Pokémon Go has quickly become the #1 mobile game of all time, and while there’s been some debate as to whether it should be considered Augmented Reality or not, it’s clear that location-based gaming has taken to the next level.
I had a chance to unpack some of the game design principles to see how it’s optimized to facilitate cooperative social gameplay with Roadhouse Interactive’s VR Director Kayla Kinnunen at Casual Connect this week. Kayla talks about Pokémon Go has connected her to more strangers in two weeks than in 15 years, how it’s changing her relationship with her wife, encouraging her to walk more, and some of the social contract issues as well as deeper lessons for the future of augmented and virtual reality gaming.
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Here’s a video of a Pokemon Go stampede that happened in Central Park last week:
And here’s a video of a Squirtle crowd in Bellevue, WA downtown park from Pluto VR’s Shawn Whiting
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Music: Fatality & Summer Trip
Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So over the last couple of weeks, Pokemon Go has pretty much swept the nation to quickly become the largest mobile game of all time. Within the app, they say it's augmented reality. And while there's been some debate within the VR and AR communities as to the extent of how much Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game, It's clear that the location-based mechanism of going out and hunting Pokémon in the real world has taken this dynamic of location-based gaming and taken it to the next level with the second most popular game IP of all time of Pokémon. So I wanted to talk to somebody within the VR community who understands the design principles for both VR and AR, and also happens to be quite an enthusiastic Pokemon Go player. So I was able to catch up with Kayla Kenyonin, who is the VR director at Roadhouse Interactive. And we do a deep dive into all the different dimensions of her experience of playing the game, connecting to people socially within it, and how it's changed her relationship with her wife. So we'll be exploring a lot of that, as well as what Pokemon Go can teach AR and VR designers, as well as some of the larger social contract issues that come up with games like this. So that's what we'll be covering on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsors. Today's episode is brought to you by The Virtual Reality Company. VRC is at the intersection of technology and entertainment, creating interactive storytelling experiences. The thing that's unique about VRC is that they have strategic partnerships with companies like Dbox, which is a haptic chair that takes immersion and presence to the next level. So they're making these digital out-of-home experiences for movies, studios, and original content. For more information, check out thevrcompany.com. Today's episode is also brought to you by The VR Society, which is a new organization made up of major Hollywood studios. The intention is to do consumer research, content production seminars, as well as give away awards to VR professionals. They're going to be hosting a big conference in the fall in Los Angeles to share ideas, experiences, and challenges with other VR professionals. To get more information, check out thevrsociety.com. So this interview with Kayla happened on July 19th at Casual Connect in San Francisco. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:44.021] Kayla Kinnunen: So I'm Kayla. I'm director of VR at Roadhouse Interactive. So I'm leading the whole VR, AR, and future realities initiative at that studio. Roadhouse has been primarily a mobile game developer. Most recently, we launched Iron Maiden Legacy of the Beast, which is a mobile RPG game. But I've been kind of working on new VR titles for that studio right now. The one that we're working on right now is a Vive title, hoping to launch it this fall and maybe talk about it more in a couple months. It's kind of a puzzle game that we're working on right now, but also exploring stuff on a lot of different platforms, both AR and VR side. So yeah, and then I've been getting a lot of Pokemon Go playing in my spare time these days.
[00:03:22.104] Kent Bye: So yeah, let's do a bit of a deep dive into Pokemon Go because last week when it launched I was in the midst of doing about 60 interviews about artificial intelligence and got a chance to play it a little bit but haven't had a chance to sit down with anybody that's really been playing it. So what are some of your initial thoughts about the phenomena of Pokemon Go?
[00:03:41.913] Kayla Kinnunen: So Pokemon Go is obviously being made by Niantic Labs, and they had previously made Ingress. And Ingress had been a very successful location-based AR style game for many years. But what Pokemon Go does is strip away a lot of the hard edges of Ingress and really focus on some very simplistic gameplay, but keeping that kind of social and location-based elements of Ingress that made it really kind of sticky for players. And then of course they attach the Pokemon IP to that to make it really, really great because it's not just good enough to wander around and do social gaming with people, it's about doing social gaming with people and collecting Pokemon during it. So, simple gameplay, go around, find Pokemon, collect them, take over gyms, and really the big thing for me is meeting people while you're out there doing your Pokemon duties.
[00:04:28.050] Kent Bye: So let's take a step back and look at Ingress and some of those hard edges, because my understanding of Ingress was that it was this location-based game, a red and blue team overtaking territory. I remember seeing people on a bus playing, and then as they were driving by different areas, they'd be taking over these different posts. So maybe you could talk about what Ingress was able to do and kind of match these natural landmarks with gameplay, but what some of those hard edges were.
