Does anyone play Ingress?

**Limes** · 09-17-2014, 06:46 AM

It's a smartphone based game, sort of Geo-caching meets live action role play: https://www.ingress.com/

You basically have these virtual 'portals' which can be public art, interesting signposts, graffiti, plaques etc. and you have to build them by placing resonators, it takes 8 level 8 players to make a level 8 portal, so it's something of a collaboration game. If the portal belongs to the other team, then you should attack it with weapons. Three portals linked together created a mind unit control field.

I've been playing for just over a year now. My next door neighbors recently started playing, unfortunately on the 'other' team, so it's kind of annoying to keep flipping portals in the neighborhood with them. In-fact, the geezer thinks he got the last attacks in at 11pm by walking around, but doesn't seem to realize that I'm a night owl that doesn't typically drink, so I'm thinking about heading out to undo his efforts.

It's a lot of fun, it's now on Apple as well as the base Android. The company that develop it, Niantic labs, are owned by Google.

**ACow** · 09-18-2014, 05:28 AM

I've signed up to kill time between home and work. This is probably a mistake.

**Limes** · 09-18-2014, 07:35 AM

Originally Posted by ACow

I've signed up to kill time between home and work. This is probably a mistake.

Probably, you'll try to get out, but they'll just suck you right back in.
I'm as anti-social as they come, "billy no-mates" but even I've been pulled into meeting new people through this thing and it happens in the strangest ways. For example, one night at 2am, myself, a computer programmer who also coincidentally was from the UK and the local pizza delivery guy were running and driving up and down the high street like retards, fighting over virtual portals. I was out at 4:30am this morning just to fuck my neighbors over because they thought they were slick re-capturing the neighborhood portals at 11:30pm (I laugh in their general direction if they think that's late)

I've met people in parks in the dark, in multiple graveyards, state capitols, all huddled around our phones, sometimes moving back and forth in both physical and virtual space. I've been stopped by the police a few times, but most of them now know what it is. I have keys from around the earth - (my favorite is the big kahuna from Waikiki beach)

One good thing I can say about it is, that I've seen a lot of cool things this past year that I either wouldn't have noticed, or wouldn't have bothered to look for - for example, driving across a rickety bridge between PA and NJ turned out to be Washington's crossing of the Delaware to fight the British. I would have just driven by it on I95 if it weren't for ingress.

I've also seen a lot of my own hometown that I didn't know existed, driven through some ass puckeringly bad neighborhoods in search of portal farms too (L8 farming is where its at) - such as Algiers New Orleans and East St Louis - officially the worst city in the US with the highest violent crime rate (is actually where I started playing).

Instead of going back to a hotel while traveling, I'm driving around these towns that I visit, blowing things up and 'hacking' - so it's like Xzibit - I hack while I'm hacking.

It's great fun to drop on a city, as I did in Jackson, MS last month and blow all of the opposite team's shit up - you instantly get a bunch of people start talking to you in comms when you know you've pissed them off enough, often accusing you of spoofing (I typically move around by rental car)

**ACow** · 09-18-2014, 09:01 AM

Just been playing this afternoon. I agree with you, one of the cool things is just finding random shit you never knew was there. Its like a virtual art/place of interest tour of the town. My workplace is a hotbed of the opposing team however....

**Catoptric** · 09-18-2014, 09:56 AM

Since my phone can now run it; Resistence!

I remember seeing an ad for it and was intrigued, though forgot about it.

**lethe** · 09-18-2014, 09:58 AM

I'm interested. I'll see if I can get anyone to play with me this weekend.

**stigmatica** · 09-18-2014, 01:43 PM

My daughter and I both played quite a bit maybe a year ago. At some point, we just faded away from it. It was fun just to have an excuse to get out and have fun, but at some point strange people started wanting to actually interact with me and the drive to work had become... work, trying to hit traffic lights just right in order to do drive by hacks and such. @Sistamatic is a level 8, but if I recall shit got too serious with the Ingress politics in her area and she quit.

Edit: I see that the max level has been raised from 8 to 16 since I last played. You going to stand for that Sistamatic?

**Sistamatic** · 09-18-2014, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by stigmatica

My daughter and I both played quite a bit maybe a year ago. At some point, we just faded away from it. It was fun just to have an excuse to get out and have fun, but at some point strange people started wanting to actually interact with me and the drive to work had become... work, trying to hit traffic lights just right in order to do drive by hacks and such. @Sistamatic is a level 8, but if I recall shit got too serious with the Ingress politics in her area and she quit.

Edit: I see that the max level has been raised from 8 to 16 since I last played. You going to stand for that Sistamatic?

I'm going to have to...I have quite the workload this semester.

Also, the asshole who was on our team, who thought he was our leader, who sucked all the joy out of playing, and who has more free time than a four year old is still as active as ever. I still play when I'm out of town, but I don't have time to deal with him freaking out every time I do something he didn't expect, or to deal with his minions. I've toyed with the idea of dedicating myself to taking over his world on my long Christmas break only to drop off the face of the Earth again when Spring semester starts, but when I consider the gasoline that would entail burning, and the social mana that would entail burning, I just doubt it will happen. It's enough to know I could.

When I'm bored (which is not often), I'll do something that causes me to show up on the coms and ignore them when they start telling me what I should and shouldn't do. I've never been to another town where it is like this.

**Sistamatic** · 09-18-2014, 04:14 PM

Originally Posted by lethe

I'm interested. I'll see if I can get anyone to play with me this weekend.

You'll need a Prius or something along those lines if you are going to sustain this new habit of yours.

**sandwitch** · 09-18-2014, 05:05 PM

I have a lot of friends who play it and when we walk places they're hunched over their phone tapping the pew-pew-pew buttons. They're really "getting out" and "seeing things". I guess if you don't have reasons to go places and see things already that it must be beneficial.

I downloaded it once and then decided that I didn't want to give Google any more location data than I already do (also I have a limited data plan).

One thing I've found interesting is that I've encounter two separate instances of Ingress intersecting with polyamory groups. I have some underformed thoughts on this that I'd like to explore further, but I'm afraid that it'd require falling down the Ingresshole.