I think Niantic used Google Maps Data initially, as they were a Google daughter. Pokemon Go and its “predecessor” Ingress is all about data collection. Thats why there is a scan-feature where the user walks around and takes a video of the Pokestop. Thats was the whole point of these games initially, giving people an incentive to do free work for niantic to sell to other plattforms. Just like ReCaptcha is used for image recognition training.
Comment on Gotta catch 'em all...
knitwitt@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Niantic uses Open Streetmaps to create their pokestops. Somebody probably created a POI on the island based on a real statue or structure which an algorithm then automatically turned into a pokestop.
Source: I sometimes contribute to OSM and the additions I make often turn into pokestops a couple of weeks after.
Spezi@feddit.org 8 hours ago
Chezus9247@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Do you get anything for contributing to the Pokéstops?
Hiro8811@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
He just said that Nintendo scraps data from Open Street Maps so, probably no
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
Wait so did they just delete user data from that stop, which may have included victims as well as abusers?
helvetpuli@sopuli.xyz 12 hours ago
They don’t have to scrape it. They just use the nominatim API like everybody else.
knitwitt@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
No, I don’t play the game but am around people who do.
kungen@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
I’m not good with OSM; do you normally add pictures to the POI? Because you can’t have a pokestop without a picture I don’t think?
knitwitt@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
No, I’ve never done that. Starting to think that a user must have created the pokestops after I added them to the map.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Ingress and PoGo use the same database of locations (portals, stops), and it was painstakingly built and added to by the (ingress) players, years before PoGo; location, name, description, reason for addition (art, historical significance, etc), pictures. Then they added the same ‘submit’ system for PoGo.
I was invited to ingress during it’s closed beta, 14 years ago, and was a very heavy player for the first two years, myself submitting several portals for review.
The financial reasons for these games? To map walking paths/navigation. Every player is supplying their GPS data while they play. The partnership with Pokémon was just an easy way to get extra players, and capture more of the market that wasn’t interested in the geeky lore of ingress.