[00:04:55.742] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, so like you, my first experience with Ingress was seeing people play on a bus. And so I saw a couple of people chatting, having this app open, and trying to take over locations and get to locations. And it was really compelling of like, well, what an interesting game concept. It's something that's taking a virtual kind of gaming experience, but applying more of a real-world location-based aspect to it. And then that social aspect of meeting people in those spaces. Honestly, though, I tried to get into it, and it wasn't something I was able to get into. It had a lot of really nerdy sci-fi type elements to it that are really challenging to get into. They aren't really... It's not really mass-market enough. I don't know. I feel like the same reasons why I have a real hard time getting into EVE Online every single time I want to play it is some of the same reasons why I had a really hard time getting into Ingress, is it fits a very, very niche demographic that is interested in that sort of stuff. But what was interesting is that there was that super compelling gameplay there that I wanted to get into, but I just didn't feel like I could get over that IP hump to actually get into it, which is where Pokemon Go is doing a really good job of.
[00:05:58.946] Kent Bye: Now, have you played previous Pokemon games, or is this your first foray into Pokemon?
[00:06:04.510] Kayla Kinnunen: So yeah, actually, I haven't played any Pokemon games prior to this, which is amazing. I was caught up in the Pokemon craze back in the mid-90s, but I was a little bit old for the Pokemon stuff that came out at that time. I actually made a Flash 3 video for my college program at that time, a Pokemon karaoke machine, which was, you know, like the Pokemon was just in the cultural space at that moment in time, and you would just be caught up in it. But I never actually watched the cartoon. I never even played any of the games across all these years. I've actually never really played a Pokemon game on a Nintendo console. But familiar enough with the IP and the Pokemon, and now playing a lot on mobile.
[00:06:45.840] Kent Bye: So I was in New York City last week and after Pokemon had launched, the first two or three experiences of me trying to even run the game, the servers were down, it was just crashing. I would launch something and it would just sort of like, it would just sort of die in the middle after I had caught a Pokemon and so I didn't actually catch it. It's just really frustrating and so it wasn't until I came to San Francisco that I was able to really dive into it. And actually on the Uber ride from New York to the airport, I went from like level one to level four. and so it was just like it made the uber ride so much more enjoyable and actually there was this moment where it was a shared uber ride to the airport and then there was a new call that came in to get picked up and normally i'd be like annoyed and frustrated but actually the car kind of diverted and hit more pokey stops along the way So I know that that's not the intended use case to be able to be driving around in a car, but it just made my Uber ride so much more gamified and interesting. And I started to get into this, like, oh, these different types of Pokemons are out there, and they would just kind of randomly appear. It kind of felt like gambling in a way, where there's not a consistent reward, and that's the thing that makes gambling so compelling is that There's no predictability in terms of when you're gonna find something that could be considered rare within the pantheon of Pokemon characters So okay, there's a few things to digest right there.
[00:08:08.106] Kayla Kinnunen: So like for me the gameplay experience of it is super shallow It's buggy as you say like the servers are down all the time. It's super frustrating with that But I like going for walks like my walk to work. I walk around. I don't own a car I don't know how to drive so walking is the my primary reason of getting around and just a super enjoyable thing for me to do and So I've always wanted to have games that I can play while walking. And Pokemon allows me to do that, and it also rewards me for walking. I can hatch my eggs, I can go to different gyms, it allows me to change my direction of what path I take. to kind of gamify my walk in a different way. And that's super compelling and super interesting for me. Because I can also then run into random people that are playing at various points along my route, meet some people. I've talked to more strangers in Vancouver over the last week playing Pokemon Go than I have in the 15 years that I've lived there. Just because you see somebody, you know what they're doing, you have that immediate way of breaking the ice with them and chatting with them about a common interest. And that's really fascinating for me. From a gambling perspective, I don't really see it as gambling. I see it as more just a thing to do. Like for me, it feels like just a way to get into kind of a flow state or just a fun state. You know, in gambling slot machines, they've done studies that one of the primary drivers for people who play a lot of slot machines is not to actually win money, but rather just to get themselves into a flow state. And so they try to use that to kind of get into that happy place for them. And so it's less about the money and more about just getting into that flow state for them. And for me, Pokemon Go is very much like that. While I'm walking, I can kind of get into that flow state and kind of do something while I'm walking. Hatch eggs, take over gyms, find Pokemon. Whether I get the Pokemon or not isn't a big deal. Unless it's a rare one and it gets away, then I'm gonna get really pissed off. But yeah, it seems to just be something to do. Like, on Sunday, Colin and Sarah Northway messaged me and they're like, like, hey, Caleb, we just want to go for a walk. You want to go for a walk and just collect some Pokemon? And it was great. It was like the new going to the bowling alley, or new playing bocce ball, or new getting a drink, or the new going to a coffee shop. It's just something to do with other people. And it is a social starter for people now, which is interesting.
