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Ingress

Started by Cramulus, July 18, 2013, 04:46:20 PM

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Cramulus



Anybody here playing Ingress?

If so, what's your experience been like?


For those of you that haven't heard of it --

Ingress is a game for mobile devices running android. It's a video game that you play by walking around in the real world. It's an ARG, definitely the biggest one ever launched. Here's how it works:



There's a blue team and a green team. (I'm on the green team)

Many public locations (mostly public art, parks, and public buildings like libraries and post offices) are "portals". A portal can be controlled by either team.

You can "hack" a portal if you're within a certain distance of it. That's like opening a treasure chest, when you do it, you get a few pieces of random gear.

Each portal has resonators surrounding it, these are like the portal's health bar. You deploy them to defend a portal, or you attack them to capture a portal.

Portals can be outfitted with upgrades that defend the resonators from damage or attack opponents when they get too close.

If your team controls several portals, you can link them together to create a "field", and capture territory for your team. There is a global score that is constantly shifting based on how much territory each team controls.



I find this is a video game that gets me out of the house a lot. I'll notice that a portal near my house has been damaged, so I walk up the street and repair it. Or another player needs gear, so I go somewhere private and drop a bunch of equipment. He then has to get within 10 meters of the dropoff location, spot the gear in his ingress scanner, and pick it up.

It's made me explore my neighborhood quite a bit. Made me notice little trails and statues which I normally just drive past. And I've now met seven or eight people who live nearby and I would never have otherwise bumped into.

The game is still in beta, and it's being updated constantly. There is an ongoing story, which is dispensed in the form of media items... once a week, when you hack a portal, you'll find an "Ingress Report" which is a little 5-minute video about current events in the game. Sometimes they stage plot events in big cities where you could actually meet some of the game NPCs and influence the story. They also have a website where plot info is kept, and it's full of bizarre puzzles. If you solve a puzzle, it gives you a code you can plug into your scanner for free gear. (although you have to be one of the first people to solve that particular puzzle, so I haven't succeeded at that yet)

It's a very interesting game. It's kind of like geocaching but with teams. Not perfect yet, by a long shot... but I enjoy that we are finally playing games that combine GPS and RPG elements. It's so bizarre to me that I'm playing a video game which involves getting exercise. Every so often, I bump into my neighborhood nemesis, the guy who foils all my plans and controls most of the nearby territory. It's weird, because our relationship exists on this game layer which is invisible to everybody else.

Just the other week, I was standing outside of this bar (girlfriend was smoking a cigarette), and trying to capture the nearby enemy portal. Suddenly, my nemesis came running down the street, phone in hand, to recharge the resonators and block my attack. He looked up and saw me standing there, and we shook our fists at each other. My friends were like, "What's going on?" They didn't even know that the two of us were engaged in this hyper-nerdy form of gang warfare.

Doktor Howl

Wow.

Cram, they're gonna put you guys in a cage.  This looks cool as fuck, but I can already see the backlash.
Molon Lube

AFK

That is totally cool, too bad there isn't an iOS version. 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Cramulus

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 18, 2013, 04:55:29 PM
Wow.

Cram, they're gonna put you guys in a cage.  This looks cool as fuck, but I can already see the backlash.

what do you think the backlash will be?



Ben Shapiro

People smashing each others phones, or people calling in to work because of turf wars.

One of RWHN's children gets inconvenienced so a bill is proposed to ban anything emulating gang warfare.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cramulus on July 18, 2013, 06:07:41 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 18, 2013, 04:55:29 PM
Wow.

Cram, they're gonna put you guys in a cage.  This looks cool as fuck, but I can already see the backlash.

what do you think the backlash will be?

A few things.

1.  As this develops, it will pick up a more FPS style.  Maybe not this developer, but someone will.  There will then be a media frenzy and attempts to link it to school shootings, etc.

2.  If this becomes popular, the No Fun crowd will ban it on the same premise they ban skateboarding.  Or they'll try to.

