Ingress #FirstSaturdays #IngressFS

                    

Update on Vancouver #FirstSaturdays Schedule

When: Sat. November 1st

Schedule: 

10:30am - Those interested in coffee can meet at:

Little Mountain Coffee shop - 4895 Main St,Vancouver

• People can register their AP (see below) at the table there. 

11:30am - Meet at Mountainview Graveyard (GY) at the Admin building.

• People can register their AP (see below) at the table there. 

12 to 2pm - Newer and more experienced players team up to earn AP (see below for more details). 

2pm - People register their final AP with organizers. 

Thanks again to @tafl for all of the organizing! 

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What are #IngressFS: FirstSaturdays are an Agent-organized meetup that happens on the first Saturday of the month in those cities taking place around the world. 

From Ingress #IngressFS

Agents.  We are pleased to announce a new type of Niantic event - "Ingress: First Saturday."

Part social, part competitive, Ingress: First Saturday is an Agent-organized meetup that happens on the first Saturday of the month.  

The very first #IngressFS meetup will happen on November 1, 2014; and 24 cities will be selected to receive Niantic Labs' official "Ingress: First Saturday Kits (IFSK-100)".  The select 24 cities will be chosen on October 20, 2014 from those communities/cities that register athttp://goo.gl/pNR7pI

#FirstSaturdays Details for Vancouver:

Date: Saturday, November 1st 

Schedule: 

10:00 AM  Cross-Faction Coffee:  Join or invite new and seasoned Enlightened and Resistance Agents in this purely social Cross-Faction meetup. All Levels are encouraged to join.  Grab a cup of coffee, meet local Agents face-to-face-to-face, learn how to play Ingress or teach a new Agent the ins and outs of Ingress and share Ingress stories.

***** Location is still being confirmed. It will be communicated soon. *****


11:45 AM  Level-Up Bootcamp (Start):  

We will convene at the Mountainview Graveyard - 5455 Fraser St. Vancouver, BC. 

Register your level and AP with the opposing Faction lead.  HiLVL Agents will pair with newer Agents working to level up.  Note that the official Visur game mechanic will reward AP gained among low level Agents during #IngressFS most handsomely.

Plan: 

• We will partner up newer players with more experienced players. 
• Everyone will log their starting AP with the Team Leads for the opposing Faction. 
• Experienced player will take portals down, newer player will build. 
• At 2pm, both report their final AP to the Team Leads for the opposing Faction. 
• Niantic will be creating scores based on cumulative AP. This will be reported by the Team Leads to Niantic. 
• Niantic will tally scores for all participating sites and determine who wins this #IngressFS. 

2:00 PM  Level-Up Bootcamp (End):  Agents will check back in with the opposing Faction Lead to record their final AP.  Individual Faction prizes are included in IFSK-100's. Communities are encouraged to develop their own Faction prize/trophies.

Can Austin take Portland?  Will Sydney top Aukland? Shall Buenos Aires rise above Rio? City v. city total Cross-Faction AP gain will be measured and reported back to#IngressFS for bragging rights and possible awarding of the next set of IFSK-100's for December 6, 2014 (48 cities).

Register your November 1 #IngressFS event via http://goo.gl/pNR7pI. On October 20, Niantic Labs will poll all registered Google+ event pages for RSVP "Yes" attendance and other factors.  24 selected cities will be shipped an IFSK-100 - designed to supply a total of 100 Agents.  

                                

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Thanks to @tafl for setting up the event page and taking the lead in organizing Vancouver's event:

From Google + Ingress #FirstSaturday - Vancouver, BC

The very first #IngressFS  meetup will happen on Saturday, November 1, 2014.

So, Vancouver! We're coming up on 1 year of weekly cross-faction beer nights (WOW!) and now we have an opportunity to compete against other communities for an extra slice of glory! Let's take our friendly beer night to the next level and be amazing competitors!

To join in the event, visit the G+ Event page and click Going. 

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Ingress celebrates two year birthday with new monthly event 'First Saturdays'

Thorp-Lancaster, D. (2014). From: http://www.androidcentral.com/ingress-celebrates-two-year-birthday-new-monthly-event-first-saturdays

Real-world adventure game Ingress will be celebrating its second birthday this year, and it's doing so in style. Google's Niantic Labs, which runs the game, will be kicking off the celebration with a new monthly event series called "First Saturdays" which will serve to bring new Ingress "agents" into the fold. The events will run simultaneously in 120 cities across the world, and will be entirely player-driven.

