Wednesday 13 July 2016

PokemonGo - Gamification through GeoAR

In little under two weeks Pokemon Go (not launched in the UK yet) has taken the world by storm.

According to 'Tokyo Reuters', shares in Nintendo (Pokemon's owners) soared on Monday 11th July 2016 bringing and increase in Market value to $7.5billion in only 2 days.

It's Nintendo's first foray into mobile gaming and although only being released in certain regions it's become an 'overnight success'. But what is PokemonGo

Most people ask what Pokemon are?

Pokemon is a brand created and used by Nintendo since the early 1990's. Where Pokemon's characters and TV programmes became a 90's phenomenon for most children of the day. 

Now Nintendo have taken it a step further by using 'Geo Location based Augmented Reality' (essentially skignz) to place little virtual characters across the planet.

This creates a scavenger hunt for people to look for this elite virtual characters as they go about their daily lives…

However this has already not been without controversy, huge pile ups and traffic problems (Check out some of the stories by pressing here) happened when someone held up traffic by walking into the middle of a road or even where a driver was trying to find a character whilst driving!

With 5% of Android users downloading it two days after its release in the US, you can safely assume that this is only going to get bigger and bigger. 

With users averaging 53 mins per day, could it be the next big game distraction since Candy Crush? 



Its already shot to the top of the charts in Apple's FREE app rankings and continues to explode across the world.

So why is skignz writing about this? Geolocation is the essence of the skignz platform and PokemonGO is the first real high profile, mass market use of this type of AR after skignz

We think it's great, we think PokemonGo although not perfect, certainly increases the profile of GeoAR in much the same way in what Oculus did for VR. 

We have had an incredible amount of emails and calls in the last few days from people we have been dealing with over the the years, asking us our opinion of PokemonGo? 

How does it affect skignz

How does it compare to skignzand plenty who have said that this makes skignz so much more relevant now, especially as skignz makes AR useful and can be delivered across so many different sectors and industries with a plethora of uses & applications, literally your imagination is the limit to what skignz can do?

In our blog post of 13th July 2016, (Press to view here) we showcase how skignz users have uploaded their own  Star Trek Space Ship, The USS Enterprise for views to find in Central London. 

This also begs the question, as we explain in the aforementioned blog post, what other brands could take advantage of this type of Brand activation? 

From TV series launches like Game of Thrones, through to the next Star Wars / Xmen, Star Wars, movies. Even going back into the archives (like Nintendo have done with Pokemon) and relaunch old franchises in a new and engaging way.

Two very interesting articles we have just come across by Tim Bajarin for Time and Alexandra Tregre for Stable | Kernal both outline the impact of Pokemon Go, but also explain that it's not AR but more Geo Location that's driving the Phenomenal take up.... 



You may further query as to why this matters or relates to skignz? That's becuase everything that PokemonGo should do can be done with skignz, not one (use a map to find each character) then the other (view the character in AR), but both at the same time. 

skignz has the ability to place the content in an exact location, not base it around your handset when in said location, there's a HUGE difference to the user experience and more importantly the opportunities for global reach...

All of the aforementioned global brands (and more) are able to follow suit by using the skignz platform to deliver their ideas...

If you want to get in touch to see how you could use the skignz platform to help with your brands activation then please email us info@skignz.com

If you would like to find out more about skignz please find us on the usual Social Media channels as well as our blog and website www.skignz.com. 

No comments:

Post a Comment