[00:10:13.992] Kent Bye: So when I was in New York, I started to see clips online of masses of people walking into Central Park, almost like a rush. And so there's a couple of things that's interesting that I think they're doing in terms of the social dimension, because when you set a lure on one of the Pokéstops, that basically will increase the likelihood of different Pokémons showing up. So if an individual does it, then everybody benefits. And it's kind of like this, in some ways, magnet to draw more players to single locations, especially if there's like three or four lures in just a small area. I was up in my hotel room and there was like three or four different PokéStops that had lures and I was able to just ramp up on the game and I wanted to get at least to the level where I could go up into a gem and start to check that out. But there's an element there of when rare Pokemon creatures appear, they appear for everybody apparently in that same location. So there's a bit of like, hey, you know, this is happening right now and everybody has an equal opportunity to catch the same rare Pokemon. So maybe you could talk about some of those dimensions where you see that they've done the game design to really amplify and maximize those social interactions.
[00:11:24.355] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, so the game is definitely not super competitive in a traditional sense. There's definitely not a winner or loser in Pokemon. It's, you know, if there's a rare Pokemon, everybody has an equal chance to get it. The monetization is primarily going to be, I can see the monetization primarily being on lures, which is a benefit for everybody. It's a really good free-to-play monetization technique because it means that anybody that spends money is improving the game for all other players. It's something that Valve has been really successful with when they've done that on Team Fortress 2. And it's just a really good positive social monetization technique. Even the most competitive aspect of Pokemon, which is taking over of gyms, there is no real reason to hold a gym for a long period of time. There's no strong design reason there. If you take over a gym, you can get the benefit of holding that gym almost immediately. which means if somebody else takes over that gym, it's not a huge loss to you. And there's actually more XP for the constant back and forth between teams holding gyms. You get more XP if you take over a gym, so it's almost on your benefit to let another team take over the gym immediately so that you can take it over from them. You can kind of have these kind of quick switchovers, which means that even the most rival aspect of it is kind of like you're all mutually helping each other out by leveling yourselves up, by having these kind of small little skirmishes right there. But yeah, you meet people out there playing, and it's a positive social experience. You see other people playing Pokemon Go, and you're not competing with them. You're rather just hanging out, doing the same thing. And dropping lures is a really good example of that. We have a few spaces near our work that have triple lure locations, and those are definitely the hubs. And you can almost guarantee that all those locations will have lures up. 24-7, because there's enough people in the area that somebody will go there, somebody will drop a lure, and if somebody drops a lure, other people are going to drop lures in the other two spots, and it's just going to keep going indefinitely. And it's just, you can give back to the community by dropping lures in locations, and that's really interesting. And that's where you're going to meet like 50 or 70 different people that are playing the game at that same time. And it's kind of where the communities will kind of naturally gather on a day-to-day basis.
[00:13:29.271] Kent Bye: So my personal experience of playing it, I found myself surprised of how into the discovery element of finding new and rare Pokemon because there's all these sort of common Pokemons that you get when you start to play. But then when you see something that's new, it's like, ooh, it's exciting. It's like, oh, I got to really catch them. And I saw a map of San Francisco of like, here's where you can go to catch 109 different Pokemon. Are there specific locations where some of these more rare Pokemon will spawn more frequently?
[00:14:00.405] Kayla Kinnunen: Yes, so again, I live in Vancouver, and so I do most of my hunting up there. And where I live, there's a ton of drowsies. The drowsies are everywhere, but there's none here in San Francisco. All my friends here in San Francisco are desperate for drowsies. They don't know where to get them here. So even between cities, there's different strengths of which Pokemon you find. Not only within a city, there's certain areas that different Pokemon will appear, but also different times of the day. So around where I live, once the app goes into night mode, there's different Pokemon that come out at night versus during the day. And what's really interesting to me is that there's now starting to be rumors within the Pokemon community of where the time of day and locations you have to be in order to get specific Pokemon. But it's kind of starting that whole community of if you really want to get this rare one, you have to go to the convention center between 10 and 11 PM instead of this location. But don't worry. Just check the Facebook channel that we all created for this. And somebody will tell you the second that it spawns. And you can rush down there and get it. You really have this interesting community aspect that's kind of building off of it.
[00:15:02.769] Kent Bye: Yeah. So as I'm sort of playing this game, I see that there's kind of three major different things that I see in terms of the game. One is just sort of like the joy of just kind of a physics-based interaction of flicking a ball and trying to catch something. Two is kind of the collector's mindset of you want to collect them all. And so you want to go out of your way to try to find them, hunt them wildly. You know, that's more the casual game. The more hardcore game seems to like do all the things in order to evolve and grow your characters to be able to take over gems and to compete at that level. I'm at the level where if I tried to go into almost any gym, I think I would just, you know, get all of my Pokemons killed or they would get defeated. When you do a gym battle, do your Pokemon die?
[00:15:44.459] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, no. So you have revives and you have potions. So if your Pokemon goes down to zero, you just use a revive to bring them back. So it's never a loss. You never lose your Pokemon. You can just lose items to bring them back to life, which are easily replenished by just going to PokeStomps.
