A mobile game that takes place in the real world, and players cross continents, walk at night in the parks of unfamiliar cities and scare motorcyclists
I collect all the documents and send a request to the FSB to visit the border zone in Chukotka. Two weeks later, the confirmation was in hand, and now I’m on the plane from Yekaterinburg to Anadyr. We land. There is a terrible frost on the street, passengers are asked to transfer to a helicopter that transports arrivals to the city located on the other side of the frozen Anadyr estuary. Finally I am on the spot – at the very edge of the world. I start capturing portals and hacking keys in order to then transfer them to Kiev, and then to agents in Alaska. The linking operation between Anadyr and the United States is progressing well.
This is not a snippet from a dystopia or cyberpunk action movie. This is an absolutely real story, which Anton Khudozhnik, one of the most famous Russian players in Ingre ss , told in his report after the game operation . “The world is not what it seems to you,” the developers say. And this is true: even in the smallest Russian city, not a couple of street racers can stand in pursuit of cars, but the failure of the Greens’ operation to seize the Earth. Blondes with smartphones in a cafe, it is likely that they do not leaf through the Instagram feed, but hack all the portals in the district.
It is enough to install Ingress on your smartphone, and your idea of the world around you can change dramatically. What is Ingress?
Basics of the game: factional system and storyline
Ingress is an augmented reality game. It was released in 2012 and is based on the capture of virtual analogs of city attractions – portals. Monuments, monuments, squares and other landmark objects of the city act as portals. Some of them were brought into the game by the developers, but the bulk of them were added and continue to be added by the players themselves. To capture portals, you need to physically be near them.
There are two factions in the game: the conditional “blue” and “green”, which are fighting for control over the territory. After capturing two portals, players can make a connection between them (or “throw a link”). If it turns out to capture and link three portals, then the space between them is also considered captured and painted over in the color of the faction. Actually, this is the whole essence of the game: capture and paint over as much territory as possible in your color, without allowing the enemy to do the same.
It is possible to cheat and change your own GPS coordinates, but cheating is strictly suppressed: the players themselves “knock” right away and they will not keep themselves waiting for a lifetime ban from the developers. There is also an ingress items shop in the game.
The game is best told by its most dedicated fans. Therefore, we contacted two luminaries of the gaming community, organizers of the largest unofficial Ingress events in Russia: Oksana Timofeeva and Viktor Kabernik.
Oksana : According to legend, two factions are fighting for influence on Earth: “Enlightened” (marked in green) and “Resistance” (marked in blue). Their struggle is for control over exotic matter – a kind of higher power that makes people talented. But at the same time, people can become talented from her in both a good and a bad sense: that is, both great composers and, for example, great dictators are equally “infected” with her. The green faction believes that, despite the potential threats, exotic matter must still exist in order to endow people with talents. The faction of “blues” is in favor of the fact that the influence of such a force is too unpredictable, which means that it should not exist.
Victor : Ingress’s storyline was strong at the start, but the further it goes, the more it gets dashed. Initially, the developers tried to make the plot interactive so that the actions of the players directly affect it. But the further, the more the priorities changed. After the release of Ingress from beta, there was a massive influx of newcomers who did not understand what was happening here. They just ran and grabbed portals. As a result, the storyline became weaker and weaker, and the actions of the players ceased to influence it at all.
How regular players play
“ One of our agents once farmed in an industrial area outside the city, where before that there were several thefts (which the agent did not know about). There he walked with a smartphone, hacking portals. Through the surveillance cameras, the guards saw that some guy was moving around the territory, then stood for a long time in one place and looked at the floor – in general, they immediately called the police. The police interrogated him for over half an hour. The guy tried to explain that this was an augmented reality game, and they eventually let him go, but it was clear that they didn’t buy his version ”(story of one of the players on Reddit).
Oksana : There is a very large stratum of people among the players, whom we call “district buns”. They just go from work to home and take over all the portals along the way at the same time.
