A few years ago I played a mobile game called Ingress https://www.ingress.com/. Ingress was interesting as it was developed by Google (now split into a separate company called Niantic) and required GPS and data to give players points for doing in-game actions, in the real world - “augmented reality” or AR.

I decided to give Ingress a try as it was free and had no ads, perhaps a side effect of being owned by a giant company like Google (after I stopped playing, I believe a store and IAP were added). I usually ignore network features of games and plod at my own speed but in Ingress, other people are built into the game experience; all players interact with the same real world as you.

Most of the time these interactions took the form of other players visiting places I did - streets, parks, shops - at different times of the day. There was competitive and co-operative elements as players were split into two teams. Once (in what became the beginning of the end for me and Ingress), a player from the opposite team and I were at the same place at the same time, me trying to attack and s/he trying to defend a game “node” at the local high school to score points.

I’d read how other people enjoyed the sense of community around Ingress. Although none of my friends played the game, there’s a great blog post at http://blog.lauramichet.com/2014/08/17/meeting-strangers-in-the-street/ describing how the author made friends in-game, defended/attacked nodes in the middle of the night and kept healthy playing Ingress.

In the end, exercise, supporting my team, and meeting other people around scoring points in a game just wasn’t for me. I got the impression that to get better at the game I had to interact with other players, visit a ton of local “nodes” - often - and generally get over my embarrassment at my low-level character.

I don’t have time for that. But perhaps I’ll try the other game that Niantic makes - Pokémon Go.