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Niantic Labs has made a worldwide name by collaborating with Nintendo to create an augmented reality hit Pokémon Go. But the game developer who debuted as an internal Google start-up began developing one of the first traditional AR applications the most ancient years ago. called Entrance, mobile gaming has introduced many of the features that later became the basic building blocks of Pokemon Go – in particular the capture and control of virtual locations superimposed on the real world. However, it is early in the trend of the AR and the ambitions of Niantic exceeded the available software and hardware of smartphones of the time.

Five years after the launch of its first game and its much more advanced AR tools, Niantic restarts its first game as Prime Entry, which is now free on iOS and Android. Those who already have the application and an account can access the new game as an update. Niantic says the account names, badges and other progress of the standard Entrance door towards Prime Entry.

The developer first approached his plans for Prime Entry publicly about a year ago, but the redesign was undertaken long before that. The launch of Pokemon Go In 2016, Niantic became one of the most popular mobile game developers in the world and established the company as a pioneer of unparalleled background troubleshooting techniques and tools.

Much of these advances (like the more realistic fusion of virtual objects with real environments) have made their way into Pokemon Go as updates. But Niantic still had to use more powerful smartphones and new mobile AR frameworks, like Apple's ARKit, with Entrance. Nowadays, Entrance has a dedicated fan base that participates in a number of real-world encounters each year.

Prime Entry is presented as a more elegant and modern version of the game, but with just about all the same elements of play and narration intact. You always choose one of two opposing parts of a global cyberpunk fight to take control of a new form of energy emanating from portals around the world, each portal representing a point landmark, a park or other remarkable place in the real world. And much of the game is still about traveling to these places, capturing portals, and helping your side build larger and larger networks of nodes around the world.

Image: entrance

Yet the new Entrance benefited from a visual overhaul of the entire UI, as well as a mapping and capture mechanism. The general characteristics of the RA are now more in sync with Pokemon Go and other modern AR experiments because Niantic rebuilt Entrance from the base using his real world platform. It's the underlying software infrastructure that powers its AR games and the next Harry Potter: The wizards unite title of the company in the works.

With Prime EntryHowever, it is less about the technology that drives the experience than the social aspect. Because he never had a great property of established entertainment, Entrance grew up relying solely on local communities who made friends in the real world and turned the game's dating component into a passionate cornerstone of the fan base.

To honor that, Niantic revives EntranceAnomaly series of annual developer-sanctioned series of events is being transformed into a series of seasonal events in Asia, Europe and North and South America starting November 17. All events organized by Niantic will take place in major cities like Barcelona and Hong Kong. What happens there – as well as what happens during "satellite" matches of anomaly for those who can not go to a big city – will influence the fight between the two factions.

The complete experience is completed by a set of new storytelling components Niantic who rely on the existing Entrance story. This includes an anime broadcast in Japan that will be available worldwide via Netflix in 2019, a new live web series called "The Dunraven Project" and a brand new feature of the game involving artificial intelligence that will be launched soon. Niantic says he has built two new virtual personalities, one for each of the two factions, with which players can interact. Over time and depending on the outcome of anomalous events and other activities in the game, the personalities will begin to change and eventually become an important part of the narrative. EntranceSaid Niantic.

Niantic understands that the entrance is and has always been more specialized, and will probably never see the massive appeal of a game using the established universe of Pokémon or Harry Potter can reach. But the developer wants Prime Entry to be as accommodating as possible with the new players, that's why he relies so heavily on the elements of narration.

A lot of what makes Entrance At first, the popularity is that, like the game itself, the story is spreading in the real world. It has always been more successful as an alternative reality game (ARG) with an AR mobile component rather than a traditional gaming experience, because "playing" in the game is actually about meeting other players, seeing events and consume various media created by fans on the Internet.

So, to get people involved and bring back the old players, Niantic now offers them as many opportunities as possible to get involved, explore the story and possibly attend an Anomaly event in the future. Hardcore fans are already here and waiting for their turn. But Niantic hopes a lot of new players, especially those passionate about the outdoors and the social components of Pokemon Go and willing to try something different, will become the next generation of Entrance Fans.