Players of the popular mobile game "Pokemon Go" might start to use their ears in the future in playing the game. The game's developer Niantic is said to be in the development phase of a new AR (augmented reality) title that will integrate audio cues into the user's gaming experience.
Niantic's CTO Phil Keslin spoke to a panel at an event organized by tech news site TechCrunch in San Francisco and told them about the surge of AR applications and its potential in the market alongside new developer tools from Apple and Google.
Keslin was candid in talking to the panel and even pointed out one of the problems with playing an AR game — that it makes the player look awkward whenever they hold up their phone to play, like in "Pokemon Go." He added that it makes people "look like a total doofus" if they have been playing for a long time.
He also said that the players of "Pokemon Go" only use their phones to share their Pokemon sightings and take pictures, which is natural given the game's dynamic. However, it starts to look awkward when someone is walking around with the phone in front of their face looking for a Pokemon, he noted.
That's why he was intrigued by the different dynamic that an aural experience can bring into the overall AR gaming experience saying that an integrated audio in the game makes it a different experience and people can hide their phones. And with people walking around with their earbuds stuck to their ears all the time no one would be they're experiencing an augmented reality, he surmised.
In a follow-up interview, he further revealed that Niantic has been playing with the idea when they were developing the location-based game "Ingress" which was an earlier version of "Pokemon Go."
He ended his time on the panel by stressing that audio is significant as it is one of the things that drives players. "AR is not just visual," he said.
