Venture Beat has had the chance to chat with Niantic’s Greg Borrud about the challenges the lockdown has imposed on developers and the players of the company’s hit mobile title, Pokemon GO. As you know, Pokemon GO is about exploring the outside world and finding new Pokemon and they have had to adapt the game to the current situation. Mr. Borrud admits it has all been a challenge, but concedes that the team have “been amazing” at adapting the game.
“It’s been challenging, I’m going to be honest,” Borrud said. “The first priority was really looking after our employees, making sure that we could safely and properly continue to work and develop our products, while they’re dealing with [wild] stuff. The teams [have been] amazing, both our development team and our cross-functional teams. Then, it was thinking about the products.”
“When you have these real world games, you have to be able to be really nimble,” Borrud said. “So, I think the first thing that our teams did, which was just amazing, is that they went in and they did a lot of really quick changes to make sure that people could play from home. That was adjusting spawn rates, the types of things that spawn, [and] the types of activities that you do. Within hours or days, at the most, we were able to make these kinds of rapid changes.”