The first of these monthly events will kick off on November 1st. However, starting tonight, a special program will run for two weeks where agents will earn double AP points, triple rewards for portal hacks, and exclusive medals for reaching certain levels by November 15th.

Media & Gameplay: Ingress Celebrates 2nd Birthday with Increase in Hacked Gear

             

Ingress Celebrates its 2nd Birthday
Cincur, B. (2014). Decode Ingress. Retrieved from: http://decodeingress.me/2014/10/23/ingress-celebrates-2nd-birthday/

To celebrate the 2nd anniversary, Niantic will award a special Innovator Medal to all Agents who reach Level 3 by November 15th, 2014.

There are 2 tiers of Innovator Medal:

• Bronze Medal: Reach Level 3
• Silver Medal: Reach Level 9

And that’s not all: for the next two weeks, AP gain will double. Also, hack output will increase:

• 3X more Resonators
• 3X more XMPs
• 3X more Rare Heat Sinks and Multi-hacks

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Ingress celebrates two year birthday with new monthly event 'First Saturdays'

Thorp-Lancaster, D. (2014). From: http://www.androidcentral.com/ingress-celebrates-two-year-birthday-new-monthly-event-first-saturdays

Real-world adventure game Ingress will be celebrating its second birthday this year, and it's doing so in style. Google's Niantic Labs, which runs the game, will be kicking off the celebration with a new monthly event series called "First Saturdays" which will serve to bring new Ingress "agents" into the fold. The events will run simultaneously in 120 cities across the world, and will be entirely player-driven.

The first of these monthly events will kick off on November 1st. However, starting tonight, a special program will run for two weeks where agents will earn double AP points, triple rewards for portal hacks, and exclusive medals for reaching certain levels by November 15th.

Ingress Guardians: A Love-Hate Relationship

This post is dedicated to one of my dear, departed guardians, which was taken out recently. Prior to this happening, I began to draft this post about guardians since many of us seem to have a love-hate relationship with them, and with each other about them.;-)

What is a Guardian?

A guardian is when you control a portal for a specific number of consecutive days. In other words, you have at least one resonator on it, it doesn't get smashed by the other faction and it keeps accruing days toward specific badges.

From Decode Ingress:

A Guardian badge is achieved by protecting and maintain control of a Portal for an extended period of time.

Guardian badge has 5 tiers and each tear has a required number of days to achieve it.

• Bronze – 3 days
• Silver – 10 days
• Gold – 20 days
• Platinum – 90 days
• Onyx – 150 days

How Does one Establish and Nurture a Guardian? 

When you look at your Agent Stats for All Time, under the Defense section, you can see the first line: Max Time Portal Held. If the number of days keeps growing, you have yourself at least one guardian.

When I first started playing I didn't really think much about getting a guardian. I live in a fairly large, urban area and the chances of establishing and keeping one here was pretty much Nil. When I selected a couple of portals in my area and they promptly got smashed and taken out, I realized I had to put more effort into this whole Guardian thing if I wanted to be a successful Guardian badge hunter.

I then scoured the Intel map and found some places that would coincide with a visit to particular areas.

What makes for a good Guardian portal?

1. They were off the beaten track, so to speak. Not usually in high traffic areas. This is harder for some of us than others, depending on the area we play in.
2. They did not have a lot a other portals nearby.
3. They were not owned by anyone else at the time.
4. We have to be able to charge them from home. Depending on our Level in the game, if the Guardian is far away (really far) we may not be able to recharge it.
5. The more remote the better. These stand a really good chance of ticking through the days, since few people will get there and cell service is often very dicey once out in the back-a-beyond.
6. The time of year and weather might be your best friends. If you find a remote guardian and nurture it well, this could last enough time to get you your badges because the Guardian is so remote it is inaccessible at certain times of the year, or the weather just makes it really hard to get to it.

Other important stuff about Guardians?

How many resonators does one put on a Guardian - Most people put a single, or couple of resonators on their Guardian. That's how people often determine it is your Guardian. Its sitting quietly somewhere, with one or two resos on it and some mods.

