Followers this post is about a game called ingress. I share it with you here rather than just a post on Facebook or Google+ because of the impact it has had on my life in general. There is some jargon involved, hopefully you will read on ….and maybe find out for yourself what it all means.
November15th marks the two year anniversary of the Augmented Reality Game (ARG) Ingress. My own experiance in the game is reaching its first year anniversary. The Google+ community is sharing stories via the hashtag #ingressyeartwo, so for our two anniversaries this is my tale:
I initially heard of Ingress through the online publication Android Central. It was an article announcing the game for open play, a history of its development, a short detailed description of the gameplay, and storyline.
I had just finished a round of binge watching the show Numb3ers on Netflix. One of the episodes dealt with a MMORPG that had a ARG component for part of its elite player round. I thought it was very interesting, and wished at the time I could find something similar on Android.
I followed the link embedded within the article and downloaded the game immediately, when I got to the faction selection portion I realized I needed to reread the storyline. I figured if it was game in which I would interact with others I should at least know why I had chosen what I was choosing. I decided on the Resistance. From what I read if I had actually experienced XM exposure, the mindset of the Resistance was more inline with what my own reaction might be to the possibility of global exposure.
I fell in love immedietly. Ingress has a massive appeal to the male mentality of capturing and holding one’s “territory”. It combines the idea of online siege games, strategy gaming, and good ol’ fashioned concepts like capture the flag, which I think is the most apt way of describing the game to those you hope to recruit. It has several areas of gameplay that reward for achievement with badges including hacking/capturing unique portals (exploration), and the creation by agents of new portals.
The only aspect I was leary of was the in game comm device, which shows all activity within the range you have it set to cover, and would give my location to the other players. It is a mobile application after all, and like shit, trolls happen, except these trolls were people in my vacinity and I might be forced into a position where I would have to stand next to someone who was trolling me on a virtual interface.
At heart I am an introvert, often awkward socially, so this worried me, and I would come to find my fears justified.
But that is a story of people, of drama, motivations, and ego. This is a story of Ingress, and love for the game.
“Get out and move”
Ingress has brought me joy, pain, focus, hundreds of miles away from home, and out of my shell. Ingress taught me about betrayal, history, navigation, comradeship, patience, and malice. Ingress has inspired me to action, to examine other actions, and to acts of generosity. Ingress has kept me fit, shown me the beauty of a well thought out game, humbled me, and rubbed me raw.
Ingress has brought me enlightenment that can’t be picked
battles that were tricks
honored me with friendship, and proven people can be dicks.
Then Rupret takes over and they get to see mine, and through it all still I get my kicks.
My Ingress anniversary has seen my wife imprisoned (I drove with the headlights on even during the day after that for …well I still catch myself doing it), and then when she upgraded her phone became my favorite agent with which to travel and hack. This year saw me try and fail to attend two Anomolies. One, very near in Nashville, so close to my entry to the game that I didn’t know to request off work. The other we intended to travel almost 200 miles to attend, only to get turned around halfway. A higher plan was at play I think now, if I had been in Birmingham then the lady that threw a brake rotor on her SUV would have kept going on home after her cursory inspection, but I wasn’t in Birmingham, and ran across the road from the gas station where I was stretching my legs and showed her the still smoldering rotor, saving her hundreds of dollars in further repairs, if not her life. I wouldn’t have gotten to see Gruetli-Laager. Did you know there was a town in Tennessee comprised of an entire village worth of Swedes that just picked up and came over? Me either until that day.
This higher plan then saw me receive an Anomoly badge without ever traveling to a event site. As part of the effort to slow the advance of Devra’s infection agents from areas of Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky created a cross-faction mega field that to my knowledge still holds a placing for longest standing teal fields. My area being an anchor, I was approached about being liaison for the anchor protection. Nashville was also a connected site for that weekends anomaly event, and the fields , our faction’s being the largest, helped for the win. The operating agent deemed me worthy to receive the Helios badge , though I still maintain I only resisted my natural desire to kill frog scum.
This year saw me be the first agent, to my knowledge, in an area that covers almost my entire region become the first non-founder(open game play) agent. It was a lesson for everyone. Hehehe.
This year saw me reach 56 approved portals, and if I was coherent there is now a picture for your post office instead of a bunch of white noise. If someone mispelled a name, it’s been fixed, and if I had time, the story descripted.
This year saw my wife and I, through work or joy riding, visit every library, post office (wayward or not) and little main street town within a 70 km radius of our home. Where there was a Courthouse Veterens Memorial portal we hacked it, where there wasn’t we submitted it, and made plans to return. The portals visited some agents get never leaving their metropolitan area, we got with our scanners approaching 600 and 700 km traveled, and we always return richer for the experience. I could go on and on, but if I do it will be year three before I finish. Let me close with a couple things.
First the Ingress community, as an introvert who spends most of his free time in serious analysis of the crazy crap that runs through his head, the Ingress community has been a blessing to me, I have met, and read stories about, so many amazing people. Knowing that agent sped to an anchor to kill a multiple k MU field moments before checkpoint is a glorious thing, laughing about it on private chat, even more so. Coming together to take down the enemy, these are the things we Ingress for.
Two. Massive Ops. Whether its an Anomaly event with hundreds or thousands of agents, a charity drive, capturing millions of Mind Units, or fabulous field art, nothing shows the separation, and evolution of gaming more than real people, in the real world, taking the concept of gaming to the next level, and effecting not just the actions of some pixels on a console in front of them, but the world around them…for better or ill.
#ingressyearthree #J4sW1nyeartwo? Cant wait to see what will you bring!
Voices in my Alphabet Soup 