SXSW: 10 Reasons You Should be Playing Google's Mobile Augmented Reality Game, "Ingress"

You are being lied to.

The world around you is a convenient ruse to keep you uninformed about humanities true fate. The world you know is meant to confuse and hide from you the very real fact that we, as a species, are not alone.

That's the pitch of the augmented reality, massively multiplayer, mobile title Ingress. Originally developed by Niantic Labs, a startup with Google, for Android, the science fiction title is set to release for iOS this year.

We caught up with John Hanke, VP of Niantic Labs, Google, during SXSW to talk Ingress, intelligence from beyond the stars, and getting out of the house to participate in civic pride. 

Ingress is a massively multiplayer game, you play via your smartphone and we're currently on Android with plans to move to iOS this year. You play the game by getting out of your house and moving through the real world. The game is built around this concept of portals that exist in the real world. These portals are typically located at historical or cultural sites. So it could be a piece of sculpture in a city park or some unique building that has some sort of historical or architectural significance. 

What's the significance of that? Why cultural icons, institutions, or monuments?
Interesting you should ask. The fictional underlay for the game is that there is something special about these places that has drawn people to them, it energizes us when we're there. And that something in our world is called exotic matter. Earth has been seeded with this “Exotic Matter,” or XM. This is the currency that powers everything in Ingress. XM is highly concentrated in these special places. You need to visit these places to collect this energy and collect these constructs within the game.

And these are the Earth is covered in the portals? And you're phone acts as a kind of "scanner"?
That's right visiting these portals is the backbone of everything within the game. In order to collect this energy you need to get outside of the house and visit theses places in the real world. The game is meant to encourage walking in the real world.

The game is also a multiplayer experience?
Yes, there's a whole tactical and strategic component that builds on top of the game involving other people. You align yourself with one of two faction within the game: The Resistance and The Enlightened. The Enlightened believe that this XM is going to make people smarter, make people better and actually advancing the human race forward. The Resistance thinks that XM is a potentially dangerous influence from sort other intelligent entity of some sort.

These would be the Ingressions?
Exactly. In Latin ingress means 'to enter' and The Resistance is wary of this substance. They want to control XM, cordon it off. The Resistance wants to suppress it while The Enlightened believes that XM is what has allowed mankind to make these massive leaps forward. It may be a foreign influence, but it's ultimately a positive influence.

That explains the cultural sites.
Precisely. And the gameplay, on top of that backstory, is one of territorial control. The two factions are competing to control these portals and to link them together and to acquire these certain objects that will help find and link these portals together.

And if you link three or more portals a field is formed. Everybody that exists in the area that's covered by that field is under the control of your faction. This allows for more harvesting of exotic matter for your faction. So when the enlightened capture a portal and set up a field, they're basically influencing people to align with their philosophy. The Enlightened would like to blanket the entire world in these green fields and saturate everyone with enlightened exotic matter and help everyone become smarter and better and drive the human race forward.

The Resistance would like to protect everyone under their blue fields and to keep this foreign influence out. The fact that these factions are trying to power up these portals and then connect them, brings people together from all over the city you're located in. From different cities, from different states, and even from different countries.

Complete strangers actually working towards a shared goal?

Right. And to make the most powerful portal it takes eight unique players to contribute a resonator to sustaining that portal. So you have to get together with at least seven other people, and it doesn't have to be at the same time. It doesn't have to be synchronous, it can be asynchronous, people can visit the portal at different times, but you need eight people in an area to really make the portal powerful. And then you might want to link that portal to a different portal hundreds or thousands of miles away.

So, you can link linked portals?
You'de power up a portal and link it to another portal and to do that you need a key to the portal you want to link to. To get that key you need to visit that portal, or somebody might transport it to you, but it has to be physically transported to you. So there's this whole trade as people acting as couriers or mules for keys. Carrying these keys from one place to another. Sometimes across entire countries.

What form do these keys take? 
They're virtual objects, but they can't be emailed or otherwise transmitted. It has to be carried by the person. And we've seen massive amounts of people, entire countries coordinating their actions to create these giant control fields. And these control fields can be fifty feet between the portals or 5,000 kilometers between the portals. The entire continent of Australia, at one point, was covered by a gigantic control field.

For The Resistance or The Enlightened?
It was for The Enlightened, but these pretty large control fields go up on a regular basis and people make these sit-rep videos they post to the Ingress channel on YouTube. We have a weekly show on YouTube called the Ingress Report. And this is where those sit-reps often get featured, and the exploits of our agents are the voices of the agents in the field.

