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Google Launches Ingress, a Worldwide Mobile Alternate Reality Game
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Finster 14y agoSeems like more of an Augmented Reality Game and not really a traditional ARG (Alternate Reality Game). The difference seems trivial but is quite significant.
- rmrfrmrf 14y agoA nice play to refine their map accuracy with Waze-style gamification (plus advertising, of course).
- aditya 14y agoLots of interesting stuff going on in this space. Shadow cities is another one that's doing pretty well. The big question to me is, where's the Zynga of this world? Can you make casual location aware ARGs?
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI tried playing Shadow Cities, and the interface was mostly confusing, so I stopped.
- aditya 14y agoHmm. Are you a gamer? I'm not, and I don't play Shadow Cities anymore for the same reason but it seems to be doing well with people who're more active gamers, which is why I was wondering if there's a way to make the games more casual for people that don't want to live in that universe all the time. Foursquare is close, but it doesn't feel like a game at all.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoIt wasn't the casualness of it - I literally had no idea what to do about nodes "near me", or what "battling" those sprite things did for me. Plus, those were the only two game mechanics I saw - I could battle things, and then I could click on nodes, and neither really seemed to progress me anywhere. I feel like that game should have had a much more thorough tutorial.
- mcantelon 14y agoSure, why not. If people will senselessly check in via FourSquare I'm sure they'll play some kind of AR Farmville.
- primitur 14y agoDownload Qualcomms' Vuforia SDK and get cracking: http://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/augmented-reality https://ar.qualcomm.at/ These sure are interesting times. Its becoming too easy to go from sci-fi to just plain sci ..
- incision 14y agoVery cool, I've been talking about something like this on and off for several years now with friends. I've been continually fascinated with the possibilities of AR since about the time of Eye of Judgement [1] and even more after fooling with Layar [2] on my OG Droid back in 2009. The possibilities seem endless, not just games or gamification but public safety, education - all sorts of things. I'm a bit disappointed to find that this project is invite only, but I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how it plays out. 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP4TjzUfOeU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP4TjzUfOeU 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08
- truebecomefalse 14y agoSadly it seems to require an invite at this time. :(
- drstrangevibes 14y agoi thought it was called facebook
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- vitek 14y agoOn the surface yes, but Ingress is strategically brilliant on many levels. Well executed, this could make Android the 'cool' OS to have on your phone. This is a great strategy to build the Android brand and sustain their unit volume domination.
- mixedbit 14y agoNext on a TODO list: an Alternate Reality Game of which players are not aware.
- TsiCClawOfLight 14y agoYES! let's build the matrix! who's in with me?
- mixedbit 14y agoI would, but I'm busy selling stocks.
- nickik 14y agoEven better use people that play a Alternate Reality Game to execute real missions.
- indiecore 14y agoSo I'll ask the obvious question. Resistance or Enlightenment?
- jchrisa 14y agoLooks like they are paving the way for a Google Glass world.
- jobu 14y agoIt's scary how much this sounds like the world envisioned by Daniel Suarez in Daemon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(technothriller_series) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(technothriller_series) Google has diverless cars, Glasses that overlay information on top of reality, and now is making a sort of game out of it.
- sown 14y agoAlso reminded me of Vinge's Rainbow's Edge.
- jonnycowboy 14y agoAnd of course the Metaverse in Snow Crash.
- gojomo 14y agoYou mean 'Rainbows End'. (The lack of a possessive apostrophe is also intentional.)
- tjbiddle 14y agoProject Glass was announced only a few weeks after I finished Freedom (Second book of Daemon). I was excited then, and I'm excited now.
- bostonpete 14y agoWhile I enjoyed his books, I don't think these predictions were exactly prescient. He was essentially writing about things that were just beyond the capabilities of existing technology...
- pibefision 14y agoI want an invite! Tks
- Osmium 14y agoIt seems to me that, with the ubiquity of smartphones and how powerful they're becoming, it's only a matter of time before there's a constantly-evolving digital facsimile of the real world. We've started to see how, for example, many geo-tagged photos can be reconstructed into a pointcloud (see Microsoft's Photosynth amongst others), and how everyone is now carrying a location-aware camera-computer in their pockets... Projects like streetview would become obsolete. The possibility for alternate reality games will be immense, but I suspect that's just scratching the surface. We've only had this smartphone technology for what? 5 years or so? And so far all ours uses for this technology have been fairly superficial and mundane (by which I mean, if you'd gone back a decade and asked people "what would you make if you had a smartphone that could do x?" you'd probably get decent predictions of the present day). But in 10, 20 years I imagine it'll have evolved to something far beyond what we can currently imagine.
