Pokemon GO Boss on VR: ‘I’m afraid it can be too good’, could be ‘a problem for us as a society’

In speaking at the Mixed Reality Summit in London yesterday, Niantic CEO, John Hanke talked about some of the differences between virtual and augmented reality and said that he feels that VR has the potential to be "a problem for us as a society." Granted, this comes with the caveat of the responsibility of the player spending too much time within the realms of a solitary VR environment.

Hanke said:

"My thing about VR is I'm afraid it can be too good, in the sense of being an experience that people want to spend a huge amount of time in. I mean I already have concerns about my kids playing too much Minecraft, and that's a wonderful game.

We're human beings and there's a lot of research out there that shows we're actually a lot happier when we get exercise, when we go outside – and outside in nature in particular. I think it's a problem for us as a society if we forgo that and spend all of time in a Ready Player One-style VR universe."

"With AR, there's a huge amount of potential to do things that really do have a positive impact on people. There is research about the health impact of Pokemon Go in particular but you can expand that to apply to all AR games. These games can encourage people to be more active than they would normally be. As a parent, part of my motivation for building this kind of game was to try and get my kids out of the house. I think there's a ton of good that can be done."