Like a fictional news show?
It's a news show, but I'm not going to say if its fictional or not, but this collaboration between people is what makes the game so amazing. The fact that is brings people together in the real world, and encouraging people from different countries to collaborate is wild. One of the early sit-reps that blew my mind was when agents from Syria, Israel, and Cypress all worked together to create a control field that spanned all three of those countries.

And if you think about everything that's going on in that region, this is something that's bringing people together in a collaborative way across those international boundaries.

And note just national, but ethnic, religious, and linguistic boundaries as well.
Exactly. There's was a story on the Ingress Report about this couple from England who traveled to Egypt and connected with a group of players in Egypt. This couple was then taken all around the country and shown these amazing landmarks and sites. Their common bond was Ingress.

The fact that they were both playing the game brought them together and unlocked this amazing experience. There are many, many stories about people meeting up and coming together for the game. And that's really the life blood of the game. That and this sort of exercise and movement component that make it this unique experience.

That's what drew me to it. The game is very anti-sedentary. You can interact with people online, but it's still rare to to see those same people face to face.
Exactly, it's the opposite of Oculus. There's virtual reality where you want to sit here and surround yourself with this synthetic world and never go anywhere. And there's out version of augmented reality which is all about taking that experience of taking a walk or going to the park and making it more. Augmenting reality for a richer experience.

Maybe forcing culture on the unwary?
I call it accidental history. Helping people stumble into something fascinating and the opposite of forcing it on them. You think you're playing this sci-fi game, and, as I was walking over here with a guy from Texas he told me how he learned that Thomas Edison created one of the first generators in his hometown while playing Ingress. He learned something about his town that he never knew before. The game builds a little bit of civic pride and civic engagement one small step at a time.

Is there an element of combat between the two factions?
It's indirect. Your combat is around portals. We didn't want it to be about people attack other people. You basically take over a portal by deploying resonators, and up to eight resonators can be deployed on a portal, and you can attack the resonators of another faction. You're able to install shields and other kinds of mods on a portal, but you're always attacking the play field, you're never attacking a person.

There's none of that me against you gameplay, it's more us against this field or this portal?
Exactly. I think there are enough shooters in the world and I wanted to do something much different than that.  There's a whole emergent complexity to the game and how the game is played. The game itself is very simple, but the strategies and tactics get very complicated and are really interesting to watch unfold. It's co-op in real life.

You are being lied to.

The world around you is a convenient ruse to keep you uninformed about humanities true fate. The world you know is meant to confuse and hide from you the very real fact that we, as a species, are not alone.

That's the pitch of the augmented reality, massively multiplayer, mobile title Ingress. Originally developed by Niantic Labs, a startup with Google, for Android, the science fiction title is set to release for iOS this year.

We caught up with John Hanke, VP of Niantic Labs, Google, during SXSW to talk Ingress, intelligence from beyond the stars, and getting out of the house to participate in civic pride. 

Ingress is a massively multiplayer game, you play via your smartphone and we're currently on Android with plans to move to iOS this year. You play the game by getting out of your house and moving through the real world. The game is built around this concept of portals that exist in the real world. These portals are typically located at historical or cultural sites. So it could be a piece of sculpture in a city park or some unique building that has some sort of historical or architectural significance. 

What's the significance of that? Why cultural icons, institutions, or monuments?
Interesting you should ask. The fictional underlay for the game is that there is something special about these places that has drawn people to them, it energizes us when we're there. And that something in our world is called exotic matter. Earth has been seeded with this “Exotic Matter,” or XM. This is the currency that powers everything in Ingress. XM is highly concentrated in these special places. You need to visit these places to collect this energy and collect these constructs within the game.

And these are the Earth is covered in the portals? And you're phone acts as a kind of "scanner"?
That's right visiting these portals is the backbone of everything within the game. In order to collect this energy you need to get outside of the house and visit theses places in the real world. The game is meant to encourage walking in the real world.

The game is also a multiplayer experience?
Yes, there's a whole tactical and strategic component that builds on top of the game involving other people. You align yourself with one of two faction within the game: The Resistance and The Enlightened. The Enlightened believe that this XM is going to make people smarter, make people better and actually advancing the human race forward. The Resistance thinks that XM is a potentially dangerous influence from sort other intelligent entity of some sort.

These would be the Ingressions?
Exactly. In Latin ingress means 'to enter' and The Resistance is wary of this substance. They want to control XM, cordon it off. The Resistance wants to suppress it while The Enlightened believes that XM is what has allowed mankind to make these massive leaps forward. It may be a foreign influence, but it's ultimately a positive influence.