[00:16:00.600] Kent Bye: So it seems like that there is a pretty much like a brute force slog that you have to go through in order to get to like the higher levels of the game to really actually compete at the gems. And that there's no kind of fast forward button in any way. You kind of have to still kind of do the grunt work of collecting and hunting and and evolving, although there's some people that are trying to find the most optimal way of accelerating their characters, whether it's they gather a bunch of characters and get a lucky egg and then start to evolve them and get double XP. To me, there seems like the path of people who are just going out, exploring the world, doing social interactions, casually collecting things, and then there's the people who are like super hardcore taking over gyms. Maybe you can kind of talk about some of the things that you're seeing from playing the game.
[00:16:46.007] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, so I mean, any game is going to have people trying to min-max everything that's going on there. And so yeah, there's definitely ways that you can maximize the time that you put into the game. So if you're in an area with a bunch of lures and you drop an incense and a lucky egg, you're going to maximize the amount of XP you're going to get by finding those Pokemon and getting all the XP at that point in time. You can just kind of do circles and loops around there to kind of maximize that 30 minute loop. And you can then save all of your evolutions, drop a lucky egg, do all of your evolutions and get that 1,000 XP boost per evolution to also maximize that time. So you can actually power level pretty quickly. But really, the biggest thing is saving up all that stardust and getting that from collecting Pokemon so that you can do the high-level evolutions and high-level power-ups that are necessary to compete at the gyms. Once you actually have a bunch of Pokemon over a thousand points, it becomes pretty easy to take down a gym, at least in Vancouver. I know San Francisco's gyms are pretty ridiculous at this point in time. I think some of them are over 2,000 right now, which seems insane. The game is designed in a way that it's way easier to take down a gym than it is to fortify a gym, and so that kind of naturally leads you to be able to do more on that than you think. So even my wife who's playing, she's got a bunch of Pokemon at around 600 CP each, and she's now able to take down gyms on her own, which is awesome and crazy. So, you know, for me, taking down a couple gyms is part of my standard daily routine in Pokemon Go. I'll try to pick gyms that are maybe a little bit more out of the way, and maybe have a lower likelihood of having a super powerful bunch of Pokemon defending it. You know, that's part of the standard loop of things I try to do in my day.
[00:18:18.904] Kent Bye: Well, let's talk about like why it's crazy for your wife to be playing Pokemon and talk a bit about her history in gaming and why it's such a surprise.
[00:18:26.308] Kayla Kinnunen: Okay, so my wife is not a gamer at all. She's, you know, very technically literate but not a huge tech nerd. Certainly not to the extent that I am. The last game I've been managed to get her into was Plants vs. Zombies and back when that came out she played that non-stop. In fact, she could play that so much I had to give her my iPad because I was never gonna see it again. But since then, I haven't been able to get her into many games. And for me, one of the biggest benefits of VR and AR is this promise of better human-centered design and more removal of abstraction layers that will make gaming more accessible to people like my wife, who are not super into learning these convoluted control schemes that console games do or super complicated systems that mobile games are, but rather have more of these human-based social interactions that are more interesting. And so from my wife's perspective, she's been kind of getting caught up in this whole Pokemon social stuff going on. Obviously, she's surrounded by me and surrounded by all my friends. And so everybody in her social circle is playing this game. But she also works out at the university in Vancouver and is surrounded by students and other faculty that are playing this game nonstop. And so she couldn't wait to get into this game. To the point that the game was only released in Canada last Sunday, but I had been playing it for a week prior because everybody up in Canada that wanted to play it hacked our iTunes accounts to get a US iTunes account to play the game. And I told her, you know, we'll just wait for it to come out in Canada and then we'll get it on her iPhone. She couldn't even wait for that. So last weekend I had to log in with my US iTunes account to get the game onto her iPhone so she could have access to it. before it came out in Canada, and now she's doing an amazing job in the game. Like, she's now level, I think, 12 after four days of playing the game. She's taking down gyms, she's collecting Pokémon all over the place. Like, she's super competitive in this game. She picked the team that I'm on so that we can fight gyms together. She's sending me updates on how her Pokémon are doing on a regular basis. this is crazy like I have no idea what's going on here and it's so amazing to me like it's really precious and special for me because we can play a game together we can experience that but it's also you know as rough-edged as it is it's simple enough that she is able to get into it and not feel that it's this huge barrier of abstraction that's really annoying to get into the game and she's just enjoying being part of that social experience that's out there right now.
[00:20:39.847] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was this Future of Storytelling video that was interviewing this VP of Netflix, and they said, when they looked at the data, they found like there was three major reasons why people were watching any given movie. One was that it was an escape into a story. The next was that it was expanding their minds in some way. And the third one was that it was enabling them to participate in the social currency. And I think that with this huge phenomena of Pokemon, There seems to be this draw of wanting to be a part of that conversation, to understand all this terminology. And, you know, when I saw videos of people stampeding and sort of coming together, I was like, wow, this is really fascinating that this location-based game is able to inspire these huge numbers of people to have this whole experience as a group. It made me kind of want to run into a crowd or be ready that if there was a crowd there, I'd be able to participate and have the experience of kind of sharing and capturing a rare Pokemon or whatever.