Victor : If you count them, then in total, about 50 thousand people launch the game in Moscow alone per day. But this is a game at the level of “open – look – take away until the end of the day.”
Oksana : Despite this, both in Moscow and in the regions there is always an active war for territories. For example, if it turns out that there is a portal near your house, then it is quite possible that it will be repainted ( move from one faction to another – ed .) Seven times a day.
Everyone is having fun as they can. Someone constantly puts farms ( massive clusters of portals at a short distance, which can be quickly bypassed – in about 10 minutes – and get a lot of items from them at once to increase the level – ed .). Someone is interested in “keeping” their area in their own color. Someone is interested in doing field art – creating images on a map from fields of blue and green. By the way, the first field art was made in Moscow.
Victor : Basically, all the players are doing this: they farm and paint as much territory as possible in their color. But if ordinary players do it from time to time and can only paint over their own yard, then organized players are planning such actions that can paint the whole of Europe.
How “serious” players play
“ I knew one player who rode in a huge pickup truck, and he had entertainment: he drove up to the portals of his faction, waited for the burglar, calculated him (this is easy to do, because the burglar should be nearby and he will have a smartphone in his hands), and then he began to pursue. He simply drove a few tens of meters behind, repainting all the portals of the person he was pursuing. Once he drove a player on a motorcycle into a dead end, into a narrow alley, and the motorcyclist had to urgently brake and turn around so as not to hit the wall. They say the motorcyclist hasn’t played Ingress anymore ”(story of one of the players on Reddit).
Victor : In the Ingress community, you can find something to your liking: someone loves to judge difficult actions, someone loves traveling or running around the city, someone prefers to coordinate a team.
Oksana : A lot of people, including drivers, are needed for every major “repainting” action. The leaders give them instructions: for example, to drive from Tverskaya to Voikovskaya at a predetermined time along the agreed route, capturing all the portals along the road. It happened that Moscow was completely repainted in one night.
There are about 600 active players who regularly participate in our events in Moscow. There are many players in the regions: from St. Petersburg to Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Murmansk.
Victor : Ingress is not a game in the usual sense, but rather a space for playing: the rules here are set by the players themselves. And this is what we are doing – we figure out what to do.
The largest operation I coordinated somehow took over a sixth of the world, painting it green. The story began with the fact that I came to Tenerife, met there with one of the local players, and we had the idea to try to capture a really large territory. A working group was found, 12 people, who – each in their own country – gathered other groups that were also involved in the operation.
It was enough to capture only 19 portals around the world (the maximum distance for establishing a link between portals of the highest level is about 655 km. But they should not intersect with links of the opposite faction of the same level), and to guarantee success, we also provided for “plan B”. As a result, 150 portals were prepared simultaneously, each of which we had our own person – in Canada, Magadan, Hawaii. In total, 460 people took part in the event, and the overwhelming majority of them did not know at all what they were doing ( such secrecy is needed so that the opposite faction could not disrupt the operation, creating its own connections within the limits of a huge field – ed. )
This operation took five months to prepare and is still the largest operation in the world. For each such operation, a plot is written, complex riddles are created in it. One of the operations even launched an internal internet radio for the participants.