Be discreet - When Guardian hunting, you may want to keep it on the down low and not announce to the local faction on the other side that you've been in the area. In other words, do not smash and wage war in the area you're establishing your Guardian. Quietly visit a particular area. If it is an unclaimed portal, even better. Sometimes we do smash and take a portal over, but if we do this, we should expect someone else is going to come and reclaim the portal, or take it away from us at some point.

Burn that Guardian portal out - Get as many portal keys as you can at the time you claim it. Almost everyone I've talked to has a story about deleting their portal key(s) at some point. I did it, but had backups. This is especially important if you have a remote Guardian you can't easily get to. If someone else has accompanied you on your Guardian expedition, get them to keep a key, or two for you. They may also help with your recharging.

Linking and Fielding from Your Guardian - It is often quite annoying when someone in our own faction links and fields from our Guardian. And making it an anchor is the fast-track to losing our Guardian. Some of us go out looking to smash people's Guardians for sport/fun. Others take them out while badge hunting for uniques. We want our Guardians to be out of the way, unobtrusive and just keep ticking and earning us badges.

What does one do when a team member links, or fields, from our Guardian? Well, some of us might Jarvis portals that have been linked to our Guardian so they can go back to being the anonymous little portal off in the distance. Its your call.

Don't get heartbroken, or angry if you lose your Guardian - This is easier said, than done. Your heart will most likely sink, or for some of us more aggro folks, our blood boil when we go to recharge and find our Guardian has been taken out/taken over. This is part of gameplay.

Keep it alive - I've heard stories about people thinking they had lost their Guardian due to decay, but when they visited it again and popped a resonator on it, or recharged it the portal caught up in terms of time, or just kept ticking along toward a badge.

Media: Ingress Diaries: In the Cemetery, At Midnight, with the Flashlight

                    

Ingress Diaries: In the Cemetery, At Midnight, with the Flashlight

How Agent ArielSkye Got Over Her Fear of Werecoyotes Eating Her Face Off (kind of)

Goodwin, S. (2014). The Mary Sue. Retrieved from: http://www.themarysue.com/ingress-diaries-in-the-cemetery-at-midnight-with-the-flashlight/

I startle easily. Really easily. And I have a vivid imagination. So, when I’m parked in a cemetery at midnight and the wind makes a tree rustle and drop acorns on the ground, I imagine that I’m being surrounded by a pack of werecoyotes bent on slowly eating my face off. Why then? Why would I do this to myself? What am I doing parked in a creepy cemetery at midnight, gripping my cell phone in one hand and one of those giant flashlights that doubles as a bludgeoning tool in the other? Well… I’m playing a game called Ingress.

You see, the Smurfs took our farm earlier in the day, and I can’t stand seeing all of that blue on the Intel map. It’s gotta go. And Agent ArielSkye is just the badass level 10 agent to do it. (Yeah, my agent name is ArielSkye, and yes, I did name my badass level 10 Enlightened agent after my favorite Disney princess and Skye from Agents of Shield. Criticize me and watch me the-opposite-of-caring. :-)) If she doesn’t fall prey to the pack of werecoyotes first. And if she can find another Agent to join her to be coyote bait—I mean, a buddy system.

                                                              

So… what the heck is Ingress, and why do I play it?

Ingress is a GPS-based augmented reality MMORPG that is played on a cell phone. Niantic Labs created it and marketed the concept to Google, with the game originally only being available on Android devices. Just this year, an Apple version became available as well. You can check out their official website for live events and access to the media files that explain the backstory.

But here’s my explanation: Ingress is like the love child of geocaching and Capture the Flag with a cool sci-fi backstory thrown in to appeal to Nerdmuffins like me. The basic premise is that this… entity, or alien race known only as “The Shapers,” has “gifted” our world with Exotic Matter (known as XM). This XM concentrates in areas of cultural, historical, or artistic importance, like parks, old cemeteries, statues, and historical buildings. Within the game, these places are known as “portals.” Gameplay involves going to portals in real-time and capturing them for your faction, of which there are two: The Enlightened (green, often called “frogs”) and The Resistance (blue, often called “Smurfs”).

A portal can be green or blue, indicating that it’s owned by one of those two factions, or a white-ish gray, meaning that it’s unclaimed.

