the initial release. No AR, and no Pokémon after Gen 1.
(cont)]PHASE 2 - Nintendo NX
After the game is realeased and it becomes viral, the second stage of the plan comes: Pokémon in real world.
The first release of Pokémon Go will serve as a way to get people interested into the game. All the parties involved are quite confident about the popularity it will reach. The only downside about the whole deal: it doesn't look like the commercial.
But fear not. Right in time for Chrismas, the Nintendo NX Android Phone will be officially released. This is no ordinary phone, though, as it will bring a revolutionary hardware tech derived directly from Google's Project Tango: integrated Motion tracking camera, 3D depth sensing, Accelerometer, Ambient Light detection, Barometer, Compass, GPS, Gyroscope and a new type of battery which will last way longer than modern phones. All of this will be used to provide one important ability modern smartphones lack: 3D mapping of your surroundings.
The Nintendo NX phone will have many third parties apps, just like any Android phones. Some apps include a tracker for blind people with voice feedback, a home-decorating tool and a wardrobe. These are just a few which will be announced with the system, but many more will come from the community and developers.
(cont)Now, here comes the interesting part: one of the release titles for the Nintendo NX will be a enhanced version of Pokémon GO, with AR capabilities. I've seen this at work and it is INCREDIBLE. It works something like this: you use your phone as a Pokédex Scanner (what it is actually doing is generating a 3D map of your surroundings to use as a stage for the Pokémon fights), then after a while, you'll see one or more Pokémon in your area, and you can send your own Pokémon to fight them. They are correctly placed in 3D space within your phone screen over the video capture from the camera. The animation work they're doing for this is just unbelievable. Some Pokémon climb over real-life objects to perform things like Critical Hits an the like. Can't even describe how good of an experience it is.
They expect to have generated enough hype at that point so everyone will be eager to acquire the new phone. Pokémon GO won't be the only app in the phone, of course, but it is it's main selling point.
Normal smartphone users will still be able to play the game, but will have more regular kinds of battles instead of the AR experience. All in all, the phone doesn't change the gameplay that much, but seeing the Pokémon in real world alone is just way too good of a thing to let it slip.
Later generations and gameplay elements from those generations will come as expansion packs later on (unsure if that implies a cost).
(cont)
PHASE 3 - Beyond the Screen
I won't talk much about this, but expect some sort of compatibility with devices similar to the HoloLens. Won't happen in the near future, though.
This is pretty much what you should expect in the coming years. I believe the world will be changed with this technology and Pokémon Go will be remembered as one of the most revolutionary things in the history of videogames. It's too good to be true, I know, but they're working on it. I've seen it and I can't wait for you guys to enjoy it.
I'm not sure if I'll get to see it while I'm at my service, but I'll sure do my best to try and experience this revolution alongside everyone else. I hope you enjoy these exciting news as much as I enjoyed helping create it.
