Pokémon GO creator Niantic gobbles up Miami’s SpotX Games in an effort to enter Web3 – Refresh Miami

The SpotX crew got here collectively on the Shrimp Home throughout Miami Hack Week

By Marcella McCarthy

SpotX Video games, a Web3 mission that got here out of this yr’s Miami Hack Week, introduced in the present day that its founders are becoming a member of Niantic, the corporate behind Pokémon GO, and bringing SpotX video games with them. SpotX Video games lets folks expertise an augmented actuality scavenger hunt throughout town and earn a first-of-its-kind consumer generated NFT showcasing the consumer’s distinctive expertise.

“We had been actually a hackathon crew that constructed one thing in per week after which met Niantic the subsequent week and our lives had been modified,” stated Traci Levine, one of many co-founders of SpotX Video games. “Once I heard the CTO [of Niantic] was flying to Miami to fulfill us, that’s once I knew this was actual,” stated Levine.

Niantic supplied to deliver the SpotX crew inhouse and provides them full-time jobs to proceed engaged on it, and so they stated sure. 

“It wasn’t even an organization once we discovered them,” stated Phil Keslin, CTO of Niantic. 

Whereas Niantic relies in San Francisco, Keslin stated the SpotX crew will proceed in Miami. “One of many predominant causes they’re staying in Miami is as a result of Miami has turn into such a hotbed for Web3,” he stated in an interview with Refresh. 

The preliminary connection between SpotX and Niantic occurred as a result of the Niantic crew was coming to city and trying to meet girls in Web3, and that’s how they received linked with Levine. Levine is a member of Web3 Fairness, an area group that helps educate and onboard girls onto Web3.

Miami Hack Week 2022

Levine linked up together with her soon-to-be co-founders this final January at Miami Hack Week, which was based by Ja’dan Johnson, a Miami Tech OG. “Miami Hack Week is a novel Web3 targeted hackathon positioned to recruit 5,000 engineers to Miami,” he says on his LinkedIn. For Johnson, who had beforehand began an enormous hacker occasion within the Caribbean, this was nothing new.

“Hack Week is one among Miami’s largest occasions attracting technical expertise into the ecosystem — and we proceed to see our group members make lifelong friendships, settle for new jobs and even go on to construct firms proper right here in Miami. This reveals that Miami is and can proceed to be an ecosystem that may current life-changing alternatives in tech and occasions like Hack Week are big catalysts for this second,” Johnson advised Refresh Miami through e mail. 

Not like different hackathons, which pile builders into a big room collectively, Miami Hack Week establishes “hacker homes” round Miami and the Shrimp Society sponsored one this yr. Chris Daniels is the founding father of the Shrimp Society, an innovation ecosystem for early stage entrepreneurs in Miami. He’s additionally a co-founder of SpotX Video games, which counts a bunch of 5 on the founding crew.

“We had 350 purposes to affix the Home and needed to slim it down to twenty spots,” Daniels stated in an interview. 4 of the individuals who made it had been Galina Fendikevich, Traci Levine, Jackson Harris and David Woodward, who would turn into the founding crew of SpotX. Whereas among the members had been residing in Miami for some time, Harris was one of many builders that Hack Week attracted, simply as Johnson had predicted. 

“I got here out to Hack Week [from California] to fulfill extra Web3 folks as a result of Miami is much less hierarchical, extra free flowing,” Harris stated.

Future Plans

Now that they’re inherently funded, the SpotX crew is working to launch a recreation referred to as Myne at a convention in San Francisco (Myne stands for mint your nft expertise). They’re constructing off of their expertise of getting launched a recreation at South by Southwest, too.

“Quite a lot of concentrate on the sport is permitting folks to play who don’t have a metamask. They will login with a Web2 login and within the background we do all of the tech for them and drop the NFT, to allow them to play with out organising all of the Web3 area beforehand,” stated Harris.

Picture at high of publish: Members of SpotX and Niantic met to debate the deal at CIC.