[00:21:36.309] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, so that is a huge compelling aspect. I mean, that's why MMOs were always so powerful to begin with, is it really brought that kind of social binding contract together and that human beings naturally, as much as we say, you know, I don't need any people, I don't care if anybody doesn't like me or anything, Really deep down, all of us want people to like us. We want to be part of tribes. We want to be on the in crowd. We want to have friends. We want to be able to talk to people and have meaningful connections with people. And popular culture is a way to do that. So the latest TV show, you know, being able to talk about the last episode of Game of Thrones and feeling the pressure of watching the latest episode when it came out so you can have that conversation with people. Watching the latest movies that are big so that you can have those conversations with people. And then Pokemon Go now, being part of this current movement that's happening out there, so you can be on the in crowd. When you see people walking around playing this game, you want to play it as well so that you have that connection with them. It really fulfills that human desire for connection with other people. So that's a huge driving force and I think as we get further along in AR and mixed reality and social gaming and we see where this technology kind of takes us in the future, that kind of gaming is going to be a really big important aspect because now we can do social gaming in the physical realm with real people next to us and be sharing in this experience in a much more meaningful way than it is now where a lot of gaming is a little more dispersed. You're doing it privately and talking about it maybe in an online forum but you're not able to do it together in a physical space. Breaking down that barrier is going to be really interesting.
[00:23:07.399] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think that there's been some debate as to whether or not Pokemon Go is, like, true augmented reality. And to me, when I look at it, it's certainly a location-based game, and it's certainly a layer of virtual gameplay that's overlaid on top of the physical reality. But I think one of the things that makes Pokemon Go more AR than VR for sure is that you've got this possibility of actually connecting with other people in physical spaces. I mean the AR in some ways is a bit incidental because it's not actually tracking the volumetrically and you know you can actually even turn it off and you could save battery in that way in terms of just playing the game and still having that experience. But for me it makes me really wonder like what is this future of these mixed reality games and actually true augmented reality with glasses. One big thing I think is that when I see people walking around and when I've had my own experience You kind of like zone out into your own world and looking at your phone screen as you're walking around. And it starts to be a little bit of either you're in the group or you're out of the group, sort of creating this, like, Pokemon zombie effect where people are not really even aware of their social surroundings because they're immersed within the game so much. But yet at the same time, it's the possibility of, like you said, actually being able to meet up and kind of hang out with people who are playing the game and provide an excuse to start to strike up a conversation with a stranger about the game and then potentially deeper. Just curious to hear some of your thoughts looking at VR design and the future of AR and mixed reality at a game development shop, what kind of things you're paying attention to there.
[00:24:37.343] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you that the AR aspect of Pokemon Go is very incidental. It's not a huge aspect of the game. In fact, I've turned AR off on my Pokemon Go, so it's easier for me to catch them while walking without having to stop and kind of reposition the things. But the aspect of being able to share a game experience that is happening simultaneously with people around you, I think that's the aspect of the game that's really important and is going to have long-reaching potential. Right now when I'm doing any kind of VR or AR development work, I'm trying to look at what is it that I can do with today's technology that will teach me the design skills and kind of teach me the things that are going to be valid 10 years out. Because if you look at the Vive right now, or you look at the HoloLens, or you look at Gear VR, or you even look at Pokemon Go, all these are just the current manifestations of what that future is going to be like. And I think, you know, in 10 years, we're all going to be wearing some sort of tech that allows us to position AR or mixed reality or holographic computing type objects in our real world. And it'll be, you know, socially required for us to have these things on us at any given time. It'll be necessary for wayfinding. It'll be necessary for apps. You know, one of the kind of apps that I think is, it really envisions what this future is going to be like is, you know, you look at running apps right now on an iPhone and you strap it to your, shoulder and you kind of listen to your running app and it kind of gives you advice as you go. In the future, I kind of look at what an MR running app might be and that might be a running buddy that runs next to you. It's like a holographic representation of a person that runs next to you that's having a conversation with you, telling you how you're doing, giving you the encouragement, and that app is then manifested as this avatar that runs with you because that is the most human way for us to communicate with technology would be through another representation of a fake human or a fake avatar that can kind of give you that conversation as opposed to some text on the screen. And so if you look at it through that way, where we're wearing these MR glasses in the future Pokemon Go game would be, we're all sitting in a park together, and we are literally seeing the Pokemon in front of us, and instead of all staring at our phones, we are all looking at the Pokemon together, and we can point at it, and we can have a conversation together, and actually be sharing a space that is augmented with these aspects of the game. And so at that point, we're no longer doing that kind of zombie-type stuff. We are actually reacting to something that we all see together, even though that is augmented and completely virtual-type stuff. We're able to interact with it on a more natural basis, as opposed to huddled down on our phones and not really looking at it that way. So that's kind of where I see things going.
