Beyond Pokémon GO; Seizing the AR opportunity

Words by Will Freeman.

Just a few weeks ago augmented reality was arguably VR’s lesser cousin. While virtual reality has long basked in media attention and games industry affection, AR has rarely punched through into the mainstream’s collective conscience.

And then Pokémon GO happened. Through the month of July it became as popular as Twitter in the US, saw Nintendo’s share price climb at a dizzying rate before a fall, and established AR as a new point of fascination for the public, press and games industry.

At the time of writing, some numbers point to Pokémon GO already experiencing a decline in its use, but Nintendo’s effort alone is not all there is to the new AR boom. Google has the Project Tango technology ready to be unleashed, granting mobile phones depth sensing cameras that can place AR experiences over and around real world 3D space. Microsoft, meanwhile, continues to develop Hololens, an AR headset that could have a revolutionary impact on everything from games to creative processes and human interaction. And then there’s solutions like Magic Leap and CastAR, all of which means there is much potential for those that build digital content.

“Several of the devices mentioned are now able to capture large real-world space that they can quickly recognise and understand their position in,” explains Simon Barrat, director at UK studio Barog Game Labs, which counts AR among its specialities.

“This means that more advanced AR – such as virtual objects being hidden behind real-world objects – can be performed. It also allows for the mapping of spaces between multiple devices, which enables collaboration between multiple people, and therefore more practical uses for the technology.”

It’s clearly a time ripe with possibilities, and as a result many believe AR perhaps has more potential today than VR, in terms of impacting day-to-day life.

“I truly believe we are headed for a screen-free future, where fashionable and lightweight glasses allow us to place our desktop, TV, or mobile device screen anywhere – [or] to be shared with anyone we want with a similar pair of glasses,” posits Ralph Barbagallo, founder of AR and VR specialist studio Flarb, and a longstanding developer of AR content. “We may be on the last generation of screen-based computing. If so, the consumer adoption of AR is potentially huge. Maybe even bigger than mobile, long term.”

That prospect is hugely exciting, but how can a developer prepare to embrace it? VR’s design rule book has taken thousands of developers years to flesh out, so it’s simply too early to know for sure. But there’s already a sense of the mindset developers should get themselves into to thrive creatively and commercially on AR platforms.

“Think about how you used to play as a kid,” offers Justin Quimby, a product manager on the Project Tango team, before getting a little nostalgic. “A table could be a castle, a chair a tower, the floor lava. AR allows a blending of the physical and digital worlds. The other thing about AR is that you don’t have to use the physical world to create the play-space. Instead, you can use AR to designate any location as your new digital play-space. The ability to use your smartphone to move your viewport into the digital world allows for very different interaction mechanics than a traditional phone game or VR headset.”

Barrat also has some insights for those wanting a taste of what Pokémon GO provided it’s creators, US studio Niantic.

“Like with designing and developing for VR, making augmented reality games and experiences requires a design rethink,” offers the Barog Game Labs dev. “Because of this, in many cases it makes sense to throw out the rulebook and just focus on iterating and failing as many times as possible, while getting people without prior experiences to try out the game.”

In many ways, it’s the same story as seen with the emergence of VR in recent years. Many of the conventions, assumptions and rules of making games are now meaningless, which means those with an experimental spirit and a willing to try new ideas could be set for a bright, successful future making games.

Yet, according to Barbagallo, it may be best to forget about games for a while, and forge a different path in AR. It’s not the most obvious one, but it could lead back round to AR gaming triumph.

“The money in AR – and mixed reality – right now is in enterprise,” Barbagallo recommends. “I’d pursue enterprise opportunities – defence, construction visualisation, warehouse logistics – and use that revenue stream to fund consumer-facing entertainment and gaming apps. Unless, of course, you can just grab one of those buckets of money from the herds of Pokémon Go obsessed investors.

“Every forward-thinking studio should have at least one HoloLens device and be building for it – as every AR and MR device on the horizon will have at least the same feature set,” he continues. “The design and technical lessons you learn on HoloLens will prepare you for what comes next.”

As a medium, it is still very early days for augmented reality. That fact alone, though, means there is presently much potential for studios that move to embrace AR. Now could be the time to define its future, and emerge as a leading proponent of a rising force in the games industry.

And consider this. The wild success of Pokémon GO alone has help mainstream audiences understand what AR is, and what it can be. To an extent, the hardest part of establishing a new creative form has been done. Now might just be the time – for those that do their research and plan carefully – to seize an opportunity that could dramatically reshape the way humans interact with technology. It doesn’t get much more exciting than that.