3.  Some kid will trip over his own feet and hurt himself, and then the fur really flies.

Don't get me wrong, I think this is a GREAT idea, and looks like a lot of fun.  I may try it myself if it ever finds its way out to the horrible backwater in which I live.  But there will be a movement to stomp it, on account of it DOES look like fun.

Shit, when I was a kid, there was a huge movement to ban Dungeons and Dragons, because obviously kids would lose their sense of reality and hack each other to pieces.  Numerous bad movies were made using exactly this premise.  Also, it was viewed as "devil worship", when what it really was, was people sitting down and being social.
Molon Lube

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

A. This looks insanely fun and makes me want to trade my iPhone in for an Android so I can play it. I have an Android tablet but I don't carry it everywhere like I do my phone.

B. It's only a matter of time before some law enforcement authority declares this a "gang simulation" and there's a media frenzy over how it glorifies gangs and is teaching kids to have gang wars.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cramulus

I was initially worried about stalking and such - luckily, you can't see other players on the scanner. You get a notification if somebody is attacking one of your portals, and that might lead to meeting them in 3D. But if you're worried about that, it's easy to avoid those portals where you might bump into a creeper.

When I met the guy I refer to as my nemesis, I was sitting at home watching the daily show. There's a portal right across the street from my house, so I can actually access it from my bed and living room. I treat it as MY portal and I won't let anybody take it for more than a few hours.  :p

I heard my phone chirp to let me know it was being attacked, so I opened up ingress and recharged the resonators. A few minutes later, I got another attack notification and immediately foiled it. A few minutes later, I got an attack notification, ignored it, then destroyed the portals as the guy was dropping them. I got a message over the com:

"I've got nothing but time, Cramulus."

that's when it occurred to me that this guy is probably sitting in a car outside my house. He doesn't know where I live, but he can conclude that I am within 40 meters of where he's parked. I looked out the window, and sure enough, there was a car parked downstairs with a scruffy looking 20-something sitting in it on his phone. Squinting, I could see he had the Ingress app open.

I shrugged and continued the battle. After all, this was taking 0 effort on my part, and to counter me, this guy is literally wasting his night sitting in a car.

But it was kind of creepy, no?

So finally I messaged him, "Wanna get a beer?" He said Hell Yeah, got out of his car, and I met him on the sidewalk. After a few minutes of small talk, I didn't get the psycho vibe, so we got a beer. Cool guy! and lives about three blocks from me. Now I see him around town and we shake our fists at each other whenever we pass. So everything turned out okay. But I can imagine situations where it might not have been as cool.


There was a moment last month where I was about to go to bed, but I checked the scanner, and there was a nearby portal which my nemesis had spent a lot of resources on. I stood to get so many points from capturing that portal it that I'd level up. So I got out of bed and jogged down to the train station.

I got this little twinge when I got closer, because I realized I was about to foil probably 2 hours worth of work on his part. And he'll know I'm here. And I can tell from the game feed that he's driving around right now. What if he FLIPS OUT and comes down to the train station to find me? Then I realized he's a skinny 20 something and I know where he lives, so I'm not that worried. But again, I can imagine personality clashes could become quite dramatic in this thing.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cramulus on July 18, 2013, 06:24:29 PM
I was initially worried about stalking and such - luckily, you can't see other players on the scanner. You get a notification if somebody is attacking one of your portals, and that might lead to meeting them in 3D. But if you're worried about that, it's easy to avoid those portals where you might bump into a creeper.

When I met the guy I refer to as my nemesis, I was sitting at home watching the daily show. There's a portal right across the street from my house, so I can actually access it from my bed and living room. I treat it as MY portal and I won't let anybody take it for more than a few hours.  :p

I heard my phone chirp to let me know it was being attacked, so I opened up ingress and recharged the resonators. A few minutes later, I got another attack notification and immediately foiled it. A few minutes later, I got an attack notification, ignored it, then destroyed the portals as the guy was dropping them. I got a message over the com:

"I've got nothing but time, Cramulus."

that's when it occurred to me that this guy is probably sitting in a car outside my house. He doesn't know where I live, but he can conclude that I am within 40 meters of where he's parked. I looked out the window, and sure enough, there was a car parked downstairs with a scruffy looking 20-something sitting in it on his phone. Squinting, I could see he had the Ingress app open.

