Phil Keslin (LinkedIn) first became interested in technology in the eighth grade, when he first saw computers as a “great escape with interesting challenges.” He never lost that passion, and today he is the CTO of Niantic, the lab behind the game that broke the internet — Pokemon Go.
In a recent interview on IT Visionaries, Phil and host Ian Faison go through the painful launch of Pokemon Go, and discuss how Niantic was able to scale its system when the game was massively popular – more than anyone had ever anticipated. Plus, Phil talks about what he loves most about AR – its ability to open up new avenues of discovery in the real world by getting people up, active, and engaged in what is happening around them.
Here are some of the highlights of the conversation.
The current state of AR and VR:
At this point, Phil does not find VR compelling enough to be a fan. He much prefers AR, because it allows for the opportunity to enhance the real world – rather than replace it with something different.
“With VR, people talk about looking outside and replacing the real world with something different. I think the real world is a magical place – so I’d rather let that come through,” Rick says. “The state of AR has a long way to go to create that unobtrusive experience I think people really want. But, I think it’s coming – and I want to make sure this company is ready for that type of experience.”
The launch of Pokemon Go was a perfect example of how this is possible. Using AR, Phil and his team were able to motivate groups of people to get up, go outside, and explore the world through their game.
The biggest challenge is creating an engaging experience. Of course, there are technical challenges as well — building on the AR cloud and getting the technology out the door, for example.
“For us, creating AR is about creating a delightful experience,” Rick says. “In the end, if you don’t create an engaging experience that gets people outside, then it really doesn’t matter that you spent all this energy and effort. If people don’t think it’s something special, everything you did becomes moot.”
The challenges of launching a product:
Niantic had been working on Pokemon Go for a year before they broke off from Google. They then launched the game nine months later. At that time, there were about fifty to sixty people total – and the engineering team was only a group of four. The initial launch happened in New Zealand and Australia – and they got more than double the expected number of users. When they launched in the U.S., it was even bigger. They had to scale their system incredibly fast just to support the game. They had to constantly deal with new, unexpected problems every day. It was a real team effort, and by working together, they were able to get their system stabilized before the launch of the game in Japan. The system was encountering millions of request per second – and tens of millions of active users at a time.
“They always tell you that every time you scale something ten times, you encounter a completely different set of problems,” Phil says. “We did that twice.”
By focusing on ways to keep costs down and the performance up – and squeezing as much performance out of the system as possible – they were able to scale in the way they needed to support the fanbase.
None of this would have been possible without the right team, or the ability to focus on where to put resources and capital. Being fiscally conservative is the only way forward in an industry as risky as AR.
“The hardest part is building a team to build all those games while trying to remain financially disciplined about it,” Phil says.
Educational applications of AR:
Because AR is built on real locations, there is an opportunity to bring people somewhere new. While they are there, they can learn about the place, the people around them, and more. playing You can discover something new and exciting just by playing a game. Players also contribute to creating the type of experience they want to have by sending in photos, comments, and feedback – which Niantic then can incorporate.
“When you’re exploring the world, you’re not looking for something artificial,” Phil says. “We want to combine the artificial with something that’s real – something that allows you to learn something about the place you live.”
Listen to the entire interview here.
