A few weeks ago, the Niantic Wayfarer was announced. The program was intended to make it easier to nominate portals, gyms, and Pokestops. Loyal players have been having a hard time to have their suggestions heard and so the game developer rolled out the Niantic Wayfarer. The goal is to send and hear the nominations of real-life places to use for Niantic games like Pokemon Go, Wizard Unite, and Ingress. Niantic Labs continues to come up with ways on how to make gaming easier for everyone. A gameboard is one efficient way that every gamer in the world can see and easily access.
More technologies have yet to be finished by the company that may expand its ability to map the world around the gamers. For a more immersive experience, players can send game locations with complete information plus titles and photos. The Wayfarer program is useful in this area.
Now for small and medium businesses, another Beta program is introduced that will qualify them and give them the ability to activate sponsored locations. This follows the success of partnerships with bigger businesses like 7-Eleven, McDonalds, and AT&T. With the program, any mom and pop shop can be included.
Sponsored locations are nothing new. They can be very effective and seem like the best place to play with friends and meet other gamers. If you wish to add your medium-sized business to the Sponsored Locations Early Access Beta program, check out this page.
The Niantic Real World Platform allows players to build their own gameboard. About 1M locations have been submitted already and we can expect more will be added.
There is also the idea of real-time AR networking so multiple players can interact with one another on different devices and with digital objects. Concepts are being tested and they may turn into reality soon. Nothing is final yet but Niantic Labs have thrown the following codenames and working title: Codename: Neon, Codename: Tonehenge, and Buddy Adventure ( Pokémon GO).
