Friday, April 5, 2013

Ingress and Google Glass. The pair that will last forever

Ingress, the game developed by Google last year, is a very odd piece of entertaiment. The game is actually set in the real world; Players roam about anywhere they please and collect energy,while looking for places-of-interests called "Portals". Players of two opposing factions fight against each other by capturing the portals (the process consists of walking up to a "portal" in real life and then using your phone to place a resonator near it) and linking them together to capture large pieces of land. Sounds fun, but why would Google ever make such a game?



Renovating Gaming. But how?

      All in all, the game is a lot of fun, it requires you to use a lot of wit as well as strength and endurance, since some of the enemies resonators in the real world are really hard to get to. However, the game experience itself is very limited due to the fact that one always has to look at their phone in order to keep up with what is around him in the game world.

This is what the game looks like...
...And this is what it needs to look like

And this is where the Google Glass comes in. The new technology that has been in development in Google is supposed to provide us with a brand new kind of human-device interaction. 



Google Glass
I will post the full review of the Glass later, but as of right now all that is important is the fact that the device is basically a wearable phone. Meaning, it is always on, always in front of you. You always know what is going on around you. One thing that users lack with Ingress is ablility to stay up-to-date, which results in loss of interest to the game over time. One thing Google Glass will lack is the ability to provide the same level of entertainment as modern mobile devices. Do you see where I am going?


To capture some portals. *badum-tsss*
One thing about Googles' business model, is that the company has little-to-no interest making things that do not bring any profit; Ingress, a free-to-play game, seemed to not fit in very well. That is, until you realize that this is only the games' beginning. When Glass goes public, thousands, millions of people will be eager to try it out, and having such an addicting multiplayer game is a very powerful factor that will only increase the sales of the device in the future. Besides, what is better than having so many people playing a free game (hint: free games are usually full of ads) from the creators of one of the most succesful targeted-Ad systems in the world? 

Now, get your game on. You know you want to.

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