“The world around you is not what it seems”
In this post I will talk about my personal experience with the game Ingress. First I will provide a little bit of the background of the game so you can understand what is it about. After it I will provide what was my experience of playing the game for about one hour. Also I will support some of my points with the reading Augmented regionalism: Ingress as geomediated gaming narrative by Shira Tess; that we had the opportunity to talk to via Skype for the class.
Ingress is a Google game that was launched on 2012 and it is a mixture of augmented reality (AR) and geolocation with a touch of science fiction narrative.
“The world around you is not what it seems” is the phrase that is posted on the game website https://www.ingress.com/ and it provides a hint of what is Ingress about; Ingress is about experience the world around you in a different way by letting users opening portals (real-world landmarks, monuments, and sculptures) and to fight for control of the area). It is important to notice that the game is part of what Jenkins calls “transmedia storytelling” because you can access different parts of it to complement it and enrich the experience from Google Plus, YouTube and the website. Also I think we can connect it with what Jenkins calls "participatory culture" because the users of the game can interact between each other and they have created meetings for the game and to increase the game experience. Here also we can talk about of what Tiziana Terranova explains as "free labor" because there are a lot of fans of Ingress that when they reach certain level they contribute and create new portals without being paid for it; also by helding meetings all over the world as Chess explains in her article (she talks about an example in Australia) without gaining any profit from it.
When I started, it required me to choose a faction to play with: The Enlightened or The Resistence. I wasn´t sure what was going to be the best so I did little bit of research about it and I found that according to Wikipedia the Resistance are jokingly referred to as "Smurfs" and the Enlightened are known as "Frogs" .So I chose the Resistence because I like the "Smurfs". After it I started to try to play but it required me to move from my place which I think is great because I have never play a game that do that. One of the elements of the game that I liked the most is that the geolocation is used in real time and that is a part of the game that provides a touch of realism to it.
After playing Ingress for an hour and reading the article by Chess I found that “locality” is extremely important for the game, the game encourages region over global because as Chess explains “the rhetorics of “locality” organize spaces in ways that are specifici to the very region.” Furthermore the game encourage the user to explore and the region portals, by letting the users “hack” portals which makes users to increase their level and focus more in the region. But also is important to recognize that as Chess explains the narrative of the game is contextualized in a global narrative, because it’s narrative is based on an International idea by the reports that are posted on YouTube and the narrative when you first play the game. Here I include the latest report of the game:
In my experience, the game allowed me to explore the world around me differently because I was trying to look for portals while walking on the street and it made me realize about my environment and how many landmarks were around me and I haven’t noticed before. At the beginning it was hard for me to understand how to “hack” a portal because the surface of the game is complicated. I personally can say that I didn´t liked the game because it was a lot of information and the till now I still don´t get how to use it well. I think it requires a lot of time to really understand it and it does not provide a useful guidance of how to play it. On the other hand one of the things that I liked about it is that is forces you to move around the city and get to know new places you haven´t been before or you didn´t noticed were historical. This is a way to learn about our environment and I think it accomplish what it is explained in the game website “The world around you is not what it seems” because it makes you see the world with another eyes and to discover it by technology, and that is what makes the experience different. Other of the elements that I liked is that the global narrative makes you feel being part of an important agent of a mission.
With the help of the article and the conference of Shira Chess I understood that the importance of Ingress is that it takes the games to another level that haven´t been used before. And that it might not be the most successful one but it is going to be the base game for something bigger that is YET TO COME!