[00:27:12.214] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things that I have really noticed about playing the game is that I think about that we're in this transition from the information age to the experiential age, where the information age is dominated by kind of desktop computing and sitting down. And mobile, you're on the go, and it's also a little bit more being in the present moment and having the experience. So something like Pokemon Go, it's actually inspiring people to go have an adventure, you know, to actually go out into the physical world. And because the Pokestops are correlated to actual landmarks, you could start to discover things about your neighborhood. Or when you're traveling, you could start to go to different places of interest. And so it kind of naturally creates this game where if you want to kind of explore and play a game at the same time, then it's something that's very natural to do with other people. But the exploration part of the actual having the experience it kind of feels like a commitment because it literally is like overtaking your phone Like you can't just turn it off you have to have the app running it can drain batteries You know data is an issue, but you have to be ready at any moment to find that random Pokemon But if it's going to actually track you're walking then it has to be running and And it sounds like you also have increased the amount that you're actually walking and exercising. So there seems to be this connection between turning a game and inspiring exploration in the real world, but also getting exercise and getting all those endorphins going that's sort of infused within the gameplay.
[00:28:35.247] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you can look at my Apple Health meter and look at how much mileage I'd put in per day before and after Pokemon Go. And I like walking, so it's pretty easy for me to get the 10,000 steps in per day. But now I'm doubling or tripling that because I just feel this compelling want and need to go out and explore more because I want to catch more Pokemon. I want to be part of the social experience. I see people taking out gyms nearby, and I want to be part of that. I want to be interacting with that group of people doing it. So I always feel this want and desire to go out there in the world. But yeah, you're right. The app right now doesn't make that easy for us. I go back to running apps. When running apps first came out on the iPhone, they were terrible. They had to be up all the time. You couldn't put your phone to sleep. They drained battery crazily. There was a lot of quality of life problems with those apps that made them not gain traction as fast as they could have. But over time that's been addressed and it's been fixed. And there's a lot of things that Pokemon Go could do as an app to address those problems and increase these quality of life things. There's no reason why it can't run in the background. There's no reason why it can't go into minimal battery mode and give more of an auditory cue when things happen. There's a lot of quality of life things that they could have if they really wanted to take that location-based gaming aspect more seriously and make it more about walking around and being out in the space and focusing more on the social aspect as opposed to the my hands and eyes focusing on the screen aspect. So they can take that game and go down that direction if they want. And I really think that's the direction that I see AR and mixed reality gaming going, is the app itself is important, but it has to blend in with what people are doing in the real world. Again, like my dream of gaming is a game that I can play while walking to work, but isn't going to slow me down while walking to work. But it's something that can kind of augment that experience for me and make it better for me, but doesn't necessarily make it feel like it's dragging me and preventing me from kind of still being efficient from getting from point A to point B. So, you know, I think looking ahead, glasses tech will allow us to create those more naturalist situations. You know, right now we're still tethered to a screen and we have to make a decision to tune out the real world and look at our screen to kind of interact with the Pokemon Go experience. Whereas in the future, those experiences will just be blended into our reality, make it a lot more easier to have a much more natural interactions with it.
[00:30:52.713] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think that, you know, for you, you've had the experience of having a more connected and shared experience with your wife, but I think that for couples who one person's playing and the other person's not, I think it actually can be more of a barrier and wall in looking into different Pokemon strategies for how to optimize my time. playing it there's some commentary saying well perhaps the best way to play the game if you really want to get serious about it is to do the incubators and walk around and actually hatch the eggs and you know invest in a fleet of incubators and hatch the eggs and just do a lot of walking and so I thought okay well maybe if I'm walking with somebody who's not playing then I could be able to play the game by just walking and sharing a walk and I'd get some benefit into the game but yet don't have to feel like I'm stopping and disconnecting myself from the conversation for somebody who's not playing But even when I tried that, tried to put the phone in my pocket, it lost GPS, it would not track, and then it would just drain battery, it would, you know, I only have a limited amount of data. All these things are sort of like, is this really worth it for me to be playing this when I'm with people who aren't playing it? So I kind of see both sides where it could connect you to people and have these adventures with friends, but it could also create this barrier between a game that's actually making me more disconnected from the people around me.
[00:32:04.412] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, definitely, and there's definitely that social contract aspect that has to be factored in with these games. You know, there were days where I was playing Pokemon Go before my wife had the game. You know, she was really excited about the idea of us going for more walks after dinner, and that quickly became frustration as I kept checking my iPhone, and she's like, okay, well, maybe this isn't the most enjoyable thing ever for me, so let's just stop doing this. And then now, where she is playing the game, on Sunday we went for a walk, but then we decided, you know what, as opposed to just checking our phones all the time, let's agree that on our walk home, we're just gonna put our phones away, we're not gonna look at it, we're gonna keep the app running so we can get our incubation going, because honestly, we're walking 5K right now, and we want those 5K eggs hatched. But we actually had to have that social contract of, let's just decide to do this right now. But the app right now isn't making that really easy. And again, that really comes down to the quality of life aspects and understanding what the users want to do with these games. So I think there's a lot of opportunities for Pokemon Go to improve the app to create better quality of life for users. And then there's a lot of opportunity for future game developers to take those lessons and think about, OK, well, what are people going to really want to do in this going forward?