- dansingerman 14y agoDidn't you know? We are living in a simulated reality: http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html http://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.html (Probably)
- Osmium 14y agoThen it'll be turtles all the way down :)
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoSimulation is overkill; the Matrix approach is cheaper - run the simulation within the brain.
- biot 14y agoThis is very reminiscent of EA's Majestic game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_(video_game) It was like X-Files conspiracy theories meets The Game (the Michael Douglas movie). Sadly, it didn't last very long. I'm hoping this will do better.
- ben1040 14y agoI wonder if Majestic would have done better if it didn't launch a month and a half before 9/11. People were on edge then, and a game that ends up making mysterious phone calls to you probably wouldn't go over well. I actually thought it was a pretty cool concept from at least what little I played of it.
- royalsurfing 14y agoThank you very much for this! I have been looking for the name of that game for years!
- marcoamorales 14y agoI've been wanting to play some ARG since I read Little Brother, can't wait to try this out.
- DrewHintz 14y ago[Edit: Looks like I currently have no invites left. As I get more, I'll give them out and update this post.] I think I have a few invites to give out. Let me know if you'd like one. P.S. I'm Resistance using the name drew
- carwithcookies 14y agoawesome if you get any more you could spare. I sent you an email.
- alieander 14y agoalieander@gmail.com
- PhearTheCeal 14y agoI'd like one, email address is pheartheceal@gmail.com
- xshoppyx 14y agoAnyway you can send one after joining? xshoppyx@hotmail.com
- fourply 14y agodplynch@gmail.com pls
- ratzinho87 14y agoOne for me too, please. Sent you an email. Thanks.
- viraptor 14y agoMy email is in the profile. Could I have one too? Thanks.
- entropie 14y agomictro@gmail.com, thanks alot!
- mcantelon 14y agoThe toolkit will be interesting to see once it's developed.
- saraid216 14y agoI had some ideas for a "discover your community" ARG two years ago that might be able to take advantage of this.
- dirtyaura 14y agoIt resembles so much Shadow Cities (http://www.shadowcities.com/ http://www.shadowcities.com/) that it almost feels like copying.
- nixarn 14y agoYeah, I wonder if Grey Area is involved with this?
- shawn-butler 14y agoNot the first to, shall we say, draw extensive inspiration from shadow cities: http://qonqr.com/ http://qonqr.com/ There is so little shame in the industry anymore, but it is admittedly a very difficult task to be creative in a gaming startup. Competition is a good thing I guess. I'd hate to be competing with Google though. Their fanboi base is suffuse with a devotion that borders on unquestioning faith which plays well in the gaming segment where the hard part is initially attracting critical mass for the underlying game dynamic to be fun.
- saraid216 14y agoDid World of Fourcraft predate Shadow Cities? http://mashable.com/2011/06/29/world-of-fourcraft/ http://mashable.com/2011/06/29/world-of-fourcraft/
- shawn-butler 14y agoNo, shadow cities predates that game by over a year, but it remained a fairly European presence at the time. And the games are fairly distinct, that looks to be simply a "squatting" game with little strategy. Look at the other 2 games linked and you find they are not only disturbingly similar in game mechanics but the graphics are also fairly derivative.
- BryantD 14y agoSide note -- I went to a great talk by the Grey Area (Shadow Cities) guys at GDC, and one of their big takeaways was that you need to enable competition between people who aren't geographically near one another. Otherwise you don't build a critical mass of players. I can't tell from the available material if Ingress gameplay provides for satisfying solo play, but if it doesn't they're going to hit the same issues Grey Area did originally.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- blocke 14y agoI've been so waiting for something like this. While I'm expecting to be disappointed by this early effort the idea is exciting and something that was inevitable. There was a great anime series that sadly doesn't have distribution in the US called Denno Coil[1] that is required viewing for anyone interested in augmented reality. The series follows a group of kids in a city that grow up with Google Glasses type functionality with virtual pets and software as "magic". The kids lead a life based upon this augmented reality laid over the real reality. If you like anime this show is worth tracking down a torrent for. It's also worth checking out the Halting State series from Charles Stross if you're up for some reading. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil
- marshray 14y agoThat was a seriously interesting show. Even if you're not 'into' anime, I recommend it.
