Yes, yes, late to the Ingress scene.
Yep, I know Pokemon Go is out. I'm level 16 or something. Yeah, still.
I'd never tried Ingress until now though. So here goes.
So Ingress loads up kind of funky the first time around - hear me out. It looks super high tech, and immediately presents the player with a very "cyber-tech-hacky" feel. Not a realistic one, but a sci-fi one - one that I think is conveyed quite well. Then the immersion breaks momentarily for the first time user. Account creation! I have almost a dozen e-mail addresses linked to my phone, so I pause a moment to think, before selecting my general personal e-mail address. Then I'm hit with some error screen, stating I can't connect with that e-mail address? I was about to be extremely disappointed with Ingress, but I gave the app a quick reboot, and it finally asked permission to access the Google account I selected. Alright. Maybe it's just some finicky compatibility silliness, since the game came out long before my Pixel XL did. I gave Ingress permissions, and then voila, I was in, and created a username.
I was given a heads up that there was a bunch of tutorialization at the start, but I kind of skimmed through dialogue that explained things in a way I felt didn't have enough context or detail to really be understood. I kept an open mind, and decided the explanations either had room for improvement, or I was thematically intended to only have a rough sense of what was going on - as if I had been actually thrust into a new alternate world for the first time. That said, I'm already familiar with Niantic's practices through Pokemon Go, and from experience, their tutorials tend to feel obfuscated. As far as the startup tutorialization, it was very surprisingly short, and before I realized, I guess I accidentally rolled through it all. That said, the game does direct you to start out by sampling a few specific in-game actions, which I did without issue. These included some basic interactions with portals.
Once that was all through, it was time to stroll out into the wild. The same sci-fi style that the game booted up with carried in throughout the game. I started off fumbling around, collecting XM as I walked. I tapped random elements on the interface, deciding to learn by trial and error. Through that, I discovered how hacking portals, recharging resonators, and deploying resonators worked. These were the means by which to attack enemy portals, support friendly portals, and capture neutral portals. These actions came with rewards in the form of EXP and items. As players have a cooldown between re-hacking the same portal, a consumable but acquirable supply of resonators, and a limited pool of XM that recharged by walking, the game reinforced the benefits of both playing as a group, and traveling proactively.
Much of my time was spent traveling in a pack with other Ingress players, teaming up to attack and resupply portals together. This was certainly reminiscent of my experience playing Pokemon Go when it first released. It certainly helped to be able to discuss our discoveries regarding the user interface and mechanics of the game as we went along. There were certainly a lot of things not explained by the game that were left up to the player to discover and discuss, and to some extent, I believe that was part of the magic of a social alternate-reality game. We coordinated our moves and swarmed over portals. We congratulated each other for progress, and we motivated each other to continue. Players started to level up. Shortly after, we all noticed the looming wall ahead - advancing to account level 3 required a crazy amount of EXP, more than we realized was possible to collect within the current play session. It seemed at that point that much of the motivation was lost, and folks began to disperse for the time being. I took advantage of this time, expecting that most of the players in the area likely already closed their games, and I obsessively recharged every friendly portal I could find on my way back to my car. I even noticed behavioral patterns returning from when I played Pokemon Go. For example, I took the long way around to my destination to interact with a few extra portals along the way.
As I wrapped up my play session for the day, I explored a few nooks and crannies in the user interface out of curiosity, and I encountered some nifty features, like changing my player logo. I'm not quite sure what all of these features are for yet, but that's discovery for another day.
BakaChibi out.
Yep, I know Pokemon Go is out. I'm level 16 or something. Yeah, still.
I'd never tried Ingress until now though. So here goes.
So Ingress loads up kind of funky the first time around - hear me out. It looks super high tech, and immediately presents the player with a very "cyber-tech-hacky" feel. Not a realistic one, but a sci-fi one - one that I think is conveyed quite well. Then the immersion breaks momentarily for the first time user. Account creation! I have almost a dozen e-mail addresses linked to my phone, so I pause a moment to think, before selecting my general personal e-mail address. Then I'm hit with some error screen, stating I can't connect with that e-mail address? I was about to be extremely disappointed with Ingress, but I gave the app a quick reboot, and it finally asked permission to access the Google account I selected. Alright. Maybe it's just some finicky compatibility silliness, since the game came out long before my Pixel XL did. I gave Ingress permissions, and then voila, I was in, and created a username.
I was given a heads up that there was a bunch of tutorialization at the start, but I kind of skimmed through dialogue that explained things in a way I felt didn't have enough context or detail to really be understood. I kept an open mind, and decided the explanations either had room for improvement, or I was thematically intended to only have a rough sense of what was going on - as if I had been actually thrust into a new alternate world for the first time. That said, I'm already familiar with Niantic's practices through Pokemon Go, and from experience, their tutorials tend to feel obfuscated. As far as the startup tutorialization, it was very surprisingly short, and before I realized, I guess I accidentally rolled through it all. That said, the game does direct you to start out by sampling a few specific in-game actions, which I did without issue. These included some basic interactions with portals.
Once that was all through, it was time to stroll out into the wild. The same sci-fi style that the game booted up with carried in throughout the game. I started off fumbling around, collecting XM as I walked. I tapped random elements on the interface, deciding to learn by trial and error. Through that, I discovered how hacking portals, recharging resonators, and deploying resonators worked. These were the means by which to attack enemy portals, support friendly portals, and capture neutral portals. These actions came with rewards in the form of EXP and items. As players have a cooldown between re-hacking the same portal, a consumable but acquirable supply of resonators, and a limited pool of XM that recharged by walking, the game reinforced the benefits of both playing as a group, and traveling proactively.
Much of my time was spent traveling in a pack with other Ingress players, teaming up to attack and resupply portals together. This was certainly reminiscent of my experience playing Pokemon Go when it first released. It certainly helped to be able to discuss our discoveries regarding the user interface and mechanics of the game as we went along. There were certainly a lot of things not explained by the game that were left up to the player to discover and discuss, and to some extent, I believe that was part of the magic of a social alternate-reality game. We coordinated our moves and swarmed over portals. We congratulated each other for progress, and we motivated each other to continue. Players started to level up. Shortly after, we all noticed the looming wall ahead - advancing to account level 3 required a crazy amount of EXP, more than we realized was possible to collect within the current play session. It seemed at that point that much of the motivation was lost, and folks began to disperse for the time being. I took advantage of this time, expecting that most of the players in the area likely already closed their games, and I obsessively recharged every friendly portal I could find on my way back to my car. I even noticed behavioral patterns returning from when I played Pokemon Go. For example, I took the long way around to my destination to interact with a few extra portals along the way.
As I wrapped up my play session for the day, I explored a few nooks and crannies in the user interface out of curiosity, and I encountered some nifty features, like changing my player logo. I'm not quite sure what all of these features are for yet, but that's discovery for another day.
BakaChibi out.
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