[00:33:10.412] Kent Bye: Yeah I've already started to see a bit of backlash against Pokemon Go because of this kind of Pokemon Go zombie effect where you really have to have it out and looking at it in order to play the game and even when you're walking down the street I found myself playing and kind of ordinarily you have an awareness of people coming towards you and you have a natural way of minimizing your distance and pass so you don't run into people but I found myself kind of like having people forced to stop in front of me and I looked up and I was like oh whoops I'm not really participating in the social norms of society now playing this game and I think that as the trends of that as that continues is that there is going to be more backlash of people who are playing and really get it and understand it and the people who just think it's really dumb and stupid and why are you doing that and it's going to be kind of like even more alienating for them.
[00:33:55.233] Kayla Kinnunen: Yeah, definitely. I mean, and that's something we're starting to learn right now is you are now seeing what is the social consequences of doing this, this gaming that exists in public space. And society is going to come up with rules around that and kind of what our best practices are. Pokemon Go is an interesting example because you have such a large percentage of people playing this. Like when I go to parks, the vast majority of people at the park are playing the game. And so they're the ones defining the social contract in that space. But we're going to see as the number of users changes, those dynamics are going to change. And we're going to learn a lot about what does work and what doesn't work in these environments. And I think that's also going to influence what design of these games are going to be in the future. And again, looking ahead, eventually we're not going to be holding phones out and doing this. We're going to have these images appearing to us in a much more natural way. But what happens in those situations when half the people in the park are seeing a Pokémon in the middle of the park, and the other half of the people in the park aren't, because they haven't subscribed to that app, or they're not seeing that augmented view for technological reasons, or they just don't have the app, or they just don't fucking care. you know, what does that mean for the social interaction at that point in time. And I think that's where there's a lot of opportunities for learning and a lot of opportunities of seeing what's happening right now at Pokemon Go and understanding the social aspects of it and what that's going to mean in the next 10 years.
[00:35:14.158] Kent Bye: Yeah, to me I really think that augmented reality is going to be a lot more popular than virtual reality just because you don't have this barrier between you and other people and we are social creatures and I think Pokemon Go is a great example of why that's going to be true. But I still think right now a lot of the cutting edge game design techniques and everything is still happening in VR. But I'm curious from your perspective, what can virtual reality game designers learn from Pokemon Go?
[00:35:38.309] Kayla Kinnunen: Oh, god. So, I mean, right now everybody's complaining that VR is a non-social experience and, you know, the technology kind of lends itself to being naturally not social, but that's not really the case. I mean, you look at Fantastic Contraption and the couch-based gaming is super fun, or you look at the toy box demo from Oculus and it's super social, sharing a space right there. I think VR right now is the space to be iterating on control schemes and design interactions that are going to work 10 years into the future. You know, if you look at the Vive right now, it is the most natural way of interacting with virtual objects that you can grab, throw, and kind of do stuff in that space. If you kind of remove the background and bring in the real world, you can kind of see what the mixed reality future will be in terms of you see all these virtual objects in front of you that you can kind of interact with, but you can also see the real world put behind that. So if you're a VR developer right now, let's look at the Pokemon Go social experience and see, okay, if the real world was kind of leaking into this position, what would you look like to people around you? Whether or not they're actually subscribed to your experience or not. And then I still think that the AR developers can learn a lot from VR developers, because VR is really where that interaction model is being refined and iterated on right now. A lot of the stuff, especially Vive developers, are learning what it means to grab, hold, throw things, and really focus on human-centered design principles. that AR really hasn't gotten to the technology level yet to really start doing that. And so there's still a lot of stuff to learn from both sides.
[00:37:04.013] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you think is kind of the ultimate potential of virtual and augmented reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:37:11.172] Kayla Kinnunen: Sure, so right now it's socially unacceptable to pretty much not have a smartphone. Like if you meet anybody on the street that doesn't have a smartphone, they are at a huge disadvantage. From wayfinding, Google Maps, to finding the next bus, to keeping connected with people, it's right now almost a cultural imperative to have a smartphone on you at all times. 10 years from now, I could see the same thing happening for a need of having MRAR glasses on at any given time. And that's going to be how we do wayfinding. It's going to be how we figure out when the next bus is coming, because we'll see a heads-up display when that's happening. I could see cities using that as ways to dynamically change how streets work or how spaces work. Maybe streets are designated bike lanes at certain times and car lanes at other times. Maybe the only way you see that is through everyone's heads-up display and their glasses. The way we're going to be integrating talking to computers is going to be through much more natural human-based interactions. So look at more voice interaction with AI holographic bots is going to be the way we kind of talk about stuff. And so we're really looking at the apps are going to change to being more physical objects and physical avatars that we have more human interaction designs with. and they'll just be living in the space with us. And I think the potential there is creating really robust, great experiences that also bring us more connected to the spaces around us and the people around us, and also share our computing experiences in a much more natural way.