- EricBurnett 14y agoEven from early beta versions it's been surprisingly addicting. The first time I tried it I went for a walk, and found myself still wandering the streets at 2am, only returning home when my battery was giving out :). If I'm at all average, you won't be too disappointed!
- flannell 14y ago+1 Loved this series. Had a real sense of 'William Gibson' about it.
- Groxx 14y agoInteresting. Decent rank on AniDB too: http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=4345 http://anidb.net/perl-bin/animedb.pl?show=anime&aid=4345 I'll definitely give it a shot. Thanks!
- lucvh 14y agoI had fantasised about this since I was about 10 years old and today it has been realised.
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- mikeevans 14y agoAnyone have invites?
- lancewiggs 14y agoI like the underlying customer cause here - Let's get people off their chairs, on to the streets and meeting each other. Let's create interestingness in the mundane. Let's create a world which rewards interaction. A lovely antidote to the trend for us to all walk around with heads down, checking the latest irrelevancy on our smartphones.
- jlees 14y agoIt's also about spotting the beautiful in your surroundings; rather than just interestingness in the mundane, Ingress draws attention to art that you may not ever have looked at before despite walking past it every day. I've discovered a number of statues and sculptures while beta testing it that I genuinely had never noticed before.
- criley 14y agoI love the underlying engineering cause -- let's get everyone to keep a GPS/data link open while they walk around popular city attractions and roadways so we can build an amazing pedestrian pathfinding system.
- ralfn 14y agoBingo. We have a winner.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- vyrotek 14y agoDoes anyone know if this is really 'multiplayer' or if your experience is in any way influence by the progress of others? I've toyed with a similar ideas but the problem was that your GPS location doesn't guarantee you are really there. There are plenty of ways to spoof your location. So, my point is it will only be a matter of time until there are bots that walk around for you. If this is purely a 'single player' game then personally I think it's a neat idea but I don't see it being that entertaining.
- jlees 14y agoYes, it is multiplayer. You capture portals and others can come along and blow them up, taking them for the opposition. The promotional video certainly captures the feeling of 'someone is attacking this portal.. wait.. is it that guy over there staring at his phone?'
- jlees 14y agoYes, it is multiplayer. You capture portals and others can come along and blow them up, taking them for the opposition. The promotional video certainly captures the feeling of 'someone is attacking this portal.. wait.. is it that guy over there staring at his phone?'
- tripzilch 14y agoCouldn't you use physical QR code stickers for such proof of location? They can be fairly small and merely need to contain a random UID code (or an URL with the code as query parameter). Of course that only works up until people start sharing those codes online, even though you can tweak game mechanics to discourage players wanting to do that, it's impossible to prevent.
- vyrotek 14y agoit's impossible to prevent. Precisely. Which is why I think this will have a tough time succeeding. Even casual gamers will eventually get frustrated. This is also the sort of thing that is difficult to repair once the damage is done.
- skannamalai 14y agoThis is somewhat alarming for my team as we've been working on very similar stuff for a while now (albeit for iOS). Oh well, full steam ahead, I suppose.
- vyrotek 14y agoI'm curious, how are you dealing with cheaters via spoofed GPS locations?
- skannamalai 14y agosorry, was sick all weekend! So far we haven't worked out anti-cheating strategies, because we haven't really structured the initial challenges around rewards or achievements, but rather around personal interests. As we add more traditional rewards and scoring type stuff (it hurts my soul to type gameification with sincerity) we'll have to start addressing cheating, particularly if we release clients on other platforms or a direct API to our system.
- vyrotek 14y agoNo problem! I hope you can figure it out. I've had many ideas for GPS-based games but as an avid gamer I couldn't help see all the ways I could cheat my own system. Somewhat related... I'm not sure if you checked out my HN profile but I actually founded a gamification platform company called http://IActionable.com http://IActionable.com a few years ago. We started it before the word 'gamification' even existed got to watch in horror as people turned it into a cheap gimmick instead of properly implementing it. We actually don't like the term 'gamification' and the baggage that comes with it. Dealing with cheating was a high priority on our list when we initially targeted social applications but we eventually found the enterprise market to be the best fit for our technology. Basically, we were able to avoid the cheating problem because we made the 'game' involve people you really knew which naturally discouraged cheating.
- skannamalai 14y agoThanks! I completely get what you are talking about re: the merits of meaningful game features vs just a cheap "gamification" job... something we'll have to keep an eye on as we move forward. This is my first company/product (ever) so it's a bit alarming how many things we've already realized we don't know. Thank you for your comments, I'm definitely going to check out your firm's site and from a business and personal interest standpoint because frankly it seems like you've thought through at least several things we haven't quite gotten to yet. For example, I hadn't realized (although perhaps intuitive in hindsight) that the context of whom you are playing with/against can effectively curb anti-social behavior like cheating.
