Fundamentally Pre: September 2014

Ingress is a word many in the network world are aware of. The reference is to intrusion into networks. In simple terms, Ingress refers to a foreign presence coming into a space.

The game Ingress, by Niantic Labs, plays with a similar concept. The story behind it talks about a strange energy of unknown origin seeping into our world, Earth. The game revolves around this energy, known as eXotic Matter, or XM. The game utilizes an overlay over Google Maps to turn the world around you into a massive playing field encompassing your surroundings, a technique known as Augmented Reality, where players from two factions battle for control over the future of XM.

Ingress has several unique points to it. One is the multi-tiered levels of game play. I’ve described this in an earlier article, so I won’t rehash here, but if you want to read it - http://techwire.lk/ingress-augmented-reality-meets-your-android/

Second unique point: it moves gaming from a sitting proposition, beyond games requiring movement in limited spaces like Wii, into the massive spaces of the real world. There are quite a few real world benefits. It’s a health boost, as the best way to play is by walking, exploring your surroundings more, taking new roads, visiting new sites, discovering places of significance you might have otherwise have never known about, and meeting new people; fellow teammates or rival players.

The Grand Hotel - Nuwara Eliya

On the surface, many people find it dumb that players keep visiting the same locations over and over again. Ingress is just a little more complex than that. For one thing, it’s not visiting the same places. I have personally visited over 1600 locations playing this game, just in my home country, exploring parts of my home town I have never been to, and have been to locations as far away as Kalpitiya lagoon, the temple at the top of Kurunegala Rock, Polonnaruwa, the gates of the Uda Walawe National Park and Galle Fort. While most are places I have visited while doing something else, places like Kurunegala Rock are places I would probably never have visited if not for Ingress. I am even motivated to re-climb Sigiriya, something I had sworn never to do again. I’ve also discovered a number of shortcuts and by-roads which can be used to avoid traffic; side benefits of exploring outside one’s normal routine.

Operations with Global Impact

Also, one of the main points of ingress is control of areas by connecting portals using links in order to make something called Fields. This is not always the easiest of things to accomplish in itself, but there are more advanced techniques to be used to maximize scores. In addition, people create fields that can cover whole countries and indeed multiple fields. Recently, the Australians covered the whole continent, and multi country teams covered practically the whole Northern Hemisphere in a massive set of fields, which included a link of a record 6730kms. These fields covered Russia, Canada, all of Europe and parts of the USA. Considering all the rules involved in making fields, this is phenomenal undertaking, involving hundreds of people, months of planning, and actually requiring people to physically travel all over the world to meet the criteria of field creation. We were involved in something like that too, called Operation Mata Hari, a sequence of fields covering most of South East Asia, although SL operatives role was limited to clearing a path so a field could be created between India, Mauritius and Australia.There have been stories of people hiring boats, planes and helicopters, and even parachuting out to reach portals in order to create fields, raising superb adventure stories to be shared.

And shared they are. The other unique point of Ingress is the social aspect of game play. The game is structured in a way that does not reward hero play at high levels. Single players can have huge impact, but to is much more effective to play as a team, and it is this aspect of teamwork and cooperation that can truly set Ingress apart. As of the time of writing this article, I am the highest level agent in Sri Lanka at Level 14, but that has been a byproduct, I will always focus more on helping new agents score as many points as possible, since having more agents is a far more fundamental factor for achieving success than playing lone wolf by myself. I’ve driven many miles burning off my own fuel, and burned the midnight oil to get help my fellow agents, and it pays dividends, creating a strongly bonded team of players who enjoy getting together even outside of playing Ingress. The last push to make me the highest level agent around and first Sri Lankan to L14 was mostly due to the push from my fellow agents, who push, gave up supplies, put their own efforts to level up on hold to make sure that our team would have the first L14 agent in the country. Even a guy I met for the first time gave me keys to make a link to help me to my medals.