
Google Launches Ingress, a Worldwide Mobile Alternate Reality Game - sek
http://allthingsd.com/20121115/google-launches-ingress-a-worldwide-mobile-alternate-reality-game/
======
blocke
I'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>

~~~
lmm
If you like that kind of thing I'll push Kaiba as a further-future look at a
world where the ability to edit memories and change bodies makes personal
identity much more nebulous. It's all emphasised with these amorphous visuals
that are a great example of something that's only possible in the animated
medium.

~~~
Raphael
Sounds like Dollhouse, which was live actors.

~~~
lmm
You could tell the same story in live action but it would be pretty much
impossible to get the same kind of visuals (even the _A Scanner Darkly_
technique wouldn't be enough) - and it's the way the visuals dovetail with the
world and the story that makes Kaiba so great.

------
lancewiggs
I 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.

~~~
criley
I 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
Bingo. We have a winner.

------
jobu
It's scary how much this sounds like the world envisioned by Daniel Suarez in
Daemon: <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
Also reminded me of Vinge's _Rainbow's Edge_.

~~~
jonnycowboy
And of course the Metaverse in Snow Crash.

~~~
TeMPOraL
And then Black Oceans by Jacek Dukaj. One of the most idea-dense book I ever
read.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czarne_oceany>

------
rescripting
I 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_launc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launches_ingress_a_worldwide_mobile/c71v7yv?context=2)

~~~
shaper_pmp
_Shaper_ _pmp, but thanks for the mention. ;-)

------
Osmium
It 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
Didn't you know? We are living in a simulated reality: <http://www.simulation-
argument.com/simulation.html>

(Probably)

~~~
RivieraKid
"We are in a simulation" is a meaningless statement. It's like saying that
there are millinons of invisible unicorns on Earth.

~~~
rictic
Nitpick: "We are in a perfect and undetectable simulation" is a meaningless
statement. If e.g. someone found a privilege escalation in our reality's VM
that would be quite meaningful.

~~~
rubinelli
Reality hackers? Let's badger Charlie Stross to write a novel about it. :)

~~~
BoppreH
There's a great novel based on this very concept: Fine Structure (
<http://everything2.com/title/Fine+Structure> ). Definitely worth a read.

------
wfn
There's some nice discussion about Google's possible motivations for doing
this here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/138res/google_launches_ingress_a_worldwide_mobile/c71v7yv?context=2)

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.

------
Finster
Seems like more of an Augmented Reality Game and not really a traditional ARG
(Alternate Reality Game). The difference seems trivial but is quite
significant.

~~~
jlees
It's both. The ARG trailhead is at <http://www.nianticproject.com/>

------
biot
This is very reminiscent of EA's Majestic 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
I 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.

------
dirtyaura
It resembles so much Shadow Cities (<http://www.shadowcities.com/>) that it
almost feels like copying.

~~~
nixarn
Yeah, I wonder if Grey Area is involved with this?

~~~
shawn-butler
Not the first to, shall we say, draw extensive inspiration from shadow cities:
<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
Did World of Fourcraft predate Shadow Cities?
<http://mashable.com/2011/06/29/world-of-fourcraft/>

~~~
shawn-butler
No, 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.

------
rmrfrmrf
A nice play to refine their map accuracy with Waze-style gamification (plus
advertising, of course).

------
jchrisa
Looks like they are paving the way for a Google Glass world.

------
incision
Very 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>

2: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08>

------
forgotAgain
The 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)>

~~~
herbig
But "ingress" is also an English language word, with a definition unrelated to
what you're talking about.

------
aditya
Lots 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
I tried playing Shadow Cities, and the interface was mostly confusing, so I
stopped.

~~~
aditya
Hmm. 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
It 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.

------
vyrotek
Does 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.

~~~
tripzilch
Couldn'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
_it'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.

------
mixedbit
Next on a TODO list: an Alternate Reality Game of which players are not aware.

~~~
TsiCClawOfLight
YES! let's build the matrix! who's in with me?

~~~
mixedbit
I would, but I'm busy selling stocks.

------
marcoamorales
I've been wanting to play some ARG since I read Little Brother, can't wait to
try this out.

------
andre
A 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/>

------
DrewHintz
[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

~~~
PhearTheCeal
I'd like one, email address is pheartheceal@gmail.com

~~~
xshoppyx
Anyway you can send one after joining? xshoppyx@hotmail.com

------
mcantelon
The toolkit will be interesting to see once it's developed.

~~~
saraid216
I had some ideas for a "discover your community" ARG two years ago that might
be able to take advantage of this.

------
jongraehl
I 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).

------
cail
This 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.

------
contingencies
I 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
And 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.

------
skannamalai
This 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
I'm curious, how are you dealing with cheaters via spoofed GPS locations?

~~~
skannamalai
sorry, 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
No 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> 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
Thanks! 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.

------
truebecomefalse
Sadly it seems to require an invite at this time. :(

------
piotr_krzyzek
This 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.

------
sherjilozair
Is this game available in all locations? Does anyone have an idea if this is
available outside US? India?

------
rocky1138
Trailer seemed cool, but I'd like to see an actual gameplay video. Anyone have
a link to real footage?

~~~
MattRix
I 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.

------
syassami
This is very cool and creative and will hopefully push the envelope for mobile
alternate reality!

------
ajdecon
If anyone has invites.... ;-) see profile for email address.

------
dvulises
This make me remember Sword art online (anime) a little bit.

------
pibefision
I want an invite! Tks

------
raghav305
Hi ... can someone please send me an invite ..

Thanks in advance!

------
superphil0
Could someone please give me an invite key? :)

------
bnegreve
Hum, since Google is an ad company I assume that bonus will magically appear
in Starbucks and McDonalds.

------
raghav305
can anyone please invite me .. raghav305@gmail.com Thanks,

------
mikeevans
Anyone have invites?

------
raghav305
can anyone please invite me raghav305@gmail.com

thanks in advance!

------
raghav305
will this work in India?

------
indiecore
So I'll ask the obvious question. Resistance or Enlightenment?

~~~
liberatus
Be careful which you choose.

You'll be shown specific ads on google based on it.