That explains the cultural sites.
Precisely. And the gameplay, on top of that backstory, is one of territorial control. The two factions are competing to control these portals and to link them together and to acquire these certain objects that will help find and link these portals together.

And if you link three or more portals a field is formed. Everybody that exists in the area that's covered by that field is under the control of your faction. This allows for more harvesting of exotic matter for your faction. So when the enlightened capture a portal and set up a field, they're basically influencing people to align with their philosophy. The Enlightened would like to blanket the entire world in these green fields and saturate everyone with enlightened exotic matter and help everyone become smarter and better and drive the human race forward.

The Resistance would like to protect everyone under their blue fields and to keep this foreign influence out. The fact that these factions are trying to power up these portals and then connect them, brings people together from all over the city you're located in. From different cities, from different states, and even from different countries.

Complete strangers actually working towards a shared goal?

Right. And to make the most powerful portal it takes eight unique players to contribute a resonator to sustaining that portal. So you have to get together with at least seven other people, and it doesn't have to be at the same time. It doesn't have to be synchronous, it can be asynchronous, people can visit the portal at different times, but you need eight people in an area to really make the portal powerful. And then you might want to link that portal to a different portal hundreds or thousands of miles away.

So, you can link linked portals?
You'de power up a portal and link it to another portal and to do that you need a key to the portal you want to link to. To get that key you need to visit that portal, or somebody might transport it to you, but it has to be physically transported to you. So there's this whole trade as people acting as couriers or mules for keys. Carrying these keys from one place to another. Sometimes across entire countries.

What form do these keys take? 
They're virtual objects, but they can't be emailed or otherwise transmitted. It has to be carried by the person. And we've seen massive amounts of people, entire countries coordinating their actions to create these giant control fields. And these control fields can be fifty feet between the portals or 5,000 kilometers between the portals. The entire continent of Australia, at one point, was covered by a gigantic control field.

For The Resistance or The Enlightened?
It was for The Enlightened, but these pretty large control fields go up on a regular basis and people make these sit-rep videos they post to the Ingress channel on YouTube. We have a weekly show on YouTube called the Ingress Report. And this is where those sit-reps often get featured, and the exploits of our agents are the voices of the agents in the field.

Like a fictional news show?
It's a news show, but I'm not going to say if its fictional or not, but this collaboration between people is what makes the game so amazing. The fact that is brings people together in the real world, and encouraging people from different countries to collaborate is wild. One of the early sit-reps that blew my mind was when agents from Syria, Israel, and Cypress all worked together to create a control field that spanned all three of those countries.

And if you think about everything that's going on in that region, this is something that's bringing people together in a collaborative way across those international boundaries.

And note just national, but ethnic, religious, and linguistic boundaries as well.
Exactly. There's was a story on the Ingress Report about this couple from England who traveled to Egypt and connected with a group of players in Egypt. This couple was then taken all around the country and shown these amazing landmarks and sites. Their common bond was Ingress.

The fact that they were both playing the game brought them together and unlocked this amazing experience. There are many, many stories about people meeting up and coming together for the game. And that's really the life blood of the game. That and this sort of exercise and movement component that make it this unique experience.

That's what drew me to it. The game is very anti-sedentary. You can interact with people online, but it's still rare to to see those same people face to face.
Exactly, it's the opposite of Oculus. There's virtual reality where you want to sit here and surround yourself with this synthetic world and never go anywhere. And there's out version of augmented reality which is all about taking that experience of taking a walk or going to the park and making it more. Augmenting reality for a richer experience.

Maybe forcing culture on the unwary?
I call it accidental history. Helping people stumble into something fascinating and the opposite of forcing it on them. You think you're playing this sci-fi game, and, as I was walking over here with a guy from Texas he told me how he learned that Thomas Edison created one of the first generators in his hometown while playing Ingress. He learned something about his town that he never knew before. The game builds a little bit of civic pride and civic engagement one small step at a time.

Is there an element of combat between the two factions?
It's indirect. Your combat is around portals. We didn't want it to be about people attack other people. You basically take over a portal by deploying resonators, and up to eight resonators can be deployed on a portal, and you can attack the resonators of another faction. You're able to install shields and other kinds of mods on a portal, but you're always attacking the play field, you're never attacking a person.

There's none of that me against you gameplay, it's more us against this field or this portal?
Exactly. I think there are enough shooters in the world and I wanted to do something much different than that.  There's a whole emergent complexity to the game and how the game is played. The game itself is very simple, but the strategies and tactics get very complicated and are really interesting to watch unfold. It's co-op in real life.