A Game Called Ingress

A game has silently gripped the Android community for the past few months. A game that has people all over the entire planet tripping over shrubs and curbs as they stare at their android devices bee-lining and sometimes running around. That game I am referring to is called "Ingress", a currently in-beta android app by the smart people at Google. The game thus far has been invite only, turning people into angry chicks chirping for food, well an invite in this case. Everyone wants in on the magic, but the community thus far has been very closed with only a trickle of newbies enrolling each day.

When I describe the game to other people, I refer to it as the biggest game of Risk ever; it takes place in augmented reality. "Portals" lie hidden away from plain-sight all over the world for the taking and raiding by the two teams in the game, "The Enlightened" (colored green, referred as greenies) and "The Resistance" (colored blue, referred as smurfs). The goal is to capture these portals for your team, and to link and network them together to create massive "fields" that count as points for your faction. Of course, with every great field that goes up, it must be taken down which is by far the most indulging part of the game.

The thing that makes this possible the best augmented reality experience ever, is the way it bonds the Android community together. Never have I been able to just randomly meet another person and have a good time running around at night, talking about the game, the devices, the operating system, and the love of Google. All walks of life have joined in on the action, accumulating to private Google+ groups for coordinating attacks and tips and even cease-fire bar meetups between the warring groups, just so you finally get to meet that guy that took down your portals while you were at work. The game is tightly knitting an experience that only exists on the Android platform, bringing enthusiasts together and forming a community not seen by any other app. Instead of zombifying you into creating loose "connections" and "friends" like social networks, it requires you to get your ass out of your seat, leave your house, and go to random places around your town or city that you would have never been before.

In the end, I see Ingress becoming an explosively popular game by this summer once it goes public and everyone is out and about in the nice weather. The two questions everyone wants answered: Will there be a hard reset in Ingress when the game goes public? and will they bring the game to iOS? I hope not to both.