Of course it’s geeky but as a result of playing this game I have decided to walk 3650 km this year. That’s an average of ten per day. I know that some days I can walk a greater distance. We will see by how much I overshoot this goal at the end of the current year.
I was going to take the scooter but it was stuck by three SUVs so I had no option but to lazily give up and go on a 10 kilometre Sunday Ingress walk. I couldn’t be bothered running up to the second floor, getting the car keys, moving the car, getting the scooter out and then moving the car back. This is especially true since it’s going to rain tomorrow.
I do have the goal of having at least one day a week without using an internal combustion engine so by the neighbours each having jeeps/SUVs I reduced my own carbon footprint. Days without internal combustion are always good.
My goal was to complete the Nyon by night set of missions. It’s the top line in the screengrab above. It’s a quick set of missions to complete with just a hack but portal for six portals. As the servers were not acting up or slow the time it took to do the walk was enough to complete the six missions. In the process, I captured a few portals and established a few more fields over the city.
While on this walk I listened to the You’re Dead to Me podcast by the BBC. It’s a podcast that explores history in a light-hearted manner. It has a comedian, an expert on the topic of the episode and the presenter. In the episode I listened to they were discussing Harriet Tubman, It’s the little brother of the In Our Time Podcast.
When I was playing Ingress a few years ago I didn’t track the walk with a GPS. I tracked it for this walk. You see that rather than be a large circular hike without overlaps you have the opposite. You see that I walked over certain streets in Nyon two or three times. You also see that there are thorns where I walk to the right or left of my course to get a portal or other.
It’s especially around the Centre of Nyon that you see that I walk through many more streets than usual. On a normal walk, I’d walk from A to B choosing the most direct route. In this case, I go up and down certain streets two or three times.
If you do this without trying to complete a mission it will be even more chaotic as you walk from portal to portal to hack, capture, up, field or other.
During the lull between summer sports and winter sports Ingress is a good way for some people to get out and be physically active without necessarily driving for hours.
People love to submit portals and portals add excitement to Ingress. The more portals there are the busier you are. Cities are fantastic places for ingress players for this reason. Geneva, Barcelona, Neuchatel and other cities already have hundreds if not thousands of portals but go to the swiss countryside, the spanish sea side or away from big cities and portals are few and far between. As a result of this rural players don’t have much to do unless they get in a car and create megafields.
What I propose is a crowdsourced portal acceptance system. The system would have two features:
Proximity to other portals. If you’re in the middle of the countryside and the portal is submitted then it is moved to the top of the submission list for quick approval. By getting remote locations to have higher portal density so users are encouraged to become more active. As people see them play so new players are encouraged to join in the game.
The second variable is based on geographic location. If a player in New York submits a portal then a player in Madrid from L9 or above sees the portal submission and decides whether or not it is too close to other portals, whether it is legitimate and whether it is worth validating. If a player from Paris submits a portal then a player can accept or refuse that portal.
Of course the second feature requires for the Portal acceptance interface to be opened up to players of level 9 or higher. The permissions would only be “approve” or “reject”. will allow players to question the submission and let a group of people decide on the future of specific portals.
If you’re a geek and you like mobile phones with a data plan then ingress is for you. Over the last two days I walked 18 kilometres playing ingress and winning back the City of Nyon for the Resistance. It didn’t last long. The same evening the enlightened players destroyed my hard work. I will just have to go back and liberate the city later. I have more important tasks this weekend. Tomorrow Ingress FS Neuchatel will take place. At least twenty of us will be playing, walking around the city, looking for portals and trying to take over the city.
Staring at a phone while walking around a city may sound counterintuitive, or absolutely normal for those who still use text messaging apps or tweet. In this case though you discover details of cities that you would not notice. You notice plaques, the names of places which you always walk by but never knew about and more.
Playing the game has two parts. Attack and defence is one part and farming the second. Attack and defence are good because they don’t require much walking around. They just require having a lot of “toys” to play with. The drawback to having a lot of toys to play with is that you probably walked around like I did going from portal to portal and hacking it. You get weapons, modules, resonators and more. They are good for game play.
