What if GTA Copied the Success of Pokemon Go?
Pokemon Go. It’s everywhere. It’s taken the world by storm and it’s got game developers all around the world following in the footsteps of Niantic, clamouring to build the next generation of games attempting to mimic the success of Pokemon Go. But why is Pokemon Go so successful? I mean, the Augmented reality stuff on screen isn’t really all that impressive. We’ve seen handheld Augmented reality much better than Pokemon Go on the Nintendo 3DS. Plus we’ve seen a similar style of real world gameplay on the game Ingress, which in some sense, was a precursor to Pokemon Go. The massive success has come from the mixture of these two technologies, paired nicely with the huge nostalgic value of the Pokemon franchise.
After seeing the success of Pokemon Go, There really is only one thing that comes to mind regarding the future of gaming: “Holy shit, Imagine if Grand Theft Auto used this kind of technology!!?”
Or at least that’s what came to my mind, so I’m going to go through three possible ways a game like GTA could implement this type of technology. Truth is, it could be a fantastic idea, but it could also be a horrible idea.
Possibility number 1: The Hyper-realistic GTA mobile game.
Pokemon Go doesn’t have any level design or game modes, the current gameplay is made out of just collecting Pokemon and battling other players for control of gyms. In the same way, Rockstar, the developers of GTA, really don’t need to worry about all the complex gameplay that they’ve used in their past games. In this hyper-realistic version of GTA, your phone acts the same way as the phone in the most recent GTA games acts. You have GPS, you can see where other rival gangs are and you can take over their territory by murdering them in real life. This way, Rockstar don’t need to really build any levels or gameplay, they just create the system for you to use while you steal cars, rob liquor stores and go on murderous rampages in real life. And I can hear you, I know you’re saying “but David, isn’t that just an app that facilitates real life gang violence And criminal activity?”
Yeah actually… You’re right… My bad. Ummm, let’s move on.
Possibility number 2: The somewhat realistic GTA mobile game.
In this outcome, Rockstar could use a similar style of gameplay to Pokemon Go. You could roam the real world, collecting weapons and ammo from poke… I mean, gun….stops… and you could go shooting simulated people in AR. Ideally, the Augmented Reality gameplay would be far more complex and involved than the simple approach taken in Pokemon Go, but if done well, this type of game could actually work, though it would certainly stray from the usual style of GTA games.
It might also be difficult to implement vehicles in such a game because you don’t really want people distracted and playing games while driving. In which case, I guess this type of game would become less ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and more ‘Super Kill-y Criminal Time….. VI’
Possibility number 3: A GTA console game that uses data, images and maps from Google Earth.
This one is my personal favourite and not just because I can play it while sitting in my underpants at home. Rather than copying the type of mobile game created by Niantic with Pokemon Go, Rockstar could follow Niantic’s lead in their use of map data from Google to create an in-game world, but they could step it up to the next level.
Which level is that David?
LEVEL 2: STREET VIEW
Imagine a GTA game that takes place in the real world, using data from Google Street View and Google Earth. Imagine being able to sit down at your gaming console, plug yourself in and drive through your own city, hooning around and outrunning the police in a game. Now before you get too excited, keep in mind that there’s really not enough detail to build a game with Google Earth data just yet. But it could certainly be a possibility in the future. A company like Rockstar could use data from Google Maps and Google Earth of real cities to create the game world and then they could populate that world with gameplay, creating a real, rich environment.
Of course there are lots of things that would need to come together to make this kind of game actually work.
In next week’s post, I’ll discuss more deeply how this last idea could work and I’ll go into detail about some interesting future technologies that could make this type of game the best GTA game of all time.
If you enjoyed daydreaming with me on the future possibilities of video games, make sure you follow me on Medium to get notified when I post new blogs and share your thoughts in the comments section below!
I also made a video on this topic, which I’ve added below.