- forgotAgain 14y agoThe name is a surprise. The Ingres database is still kicking, it's an OSS project that's was a commercial product for 20 years before that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database)
- potatolicious 14y agoI doubt this is a reference to a piece of software. "Ingress" also means "to enter", the opposite of "egress".
- herbig 14y agoBut "ingress" is also an English language word, with a definition unrelated to what you're talking about.
- bnegreve 14y agoHum, since Google is an ad company I assume that bonus will magically appear in Starbucks and McDonalds.
- syassami 14y agoThis is very cool and creative and will hopefully push the envelope for mobile alternate reality!
- whoisnicole 14y agoSo what is Windows Phone 8 going to do to counter? Remember Bing Cashback? Are they going to come up with something similar to Ingress, expect for that everything is free when you use Windows Phone 8 to scan the SKU? :)
- rocky1138 14y agoTrailer seemed cool, but I'd like to see an actual gameplay video. Anyone have a link to real footage?
- MattRix 14y agoI think the stuff you're seeing the device screens in the trailer is the gameplay footage... You go somewhere, scan around for "energy", and "hack it" or whatever.
- andre 14y agoA blog post I wrote back in 2007 (on Noah's blog) comparing Google and Daemon: http://okdork.com/2007/06/18/is-google-the-daemon/ http://okdork.com/2007/06/18/is-google-the-daemon/
- rescripting 14y agoI find it odd there is no discussion about what Google's motivation/business case is for Ingress. Reddit user Sharper_pmp has a compelling theory that it's an attempt to collect pedestrian route data to compete with Nokia's newly announced turn-by-turn routes for pedestrians. He also brings up instances in the past where Google has created mutually beneficial ways to have people voluntarily build their data sets. http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launches_ingress_a_worldwide_mobile/c71v7yv?context=2 http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launc...
- shaper_pmp 14y agoShaper_pmp, but thanks for the mention. ;-)
- wfn 14y agoThere's some nice discussion about Google's possible motivations for doing this here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launches_ingress_a_worldwide_mobile/c71v7yv?context=2 http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launc... Granted, speculation, but rather convincing. >TL;DR: Whatever the plot's about, the point of it is to quickly and cheaply build an unrivaled corpus of pedestrian-accessible routes, locations and journey-times for the next generation of foot-enabled Google Maps and Navigation apps Edit seems that user 'rescripting' somewhere above has already made a reference to that discussion.
- superphil0 14y agoCould someone please give me an invite key? :)
- cail 14y agoThis looks really interesting to me. Fascinating to see more augmented reality concepts being pushed out. I am interested to see if this will eventually be tied in with glass. Google really seems to be pushing towards ubiquitous computing lately. Can't wait to try it out if I get an invite from them.
- raghav305 14y agocan anyone please invite me .. raghav305@gmail.com Thanks,
- raghav305 14y agowill this work in India?
- contingencies 14y agoI find it more than a little scary that, coming from a company with as much influence as Google, the subliminal message here is that pro-technology people are "enlightened", and anyone else is "resistance".
- adrianhoward 14y agoAnd to me 'enlightened' sounds like hippy-religious-rubbish so I'd probably immediately plumb for resistance. With games like this you need to have both "sides" have an attractive "we're the goodies" pitch. I thought it was rather clever naming since I think I could argue myself into either camp quite easily.
- dvulises 14y agoThis make me remember Sword art online (anime) a little bit.
- sherjilozair 14y agoIs this game available in all locations? Does anyone have an idea if this is available outside US? India?
- piotr_krzyzek 14y agoThis is eerily similar to the show H+. Not on the same scale of course, but that's the first thing that came to mind when I saw this post.
- ajdecon 14y agoIf anyone has invites.... ;-) see profile for email address.
- jongraehl 14y agoI hope the game (if it catches on) is sensitive to traffic congestion, or decreases rewards for driving in traffic, and further, doesn't steer people toward areas of increased smog, car-on-pedestrian accidents, or crime (I'll bet the EULA disclaims that liability). Getting shut-ins outside where they can be hit by cars may have net health benefits (and people can choose for themselves).
- raghav305 14y agoHi ... can someone please send me an invite .. Thanks in advance!
- raghav305 14y agocan anyone please invite me raghav305@gmail.com thanks in advance!