There is a cultural aspect to farming. Missions designed by L9 players of ingress have portals related to a certain theme. If you walk in the old town of Geneva you can follow the Calvin track, the park brunswick mission or the Geneve, around the Cathedral mission. There is a good chance that you will know some of the monuments and you will discover others. With each portal players can write a description. These descriptions can provide you with a new understanding of the places you pass by. In essence it could serve as a guide book for those who like to see things in a different light.
Ingress is a selfless game when you play as a team. The driver gets no AP. Other operators get a few AP for breaking portals. Three individuals gets hundreds of thousands of Mind Units (MU). Rather than feel a sense of achievement I feel fatigue.
The first reason is to do with the hangouts. You have to be serious. When I work in a team I want to be able to joke around. The most fun you have is with people who know what they’re doing and despite the stress have fun doing it. When you do something for free this is even more important.
The second is driving a hundred kilometres. I don’t like driving without something to do at the destination. I also prefer to be active during daylight hours rather than once the sun sets. I am not a vampire.
The three day rains don’t help either. Three days of rain, seeing the Arve saturated and very high. The Pont Rolex is a metre from being flooded.
Friday I drove three hundred and seventy kilometres for another operation. I drove an hour to the location and an hour back from the location. On this previous up the engine had run for six and a half hours.
I drove up one slope and fire crews were present. They allowed me to go on and I drove up beside the stream running down. The water wasn’t too deep but there were a lot of stones and mud. I felt the car loose traction so tried to keep my speed up. I saw where a storm drain intended to take water in was overflowing like a spring.
In total I drove 470km on half a tank of diesel so fuel wise it was probably still cheaper than driving to meet people in Geneva. I think I’ll take a break from communal activities and play solo. I’ll stick to Via Ferrata and hiking as team activities. I will feel good about the op in a few days, when the sun starts to shine again.
Once again I was out in the rain walking around a city. Once again I was looking downwards and then up. I was also looking around and navigating through a city I have been to before but only for a meal and on my way to another place. I went there for a blogobar event many months ago. More recently I went through the city on my way to a Via Ferrata near La Chaux De Fond. This time was different. I was meeting people who stare at their mobile phones when walking around city. To many of you this describes what you think is wrong with society. Too many people withdrawing from society, not interacting. This isn’t the case.
These people who met from 10am on a saturday until 1145 before a group picture was taken are ingress players. Ingress as you know from previous posts is a muntiplayer augmented reality game that people play by walking around in the real world. They walk towards buildings, monuments, statues and other sights of interest. As a group, as I wrote about yesterday we had three missions as a group. I only did two of these with the group. One of them required a physical walk up to the castle of Neuchatel and back down the slope. As we walked we saw parts of the city which I had yet to see. The second walk was from the train station down towards the lake side.
This is relevant for two reasons. The first of these is that I am a hiker and in summer I spend my weekends in the mountains. The second is that I have walked around more cities than I can remember. The best way to get to know a city is by walking. You gain a sense of scale. You understand it’s geography and you also see what points of interest are where and how they are connected. Rome is a city which I visited many times alone. I love the city because I love the life style contrast between Geneva and Rome. I also love the city because of it’s history. Where else do you park a car in a basement next to some Roman walls. Where else do you have two Millenia of history so visible?
Ingress today offered me an opportunity to meet with strangers and do activities with them, to see parts of a new city and to have company. So often mobile phones are associated with solitude and isolation. Through this account you may understand that mobile phones and especially smartphones can be inclusive. The conversations that we had through social media have faded as the noise has gone up and this is where social augmented reality games can pick up. They can provide a new opportunity for people to connect.
Next month I plan on going to Firenze for another event. So far over 600 people have signed up. They will come from around Europe and around the world to meet in a beautiful city with a rich cultural history. This will be the backdrop for the game. I look forward to visiting the city once again and meeting new people precisely because of smartphones rather than despite of them.