Friday, November 30, 2012

More on Niantic Project ARG/Narrative

Well, the google Niantic Project is going strong and seems to have more coming.  A lot has happened just in this last month of full on launch.  There was a massive shift in the ARG about half way into the month when Google released Ingress - www.ingress.com  it made a huge split and created a new wave of "players" many of these however were not interested in the ARG or backstory (some in chat have said that very thing) but just the Ingress video game app - it was fascinating to watch the IRC channel change from the puzzle solving and chatting to the new audience of gamers - there was such a difference... it was, odd and a definite people watching moment to see the shifts and changes.

It looks like this project has no signs of stopping, a second month timeline at www.nianticproject.com looks to be starting tomorrow.

Plus in this article - http://allthingsd.com/20121115/google-launches-ingress-a-worldwide-mobile-alternate-reality-game/  J. Hanke, the head of Niantic Labs - the department seeming to be behind this, or at least the PR face for this, mentions a long event.

I wanted to continue my community and fan based thread and thoughts and, i will get to that, but WOW a number of communities appeared overnight with the advent of the Ingress video game app element - there are dozens of groups.  Also, as the IRC and ARG puzzle solvers were overrun by the Ingress gamers, more wikis and google docs and other outlets have appeared, these are more one or two people, but are attempting to continue the puzzle solving.

There is so much going on with this project and event, people have been making art and similar by the 100s and 1000s to try and get invite codes to the Ingress game, have to admit, getting people to do something for the invites and especially creative art and similar is awesome.  Also, google is collecting a buttload of map data as people are taking pictures of local art, murals, science places and similar to try and get portals made. plus, they send in a map error when a portal is located wrong - what a way to do free data collection...

And I could go on, I need to, there is a lot to talk about and point out, but I am off to try and hack a portal.

Oh, for the record, for now, I joined the Enlightened side, even if it seems like the Shapers are not so nice.... ;)

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