Ingress Across the Globe

Ingress players in Seattle.

In a world where video games, particularly casual games, are common place among the masses thanks to the advent of the smart phone, there seems to be a new gaming fad every few months.  Most recently we have had Angry Birds and Flappy Bird games sweep across mobile platforms.  Like most mobile games, the location where you play the game is largely irrelevant.  Location agnostic games are about to get a dose of serious competition from augmented reality mobile games.

Mobile gaming may be on the verge of a revolution.  Ingress is an augmented reality game developed by Google for Android and iOS.  It is a game which requires that you ally yourself with the Resistance or the Enlightened.  Next, you use your Ingress app to find nearby portals(selected sites in the real world).  You must physically travel to a portal which is usually located at major locations in a town or city.  Then you can find two other nearby portals and visit them to make a triangle called a control field.  Then you must defend your control field from other players to earn points.

 

Local Ingress Battle

The longer one is able to control their field, the more points they earn.  The amount of points are increased if the population is high.  For example, cities like are prime location to rack up copious amount of points yet it is a location where one is more likely to be attacked.  Thus, these population dense areas are harder to control.

 

Snapshot of the global game of Ingress.

Some players have become so competitive that they are willing to travel hundreds of miles to control new locations.  One man bought a plane ticket just to fly to a remote outpost in Alaska to control a portal in Ingress. 

 

The real question here is how far are augmented reality games like Ingress going to develop and how popular are they going to become.  Ingress already has a considerable following that is likely to grow as the game expands to more platforms.  This appears to be the dawn of a new age of video games that actually requires players to get off their couches and go outside.  Most likely this will lead to new friends for players as well as new enemies. 

 

Personally, I would love to download this application, but I might become too competitive and end up buying a plane ticket to remote locations in Alaska for a few extra outpost to control.  Though if I had the money and the free-time, this sounds like a fantastic experience that encourages people to travel to places that might not have visited before.  The impact of games like this could lead people to find new areas of their towns and cities that might not be familiar with.  Businesses might even begin to encourage Ingress or other augmented reality games to add their businesses as a portal to control.  The potential benefits and impacts of such a game are absolutely limitless.