Back to Ingress

After some time away from the game, I finally had a chance to go back and play Ingress this past week or so.  I am still around 428000 action points away from the mythical Level 8 in the game.  I would love to get there before they add a Level 9 and during the time that Brian Rose is giving out Level 8 patches.

Ingress has been a ton of fun over the past four months.  I have learned a lot of useless historical facts about places that I passed by everyday and I have explored a lot of places on foot on paths I would have never taken without the game.

Niantic Labs have done a great job building an application that takes a game like Valve's Team Fortress, one of the most popular free-to-play MMO games and puts its capture the flag mechanics to work in the real world.

Last night, I had the opportunity to go to the Niantic Labs Ingress GDC Mixer event at The Alchemist in San Francisco.  In attendance were several members of the team that make Ingress as well as cross-factional representation from the Enlightened and Resistance.

I got there first.  Literally.  I got there at 4:50pm as the bar owner arrived.  Some folks from Ubisoft got there a moment later as I noticed a "Birthplace of Jack London" historical marker on the building next door.

The Ubisoft folks worked on the Assassin's Creed 3 game I recently played but said most of the work was done at other Ubisoft studios.  The studio they came from was on the same block as the bar and they were just going for happy hour not for the Ingress mixer.  They all also seemed to have iPhones.

A little after five, they let us in and checked IDs before sending us upstairs to the bar.  I met INFINITDARKNESS first, a fellow Resistance agent named Paul.  He had been hanging around outside waiting to go in as well.  A guy named Eric, in game named Sidereal was the next to arrive and started a trend of many Enlightened folks showing up.

A small contingent of Niantic employees arrived together, many with white Niantic tee shirts with the ship being hoisted up by a big balloon emblazoned in.black on the front.  One of the guys was talking about Field Trip and I showed the app on my screen like a dork.

I talked with Sidereal and another Enlightened player IPv6berry for a bit and we were later joined by AltAlt, real name Al, who had destroyed some of my links at 24th and Mission that I had made the night before last.

The Enlightened folks did some item trading and I promised not to steal from them.

I liked that the Enlightened folks were friendly.  Eric and I started introducing ourselves as "we're Eri(c/k)" as others joined the conversation.  Another Resistance member, Rook from the East Bay, chatted with us for a little bit and the general gist of the conversation was that practically no one was following the Niantic Project ARG.  That makes me sad.  A lot of us only played for an hour or two at a time and a good percentage played on foot or by bicycle.

I don't particularly care for those that play the game by car, especially when driving, but I have experienced it and even hacked a few portals by bus or as a passenger.  That sentiment of frowning upon portal hacks while driving was shared amongst those I talked with at the event.

Eventually, I was introduced to Bouncinglime, a female Enlightened member and Daminator, a male Resistance agent.  I didn't get to say much because I was interrupted by a guy in a black jacket who asked Eric and I about how we got into the game. 

I explained my origin story from family members, friends and a coworker sharing their interest and me entering an IRC channel, answering a trivia question correctly and beginning my Resistance adventure with no choice of Resistance vs Enlightened. 

Eric shared his origin story and the guy in the black jacket asked if we played in the city and what we did for a living.  We both responded and asked him the same question.

He said he worked locally at the Google campus and was a UI designer for Niantic Labs.

This unassuming guy had just mined data from me and was the guy that designed the whole interface I had been playing on since late November.

He couldn't share much but said that has high level players there is a lot of cool content in the works to help balance both factions.

Eric misheard and thought he said they were adding factions.  I explained that wasn't what he had said.

The UI guy gave me a couple of packs of stickers, one Ingress/Niantic Labs pack of five and one three pack Resistance specific.  He asked where I got my blue trimmed New Balance jacket and revealed that he too is Resistance.

I mentioned I wanted to get faction patches for my jacket but that they were always on backorder.

He said they didn't even have them and the merchandise was selling way more than expected.

I asked if the thumbnail for my Freight and Salvage portal could be changed and he explained that every object in the game had to be coded individually to deter hacking.  It would be virtually impossible to change without deleting the portal, readding and using a different picture.

He said we should see power cubes come into play in the next few weeks and recommended that I swing by and destroy the green resonators at the Google SF campus on my way back to BART because no Enlightened agents would be there to stop me.

I met a marketing guy as well who mentioned the response to the game was far greater than they expected.  They thought 40-50 portals in major cities would satisfy early demand and people would only play for a few minutes at a time and maybe just alter their commute a bit to visit a few portals on their way to and from other places.  He was extremely happy with the player participation and that so many showed up to the mixer.

I briefly chatted with the other UI guy who also liked my jacket/Resistance shirt combo.  He was Enlightened and had a Cafepress unofficial shirt thatched the Enlightened symbol with the word Evolve below it on the front.

He mentioned that he had created the symbols used in the game but that the developers loved seeing what the fans had been creating.  They even had fan artwork being projected on the wall of the bar throughout the night.

I eventually ended up chatting again with Eric, who had gotten some Enlightened stickers of his own.  We were approached by a very British man asking if we had any stickers that weren't "nasty green".

Resistance agent TinyClanger is a high level member of the London Resistance who formed actual cells to patrol and protect their city from the Enlightened Shaper influence.

