9 Aug 2016

Small progress is some progress? 

The good news is we are official, WinsowShade Imaginarium LLC, was created, effective 12 July 2016.  This move makes things feel a bit more substantial even if the summer has seen slow progress.  Of course while all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (and poor), there does seem to be a requirement to do some work in amongst the play.  Harsh realities to be sure. 

A trip to England for Joe and new job for Mike has kept both of us busy this summer.  To a large extent these have been leveraged as growth and research opportunities.  Mike has delved into the development and software creation world, and Joe has managed some creation, design and execution growth. 

Our first holding 1212Gaming continues to work on development of the game tentatively named "Arena".  Without giving away any details, suffice to say that discussions a year ago regarding Arena and the possibilities of geo-gaming (my attempt to coin a phrase, you heard it here first) have been spectacularly proven viable by a little yellow cartoon creature called Pikachu. 

Augmented reality, as well as augmented physicality are the waves of the future.  I’m not sold on the inevitability of the “singularity” where AI becomes sentient in some manner.  But it’s readily apparent and already a fact that augmented reality and physicality will continue to accelerate and take humanity to the next level of existence.  It’s hard to not be excited about the possibilities.  Humanity in the near future is going to use machines and computers, increasingly miniaturized and powerful, to augment their natural human state.  I'm not talking about simply making things easier, I'm talking about making impossible things possible.  Incredible times ahead. 

We can see the way forward being lit by gaming and Pokemon Go is the most famous example so far.  It’s a game that interacts with the physical world around you.  And more importantly you interact with the digital world it lays over the physical.  To be sure it’s not a perfect fusing, and the interfaces/manipulation remain clunky.  But the pure, raw potentiality is clear to see.  

The question then, is how to harness it, and who will figure it out?  It is of course a journey, but every journey has success and failure, stops and starts. 

Clearly Niantic, the developers of Pokemon Go have a head start.  I have no doubt dozens, and perhaps now thousands of developers are creating similar games that use the real world as their playground.  But Niantic has won the first to market race.  Or at least the first to market that went big, because there have been several games released using the phone GPS function and the real physical world.  Some have been of middling success, but nowhere near Pokemon Go.  As we said in the fighter jet business, "Fight's On"!

For 1212Gaming, the success of Pokemon Go proved a revolutionary idea was viable.  The question then is this, how do we build upon it, and grow from it.