In the game, there are resonators, which you can think of as the “flags,” and bursters, which are basically like the “guns.” If Agent ArielSkye is walking to a restaurant for lunch and comes across an unclaimed portal along the way, she can deploy resonators to claim that portal and turn it green. And she does. If Agent ArielSkye encounters a blue portal, she can use her bursters and blast the blue right off of it, deploy resonators, and claim the portal as her own. Which she will. She’s cool like that.

There are other aspects of gameplay—you can put mods on a portal that make it harder for the other faction to take it down, you can farm for keys and inventory, you can play cooperatively to create large fields or long links, or you can travel out of town and collect unique portal keys. You can also communicate with other players via an in-game chat, so smack talk is totally a thing. For example:

AgentSmurfyWhinypants: You destroyed my Guardian Portal! Whyyyyy!!!!
Agent ArielSkye: Your “Guardian Portal” was in plain sight. Off of a highway. In a parking lot. Do better next time. I’m helping you grow.
AgentSmurfyWhinypants: I’m going to find your portals and turn them blue!
AgentArielSkye: Go ahead. I’ll take them back and get more points to level up. You’re so helpful! Thanks, man!

Some cool things about Ingress:

1) I walk more. I walk to lunch so I can play Ingress along the way. I park downtown and walk around to farm some inventory and level up. I meet up with other Ingress players to walk around together. Basically, it’s making me more active and helping me meet more local nerds to chill with, and those are some really good things.

2) I am now much more aware of parks, monuments, and general cool stuff in my area. There are statues here in my town I never knew existed. There are parks I have explored that I never would have been to before. And there are restaurants I eat in because they are portals, and I can put a multi-hack on it and hack away throughout my meal. And I do.

3) Local groups of players are supportive and generally cool. The Bloomington Enlightened communicate with each other via the in-game chat and also via Google Hangouts. We rush to the rescue of other Agents who are trying to make something or take something down. We have parties and cookouts. We help noobs level up. When my awesome cat Valentine passed away a few months ago, the local Enlightened group got me an official Ingress poster, and everyone signed it (real names and game names) with their with condolences. Seriously.

4) When I first started playing, I was one of only a few lady players in town. Now we are many, we travel in packs, and we plot strategy. Diabolically. To quote Kefka, “Bwa ha ha!”

5) Gameplay is vastly different depending on whom you play with. One of my friends likes to take trips out of town and use the game to direct us to places of interest. A couple of friends and I like to walk around downtown and reinforce existing green portals and make links and fields. When I play with my brother, he likes to plot out ways to make giant fields that cover the Intel map with green. My mom plays sometimes as well, and she enjoys the local history aspect—submitting new portals for consideration and writing good descriptions of historical places. There are official events called Anomalies that players can engage in as well.

6) I have a lot more weird phobias after dark than I ever thought I did. I’m a night owl, and I do a lot of my Ingress playing in the wee hours. I never knew that I was a person who worried about wild animals leaping out of the forest and into the open window of my car. Now, I know this about myself. I keep the window up to block werecoyote access to my face. Problem… solved?

7) I take the long way to get places. By the “long way,” I mean “the way with the most portals along it.” Ingress obsession can cause some delay in getting from point A to point B. Especially if you encounter a blue portal and have to pull over to take care of things. :-)

8) Generally, I play smart—I don’t climb fences and trespass or tempt fate by crawling into potential werecoyote dens. If I’m going to be out in the dark for a long time, I tell people where I’m going. It’s usually more fun to play with friends, and you waste a lot fewer resources if you’re not using all of your own resonators and bursters to deal with enemy portals. Two of my friends have serious safety concerns about the game, but so far, I have not ended up dead in a ditch or been turned into a faceless werecoyote. Just be sensible and don’t do stupid things like hiking alone in a thunderstorm while holding a metal rod aloft, challenging Zeus to strike you down.

9) The game is played internationally. There have been some really cool images created with both factions cooperating. Especially in Ukraine:

                                    

This is just… neat!

10) I chose Team Green. You don’t have to. Even if you decide to be a Smurf, you’re going to have fun, make friends, and explore. And, without Smurfs, us Frogs would be kind of bored. It takes all kinds.
So, if you decide to become an Ingress Agent after reading this article—have fun! Explore, make friends, and carry a big flashlight. In case of werecoyotes. Just because they’re not real doesn’t mean they’re not lurking behind a tombstone, ready to leap out and eat some faces!

