Beyond the technological problems, however, there are other pitfalls for Ingress. For one thing, it seems like it could easily turn into a pretty severe grind, particularly for more enthusiastic players - given the lengthy approval process for new portals, the competition could quickly devolve into a battle of which team gets more players to spend their lunch breaks attacking a key strongpoint. (Kind of like Foursquare meets World of Warcraft.) This and a rudimentary leveling system give Ingress some of the more unpleasant hallmarks of modern MMORPGs.
What's more, it seems unlikely that businesses will fail to recognize the opportunity presented by the player-created portal system -- if all it takes to get a nearly guaranteed boost to foot traffic is a simple photograph sent to Google, who wouldn't give it a try? Thus, Ingress could quickly become a walking tour of local bars that were sufficiently quick on the uptake, rather than a conspiracy-inflected adventure game.
It would be somewhat unfair, however, to criticize a game model that isn't fully established, nor an obnoxious commercialization push that hasnt actually happened. Ingress is an ambitious project with expertly created atmosphere, polished packaging and the biggest possible backer in the form of Google. The game is already groundbreaking -- and if it avoids the aforementioned pitfalls and sands down its technical rough spots, it could easily become a classic.
Email Jon Gold at jgold@nww.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold. Long live the Resistance.
Read more about software in Network World's Software section.
