SNEAK PEEK
- Niantic announces Campfire, a social app to connect all of its mobile games.
- Pokemon Go players can access the app over the next few months.
- The minimum age to use Campfire is 13 years.
Established in 2010, Niantic is a San Francisco-based game developer specialized in AR. Upon splitting from Google in 2015, Niantic developed Pokemon Go in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. With approximately a billion downloads by 2019, Pokemon Go was a major hit; thus, pushing the company to develop more mobile games based on AR.
Now, Niantic is all set to release ‘Campfire,’ a new social app. Basically, the app is community-based and will allow gamers to discover other gamers who play games developed by Niantic. Players can jump into local events and also create an event once more interconnected applications that use Campfire arrive.
To feature the events, the app uses a map in a 2D layout. Green flares will be sent to highlight locations where something interesting is happening. Though the flares will be visible to all the players, they are anonymous while being public and last for 10 minutes only.
Elevate, collaborate, and connect across all Niantic titles with Campfire 🏕
— Niantic 🧭 (@NianticLabs) June 30, 2022
Our new social app enhances how you communicate while playing our games. We’ll be testing Campfire with a select group of Pokémon GO users and expanding access to everyone soon. https://t.co/QcTL73YqCq pic.twitter.com/89YlDJhBGj
Games developed by Niantic will be featured in the top right corner to enable players to add their friends across all the games. This will sync with a player’s profile, Niantic ID and friend list. Other than discovering fellow players in the nearby area, Campfire allows messaging each other, sharing content as well as organizing events and meetups.
Campfire features its own icons to enable switching between views for different games. Niantic’s Campfire lead, Ivan Zhou said:
We’re bringing more and more content from our developers of our games to this surface area.
An early Beta test was conducted in the past few weeks, which has allowed the team to finally open the door to players worldwide. Initially, selected groups of Pokemon Go players will have access.
At the moment, it is not clear how many players will be invited to Campfire; however, Niantic aims to reach maximum groups by the end of summer.
Campfire will be available on both iOS and Android.
