Masa Kawashima joins product lead, we will get new lore again ?
Niantic Vice President Masa Kawashima returned to Japan last week and performed a Dead Drop (DD). This is the message we got from the DD (https://twitter.com/irk_osaka/status/1682903517420474368?s=46&t=dZTOghoXILy1JfuR0yX25Q)
#CapturedByRES
According to the message, Masa, who was also a member of the initial Ingress development team, has been appointed as the Ingress product lead. Additionally, it appears that members who worked on the initial Ingress story and game design will be returning. This move is expected to help the Ingress lore live on again.
6
Comments
Interesting that they’ve moved more people on to Ingress. Guess they’re being faithful to
“…concentrating on first party games that most strongly embody our core values of location and local social communities.”
Sounds like they finally realized that they have no idea what they've been doing.
While Masa worked on the Ingress story during the early days, we are looking forward to the person that was blanked out. While we only have two to three strokes to go by which escape the black marker, they fit perfectly to the name of one of the people that have been responsible for the majority of the lore.
Seeing this, with the mention of Ingress being a Forever Game, is nice.
Kawashima Masashi is being promoted to Product Manager after 10 years in Niantic, having previously worked Ingress as a designer in 2013, focusing on the early story and game design and moving on to be the Asia-Pacific director of a little known game called Pokemon GO, essentially being responsible for it's creation. Together with director Brian Rose and a new team, they're ready to take on new challenges, while aiming at making Ingress a Forever Game.
Kawashima credits the supportive agents and the special allure of Ingress for keeping him passionate about the game.
Judging by this article, it's also likely that one of the former employees who worked on the lore of the game will also re-join the project. This means that new game lore might be on the way!
Mark your calendars for September 16th, as both Brian Rose and Kawashima Masashi will fly in from the US to attend the Ctrl Kobe Anomaly.
Source: https://twitter.com/irk_osaka/status/1682903517420474368, @tabineco
@IUENG
Been waiting for new story and Lore for so long.
And it is great that Kawashima is returning to Ingress as the product manager.
Looking good so far.
Yay!
For someone who wasn’t around in Ingress when this person was, what did they do before? What are the implications from them rejoining?
At this point, hopefully someone who can add to knowing which decisions are great for Ingress versus not. This is similar to Brian Rose but it sounds decisions were above Brian's head for some implementation of things.
I probably don't want to hold my breath but having another voice knowing what works for Ingress seems to be a net positive when anything comes from the top - especially if this person's role will be a product lead for an IP that is 100% Niantic.
Thanks. That’s useful insight.
So a Niantic VP is going to wear another hat? Niantic is definitely tightening their belts.