As a day job, TinyClanger works for Square Enix in London and brought along a more local Redwood City Square Enix studio friend who hadn't heard of the game until the walk over to the bar from GDC.  I talked to his friend a bit while TinyClanger headed to the bar.  He talked about how he had applied all over Silicon Valley and had been offered a job at Electronic Arts.  He hesitated because at the time EA was really only big for sports games and that wasn't the type of game he had enjoyed playing.

Soon thereafter, he got a call to interview with Square Enix and while walking down the hallway and even in the interview room he was surrounded by artwork and promotional signage and statues for games and characters he loved.  He figured the distraction from being a fanboy would have ruined his chances at the job, but he's been there for four years.  He has an iPhone but armed with an invite from the Niantic marketing guy, he pledged to borrow an Android device from work to try out the game.

TinyClanger returned with his overpriced beer and we traded portal keys.  He gave me the London Eye and I gave him the Apollo 18 prop capsule from Universal Studios.  He talked about how he got into developing games.  He wrote for the Fighting Fantasy gamebook Deathtrap Dungeon and eventually ended up moving from books and tabletop games to video games.

His first video game was Tomb Raider.  The original.  His latest was the most recent 2013 Tomb Raider.

Eventually, TinyClanger went to catch up with his friends and while I was standing alone, one of the guys in a white Niantic shirt walked up to me:  "Are you eminus?" He asked.  I said I was.  He said his name was Chris and he recognized me because he had put me in the game.  He was the guy that put my photo with the Redwood City dead drop that I had recovered onto the Niantic Project website.  He too loved my shirt/jacket combo and gave me another few packs of Resistance stickers.

I had an unbelievably good time in what to me was a very awkward social situation.  It was like a PAX party, but alone, sharing only the common bond of Ingress.

The experience was much like when I played Munchkin Apocalypse with Andrew Hackard last year, but in many ways even cooler.

I captured the Jack London birthplace portal on the way out, waving goodbye to TinyClanger. 

Bouncinglime came up the street and yelled "Hey! You stole my portal.". I offered it back but she just smiled and said it would take too long for the app to load on her phone.

I took some other area portals and even destroyed and deployed at Google SF.

I got 22000 points for that.  Not bad.

SITREP (In tribute to today's debut of Ingress Report)

//Ingress Situation Report\\
//..13.03.26..1700hr
The Resistance have constructed a strong farm in the Mission District.  Suggest deployment via BART to drop coordinates: N 37° 45.126 W 122° 25.098 (10S E 551243 N 4178469)\\
I arrived battle ready at 24th and Mission station, equipped with my Ingress scanner application and a fully charged battery.  I set out to collect supplies from the vast amount of Level 6-Level 7 portals in the area between Harrison Street and San Jose Ave.  I proceeded to farm the 24th Street portals until I burned them out of supplies and then zigzagged along the same route until I had hit virtually all of the portals between 16th and 24th streets in that area.
I even ran into a fellow Resistance agent, donodog who wasn't active at the time but cheered me on and shared resonator placement with LadyTsa, who I didn't see but assisted in capturing three portals on Folsom Street.
By 1900hrs, I considered my operation a success and closed the portal scanner for the night over 20000AP higher and with a much larger inventory than two hours before.
//END REPORT\\

Chrome Dead Drop

During lunch, the Niantic Project Google+ account posted about their operative finding NIA dead drops at Chrome bags stores.  We happen to have a local Chrome store in San Francisco.

My only issue with going in to the city was that I hadn't worn a jacket to lunch. 

There was a Burlington Coat Factory on the way back to the car.  After what felt like days but was really just minutes of looking, I found the perfect blue trimmed all weather New Balance running jacket in my size at a reduced price of $16.98.  I bought it.

Our friend and I hopped on BART.  He headed home.  I headed to Powell Street station where I took a nice walk across town past Hotel Utah to Chrome SF.

The people inside were very helpful.  They didn't have the faction patches advertised on the Niantic Project post but they did have the dead drops.  I ended up with a leftover DroneNet code from SXSW.  I also captured their portal for good measure.

After visiting Chrome, I hacked and captured Ingress portals for a while and eventually met my wife at San Francisco Centre for a quick dinner before heading up the giant hill that Mason Street becomes for a concert at the Fairmont's Venetian Room.  I captured the Fairmont portal for good measure while there.

Ingress Adventure: Colma Cemeteries

We woke up early this morning and my wife dropped me off at the entrance to the Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma.  I met up with three other Ingress Resistance agents (pokeysrevenge, Aleckazam and Allissasaurus) and provided airdrop support, destroying Enlightened resonators on 16 portals in a few cemeteries   I helped two agents move up from Level 3 to Level 4 and created a pop up Level 5 portal farm, which I then proceeded to "burn out" on resources before Marloniusfunk, an Enlightened agent came through and took it back again for his green team.  Maybe I'll go through on my own next time, because the "adventure" was mostly me walking around and having fun and the other three agents getting into their car and driving to each portal individually and getting most of the points!

I don't need Ingress points anymore, I'm having fun now that I'm Level 7 and not playing "full time" to try to get further in the game.  Level 8 is far too far away to try to get there at the pace I was playing prior to hitting Level 7.