Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
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Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#2How's Ingress doing nowadays? I never got into it because it sucked so much of my battery life, but I keep receiving their newsletter and it seems like a surprisingly active community.
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#3I got an invite to Ingress pretty early on, played heavily for several months then dropped it completely. I never got into the lore and didn't particularly care for bar-hopping meetups. As a game it felt really uneven, free to enact sudden changes in some areas but leave others frustratingly untouched.
Seems pretty polarizing though, among the people I played with many stopped playing long ago while others remain completely immersed.
At the moment, I'm more interested in what Google is/was getting out of it? I haven't kept up, but I can imagine all sorts of interesting data that the game could generate from the obvious cataloging of landmarks to path finding or network effects in the distribution of invites and codes.
I can't help but wonder if this feature is a move toward putting the game out to pasture in a way by putting content generation in the hands of the players.
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#4I got an invite to Ingress pretty early on, played heavily for several months then dropped it completely. I never got into the lore and didn't particularly care for bar-hopping meetups. As a game it felt really uneven, free to enact sudden changes in some areas but leave others frustratingly untouched. Seems pretty polarizing though, among the people I played with many stopped playing long ago while others remain com…
Considering that this is a game whose playing field is the entire planet, content generation has always been in the hands of the players. What surprises me most about Ingress is how little of the game scales that way though. Portals (the nodes players fight for control of) are submitted by players but approved manually, which typically takes 4-5 months. Likewise the game's major events ("anomalies") occur only in a few hand-chosen cities at a time, so most players have never been near one.
As for what Google gets out of it, originally Niantic's model was to build a business out of a sister app called Field Trip, which is a "show me something interesting near where I am" kind of app. Ingress was there to gamify the content generation, and presumably Field Trip would pay the bills somehow. There was also a tie-up angle, where some company (Jamba Juice?) had all its stores show up in-game as portals.
But Google acquired them before that process had gotten going, and hasn't done anything of note with Field Trip, so presumably that's not the answer. My suspicion is that they consider Ingress worthwhile just for the the data generated, and for convincing a lot of people to run around with location reporting turned on. You'd think that Google would also start doing something with the user-submitted data (e.g. surfacing the portals in Google Maps as "points of interest" or similar), but AFAIK that hasn't happened.
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#5I got an invite to Ingress pretty early on, played heavily for several months then dropped it completely. I never got into the lore and didn't particularly care for bar-hopping meetups. As a game it felt really uneven, free to enact sudden changes in some areas but leave others frustratingly untouched. Seems pretty polarizing though, among the people I played with many stopped playing long ago while others remain com…
Considering that this is a game whose playing field is the entire planet, content generation has always been in the hands of the players. What surprises me most about Ingress is how little of the game scales that way though. Portals (the nodes players fight for control of) are submitted by players but approved manually, which typically takes 4-5 months . Likewise the game's major events ("anomalies") occur only in a…
> some company (Jamba Juice?) had all its stores show up in-game as portals.
Duane Reade as well.
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#6I got an invite to Ingress pretty early on, played heavily for several months then dropped it completely. I never got into the lore and didn't particularly care for bar-hopping meetups. As a game it felt really uneven, free to enact sudden changes in some areas but leave others frustratingly untouched. Seems pretty polarizing though, among the people I played with many stopped playing long ago while others remain com…
Considering that this is a game whose playing field is the entire planet, content generation has always been in the hands of the players. What surprises me most about Ingress is how little of the game scales that way though. Portals (the nodes players fight for control of) are submitted by players but approved manually, which typically takes 4-5 months . Likewise the game's major events ("anomalies") occur only in a…
Google didn't acquire Niantic. Niantic was launched as a 'startup' within google.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3004551/can-startup-live-inside-g...
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#7I tried getting into this game early on. One option for players was to submit local landmarks as locations of note for the game. I would photograph and submit whatever landmarks nearby I could find. While waiting some weeks for them to be approved, I noticed one day that a bunch of Zipcar parking spots had suddenly become Ingress hotspots. I was so put off by the obvious advertising ploy that I stopped playing right then, and never touched it again.
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that this is a game whose playing field is the entire planet, content generation has always been in the hands of the players. What surprises me most about Ingress is how little of the game scales that way though. Portals (the nodes players fight for control of) are submitted by players but approved manually, which typically takes 4-5 months . Likewise the game's major events ("anomalies") occur only in a…
Google didn't acquire Niantic. Niantic was launched as a 'startup' within google. http://www.fastcompany.com/3004551/can-startup-live-inside-g...
Ah, thanks. That makes it all the stranger that Field Trip seems to be (or have become) an afterthought.
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#9I tried getting into this game early on. One option for players was to submit local landmarks as locations of note for the game. I would photograph and submit whatever landmarks nearby I could find. While waiting some weeks for them to be approved, I noticed one day that a bunch of Zipcar parking spots had suddenly become Ingress hotspots. I was so put off by the obvious advertising ploy that I stopped playing right…
AFAIK, Google are not selling advertising in ingress like that, so I think you're making bad assumptions. That doesn't leave out people spamming/gaming the system just like blackhat SEOs try to game Google search. I don't think the Ingress people really have the resources to curate all portal submissions.
It also could be to bootstrap the system, they just points of interest or business entries from Google Map's database. Otherwise, the game would be boring for most people with no portals nearby to play with.
(If you live in the suburbs, sometimes the nearest interesting thing is a Safeway or Quiznos)
Re: Google's mobile game Ingress enables players to create user-generated missions
#10I tried getting into this game early on. One option for players was to submit local landmarks as locations of note for the game. I would photograph and submit whatever landmarks nearby I could find. While waiting some weeks for them to be approved, I noticed one day that a bunch of Zipcar parking spots had suddenly become Ingress hotspots. I was so put off by the obvious advertising ploy that I stopped playing right…
AFAIK, Google are not selling advertising in ingress like that, so I think you're making bad assumptions. That doesn't leave out people spamming/gaming the system just like blackhat SEOs try to game Google search. I don't think the Ingress people really have the resources to curate all portal submissions. It also could be to bootstrap the system, they just points of interest or business entries from Google Map's data…
No, they made a deal with ZipCar to advertise in game via portals. And every portal submission is reviewed by hand. The quality of the review varies, but there's a 130 day delay right now.