About inter-faction activities
“So we put the 8th “farm” on the Borodino panorama late yesterday evening. Suddenly, two greens show up. One I really did not like: a terrible swearing. But they say he is a good man. Then I remembered that I had to give the girl several items. “Green” ears pricked up, heard, let’s spin around us. You cannot throw a capsule with little things in their presence – they will pick it up first. We got to the girl’s car. The Greens are with us. They are not going to leave under any pretext: they are examining the car, pestering them with questions. OK, I say, let’s go, let’s go, I’ll drop the capsule away from you. OK, he says. We look – “green” somewhere suddenly rushed with terrible speed, wagging their asses. Well, we didn’t understand, we neigh … Then we look – they open the car door 50 meters away. It turns out that they also had a car. We tear to Kutuzovsky, along it in the direction of the region. The girl was annealing: either she would drive through a gas station with a breeze, or a piece in the opposite lane … These two are not lagging behind. We rush through the night Kuntsevo (case around midnight), through the Setun platform, trying to throw off the “tail”. Finally we stop at one gas station – we really needed to refuel. The “greens” make a couple of circles around us, like, in spite of our direction, and in general here by accident – and such persecution in the real world is strictly prohibited by the rules of the game, for such a ban they will immediately be banned. I photograph them, they cover their faces. Finally, they pretend that they are leaving, I jump on the scooter, rush in the opposite direction, estimating how long it is necessary to drive away for the girl to reach the thrown capsule, and the “green” ones do not. It worked. The “greens” are taking pictures of us, yelling something about using the second account, that everyone has filmed and will write a report on us. I answer, that I also filmed everything and, in turn, I will slap such a report for harassment to both, which will not seem a little, we risked our lives, seeing that we were persistently pursued by an unknown car. With that we parted”(Story of one of the players on Facebook).
Although the “blues” and “greens” are irreconcilable enemies, and the showdown between them sometimes reaches a massacre, truly keen players consider this behavior unsportsmanlike. The leaders of both factions are in constant contact with each other and even try to hold joint events for hundreds of participants.
Victor : The rules are discussed, each faction nominates several representatives, and then the competition begins according to these rules. The mechanics of such an event are arbitrary. For example, both factions must drive a pedestrian to a certain point.
Oksana : This pedestrian is a real person who follows the route created for him from links. The task of the teams is to guide a person along their links, not allowing the other team to “hijack” him. The team that led the pedestrian to the finish line wins. If the allotted time – for example, four hours – is over, and the person has not reached anywhere, a draw is declared.
Victor : Such an event requires the efforts of several hundred people.
Why do people play Ingress?
This was the most important question we asked Viktor and Oksana. There are enough worries and problems in our world – why do they add new ones to themselves?
Oksana : Having started playing Ingress, I began to communicate with people from other cities and countries. Each faction has familiar agents in almost every city. They will not necessarily react to your arrival, but after reaching, for example, Ufa, with Ingress you can find someone and ask for help to sort out the city.
Victor : Ingress is a story about global mobility that requires a lot of travel. There is, for example, the city of Alexandria, but there are no local players there at all. According to the storyline, a shard got there (an artifact of 13 parts, which each faction had to deliver to its city. The artifact could only be moved along the links between the portals – ed. ). How this splinter got there is unclear, but you need to get it out. Our entire faction quickly raised money for a trip to Alexandria for a landing of several people. They arrived, took over the portals, moved the shard, and quickly left.
“We are diving into the already familiar darkness of the park. Branches crunch underfoot, in the bushes someone is eating someone. We calmly continue to move towards the portal. The police arrive. There are questions about who we are and what we are doing here. We explain that this is a game related to the study and visit of ancient monuments. In the course of conversations, we capture the portal and throw a link. Just in time, because the agents of the Resistance are already very close and are attacking our portals in the park. All this time, the policeman is studying our passports, visas, tickets, giving the data on the radio for verification. We are being searched. Finally, the shard moves to our destination, Turkey. I am experiencing a real thrill from the successful completion of the key phase of the operation. It means we didn’t fly here in vain ”(report on the operation in Alexandria from a player in LiveJournal).
Ingress is a test of the pen for Google in the world of augmented reality games, the first pancake, which in many ways turned out to be lumpy: it is not in the tops, there is no gossip about it at every corner, and there is no beautiful graphics in it, but it has a nightmarish interface, but communicate with other agents come across wildly uncomfortable Google+. But if you somehow manage to get used to all this, it will be difficult to get you out of Ingress – in fact, you will have a second, parallel life, in which there are sudden night chases, difficult tasks, cunning intrigues and new friends (as well as new enemies ). Is it worth it or not? Decide for yourself.
