From Google Maps to Pokémon Go, John Hanke is programming the future

The CEO of Niantic has helped create technologies that have changed the way we live. How does he see the future of play?

It's not often you meet someone who's genuinely changed the world, but that's what happens the day I greet Niantic CEO John Hanke. Sipping his coffee alone in a gargantuan San Franciscan boardroom, I wonder whether the man on the other end of this Zoom call realises just how often people use his former company's creation, Google Maps.

Hanke's yearning to create started young. Fresh out of business school in the 1990s and already with one of the first online gaming successes to his name, he was snapped up - along with his company, Keyhole, by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and folded into the team that made Google Maps, now arguably the most useful thing on your smartphone.