Agent ArielSkye’s Scanner (aka her cell phone)

Videos: Ingress Game Play

Guest post from @sidetracked: 

Video Tips From the "Ingress Report"

Early in the life of the "Ingress Report" they had a series of video tutorials to help agents level up. Here are the first eight episodes.

1. L1 - Hack Everything and Get Help
2. L2 - Fielding and Events
3. L3 - Commuting and Scanner Tips
4. L4 - Portal Defence
5. L5 - Scanner Communications and Field Strategy
   
6. L6 - Join Your Community
7. L7 - Playing as a Team
8. L8 - Mentoring

Video: Playing Ingress: Capture, destroy, link and field

Capture, destroy, link and field. Discover nearby Portals and make new friends from around the globe. #Ingress, explained by Agents.

From the Ingress YouTube channel, shared by @sidetracked

Playing Ingress

For those who can't access the embedded video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6-JAm3NCAk

Media: Google’s Ingress Takes Mobile Gaming to the Streets

Google’s Ingress Takes Mobile Gaming to the Streets

Andersen, M. (2014). Wired. Originally posted at ARGNet. Excerpts below. Click the link to read the whole article for background on how Ingress started, game specifics and the convoluted storyline. 

Google has encouraged Android users to wage a silent battle for global domination focused on locations of cultural relevance, through its mobile game Ingress. For over a year, “field agents” in the game’s invite-only beta have pieced together a deep narrative hiding just beneath the surface of the geolocative gameplay. The game was recently opened up to all Android devices, with an iOS release rumored for 2014.

It’s been over a year since Google introduced the world of Ingress. At its core, the project is a locative mobile game spawned out of NianticLabs@Google, an internal skunkworks team based out of the search giant’s San Francisco office. In Ingress, players compete to capture and connect virtual portals situated at real world locations to control the globe for their team. 

Finding Community in Competition

In the past year, the Ingress community has blossomed, with blogs and a subredditproviding regular updates on the game’s progress, Wikis documenting the minutae of the game’s story, and a weekly in-game web series produced by NianticLabs drawing attention to some of the game’s highlights, focusing in equal parts on the narrative and gameplay. And there are quite a few highlights, like when one passionate player got a tattoo of the game’s logo.

Each of these serve as practical windows into the world of Ingress for the outsider, but the most vibrant community can be found on Google+. While Google’s efforts to integrate its social network across everything from YouTube to Gmail has been met its own resistance from the company’s existing user base, Ingress may serve as Google’s strongest case study for providing a compelling reason for people to actually use the service for its intended purpose. Ingress‘ gameplay is inherently competitive, pitting faction against faction. However, inter-faction collaboration is also essential for regional planning, so players have turned to Google+ Circles to manage tactical planning while still participating in cross-factional conversations.

The friendly localized rivalries have even led to some unexpected and unprompted instances of geo-locative artwork. Given a palatte of geo-locative points on a map, Enlightened and Resistance field agents teamed up to engage in not-so-random acts of field art, carving out virtual bat signals, woodpeckers, and sailboats to decorate the game’s interface.

Media: Pennsylvania man arrested on warrant while playing Ingress game in Warren County

Pennsylvania man arrested on warrant while playing Ingress game in Warren County

Bultman, M. (2014). The Express-Times. Lehighvalleylive. 

While a Monroe County man was trying to capture landmarks in Oxford Township, police captured him.
John Randall, 55, of Eldred Township, and another man in the early morning hours of Sept. 13 were outside St. Rose of Lima Parish playing an interactive cellphone game called Ingress, according to police. Similar to capture the flag, the game requires players to visit historical or cultural places and claim them for their team.

A Washington Township, New Jersey, police officer -- the department  provides coverage to Oxford -- was on patrol about 1:50 and became suspicious of the two men in the church's Academy Street parking lot, police said in a news release.

The officer discovered the men were playing the cellphone game but also found Randall had a $290 outstanding warrant out of Riverdale, N.J., police said.

He was arrested and released after posting bail, police said.

Matthew Bultman may be reached at mbultman@express-times.com. Follow him on Twitter @NWJerseyCrime. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.