[00:38:34.126] Kent Bye: Awesome. Anything else left unsaid that you'd like to say?
[00:38:36.828] Kayla Kinnunen: No, I think that's good. I think it's going to be a really exciting next 10 years, and I can't wait to catch them all.
[00:38:43.516] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thanks so much. Thank you. So that was Kayla Kinunen. She is the VR director at Roadhouse Interactive. So I have a number of different takeaways from this interview is that first of all, I think it's important to not underestimate the impact of the social desire to be a part of a larger conversation. This happens a lot with big huge TV shows that kind of creates an extra peer pressure to dive in and become involved and I can definitely say from my own experience that there's a lot of people within my social media feed that are talking about it and I kind of felt like I had to experience Pokemon Go just to be a part of that conversation and to understand it a little bit more. To me, one of the most memorable moments was seeing people in Bellevue, Washington, as well as in Central Park, New York, in this huge herd, just stampeding towards a location where one of the rare Pokemons was spawning. And, you know, there's a part of me that as I was walking around playing Pokemon Go, I kind of was secretly hoping to participate in a huge crowd like that, just because I think it would be cool to sharing that experience in a huge group. It's just something that I haven't really ever seen before in the world of gaming. And so overall, I think that Pokemon Go is kind of a symbol and an omen of augmented reality being, in the end, way bigger than virtual reality. And there's a couple of reasons. One is that in VR, you're blocking out your eye contact from everybody that's physically around you. And talking to different people about VR, the consensus seems to be that the use case for VR is pretty much going to be in the privacy of your own home. And I think AR is just going to have so many more use cases. So we could see like in Pokemon Go, you're going to be out in the real world and being able to actually use these games to facilitate different connections with you and other people. And I think to me, that's probably one of the most powerful aspects of Pokemon Go is that it's forcing people to not only get out and break out of their normal routine, but it's also allowing them to connect to just random strangers and have something to talk about. Now, that said, I do agree with Kayla that there has to be a little bit of social contract that is agreed upon when you're with other people and you're out and about. And, you know, I found myself, it's pretty awkward to be playing Pokemon Go when you're walking around with somebody who's not playing it at all. It is pretty disruptive to being present and connected to other people. But over the last couple of weeks of walking around New York City and San Francisco, I saw a lot of people who were hunting for Pokemon together and just anecdotally hearing a lot of people that were inspired to go hang out with friends and hunt for Pokemon, just like Kayla said that the fantastic contraption creators Colin and Sarah Northway asked her to go out and start to hunt Pokemon. So the success of Pokemon Go is worth looking at, but also it's important to realize that Pokemon is a brand that is extremely deep and rich and powerful and Wikipedia says that it's the second most successful game IP right behind Super Mario Brothers. It's got a deep history and a lot of people who are millennials grew up with it. I myself was a little too old to really get into Pokemon when it was a huge craze and so Pokemon Go was really my first foray into playing Pokemon and I can say it's pretty compelling. It's a great concept with these characters who evolve and I just like the idea of just going around and hunting. Now I've gotten up to a certain point and it's unclear whether or not I'm really actually going to continue and try to play the game and play at the upper echelons. The thing that is interesting is to try to find and discover all the Pokemon and just over the last couple of days there's been some reports that people have been able to find all of the Pokemon within North America and there's certain Pokemon that are only available in certain countries and so these super rare and legendary Pokemon you have to basically go into different countries and so That to me I think is really interesting to see if Pokemon Go is actually going to inspire people to travel overseas and to go do specific hunts for Pokemon. A trip that they probably would never do other than to complete the game. The other thing that I think really stuck out to me is just Kayla saying that she likes to take walks and she's always wanted to have a game that really gamified her walks in different ways. And it sounds like Pokemon Go is really doing that successfully and inspiring her to go off her normal paths and actually walk around a lot more. So I think that in the future, people will eventually all be wearing augmented reality glasses. I'd say probably in about nine years, it's going to be pretty all pervasive and perhaps augmented reality will eclipse our use of cell phones and looking at screens. And I can expect that there's going to be a lot more different types of games that kind of gamify our normal activities that we're doing anyway. So there's been a lot of stories and anecdotes that I've seen covered in the media about how Pokémon Go has changed their lives in different ways. I think one of the most salient ones was a mother whose son had autism and she gave him the game and he just immediately was captivated with this idea of capturing Pokémon. And by going to the park, it actually gave a reason both for the kid who has autism as well as other kids to interact with each other. And the mother just was floored and just completely stunned that it was possible to see this type of social engagement with her son. So I think there's lots of different stories like that that I've seen, lots of different ways that people's lives have been changed by this game. And it's still just a couple of weeks in, and I think it's yet to be seen how sticky this game is going to be, whether or not people are going to be playing it for months and months and months on end, or whether or not they'll get kind of bored from playing the Pokemon. So that's all I got for today. And I just want to thank you for listening. 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