Back in 2018, Niantic announced a developer contest worth one million dollars called Beyond Reality Contest. The contest is spread into two phases, with the first one being the “application phase” in which developers had the opportunity to send in an application and interview with Niantic in order to proceed to the “development phase” of the contest.
Today, the application phase closes and Niantic has announced 10 finalists which will be flown into the Bay Area and participate in the development round. The Beyond Reality Developer Contest finalists are:
- Dibs Studio – Toronto, Canada
- Escality – Los Angeles, USA
- HappyGiant – Conway, USA
- Hitpoint Studios – Greenfield, USA
- JCSoft Inc. – Cupertino, USA
- Land Lubber Games – Honolulu, USA
- MechaChicken – Los Angeles, USA
- Ninth Wonder – Vancouver, Canada
- Team ExplorAR – New York and Texas, USA
- Team Triheart – Singapore
Right now, the ten teams are working on developing new geospatial AR experiences built on top of Niantic’s Real World Platform, which is a common platform that underpins Ingress Prime, Pokemon GO and Wizards Unite. Niantic’s official blog post announcement also unveiled which projects are being worked on by which team:
| Team | Project name |
|---|---|
| Dibs Studio | Wild SanctuARy |
| Escality | CryptOS |
| HappyGiant | Cute vs. Chaos |
| Hitpoint Studios | The Gettysburg Battlefield |
| JCSoft Inc. | Run to My Heart |
| Land Lubber Gammes | Flint and Steam |
| MechaChicken | Bio-Squad K |
| Ninth Wonder | Novagarde |
| Team ExplorAR | ExplorAR |
| Team Trinheart | Kymera |
Finalists will work for a three-month period, with the goal of showing off their incredible work at a Demo Day in San Francisco, hosted by Niantic. You can find more information and photos of each team here.