I shrugged and continued the battle. After all, this was taking 0 effort on my part, and to counter me, this guy is literally wasting his night sitting in a car.

But it was kind of creepy, no?

So finally I messaged him, "Wanna get a beer?" He said Hell Yeah, got out of his car, and I met him on the sidewalk. After a few minutes of small talk, I didn't get the psycho vibe, so we got a beer. Cool guy! and lives about three blocks from me. Now I see him around town and we shake our fists at each other whenever we pass. So everything turned out okay. But I can imagine situations where it might not have been as cool.


There was a moment last month where I was about to go to bed, but I checked the scanner, and there was a nearby portal which my nemesis had spent a lot of resources on. I stood to get so many points from capturing that portal it that I'd level up. So I got out of bed and jogged down to the train station.

I got this little twinge when I got closer, because I realized I was about to foil probably 2 hours worth of work on his part. And he'll know I'm here. And I can tell from the game feed that he's driving around right now. What if he FLIPS OUT and comes down to the train station to find me? Then I realized he's a skinny 20 something and I know where he lives, so I'm not that worried. But again, I can imagine personality clashes could become quite dramatic in this thing.

Relevant:

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,34990.0.html

I can't say enough good things about any of this.  I think it's fantastic.
Molon Lube

LMNO

If this gets really popular, I can clearly see an IRL fight, and possibly even manslaughter, as monkeys fight over imaginary territory.


Doktor Howl

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on July 18, 2013, 06:32:34 PM
If this gets really popular, I can clearly see an IRL fight, and possibly even manslaughter, as monkeys fight over imaginary territory.

Well, you can't go to a bar without some drunken asshole throwing a punch.  There's assholes everywhere, it's no reason to stop having fun.

What I can also see is this being used for police/intel geek training.
Molon Lube

Cramulus

The saving grace has been that the community - at least so far - has been extremely welcoming and friendly. I've met more people from the opposing team than I've met members of my team. And they were all super nice, warm, excited that the game is growing, glad to associate a face and personality with the username they've been battling against.

I've even seen enemies in-game send friendly little heads ups when they see opponents are traveling into dangerous neighborhoods. "Just be careful going there at night, don't be the guy walking around staring at his phone oblivious to the world." ---- I'm guilty of that. I have smacked into two trees while playing this damn game.  :lol:

The only ugliness I've seen is from one player, who seems kind of paranoid, and thinks other players are stalking him. To my knowledge, people kind of avoid him because of that, but it's hard to say what's really going on.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Cramulus on July 18, 2013, 06:44:52 PM
The saving grace has been that the community - at least so far - has been extremely welcoming and friendly. I've met more people from the opposing team than I've met members of my team. And they were all super nice, warm, excited that the game is growing, glad to associate a face and personality with the username they've been battling against.

I've even seen enemies in-game send friendly little heads ups when they see opponents are traveling into dangerous neighborhoods. "Just be careful going there at night, don't be the guy walking around staring at his phone oblivious to the world." ---- I'm guilty of that. I have smacked into two trees while playing this damn game.  :lol:

The only ugliness I've seen is from one player, who seems kind of paranoid, and thinks other players are stalking him. To my knowledge, people kind of avoid him because of that, but it's hard to say what's really going on.

I think you're going to find that most people who want to go out and play that game are people who are going to be gregarious by nature.

This is the coolest thing I've seen all month, and I don't even like video games.
Molon Lube

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 18, 2013, 06:42:28 PM

Well, you can't go to a bar without some drunken asshole throwing a punch.  There's assholes everywhere, it's no reason to stop having fun.


THIS!

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This is a really cool idea!
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