Les hvorfor Linda Firveld fikk hakeslep da “nerde-kompisen”, som helst spiser hamburger, pølse eller biff til middag, fortalte at han hadde gått over 1000 kilometer på ett år.
I have two very good friends, and I will name them John and Thomas in this article. They are 40 years old, very nice guys, sociable, intelligent, fun travelling with and foremost, they are geeks, of course working with and within the technology industry.
Last week, Thomas told me that he had walked almost 1000 kilometers in a year. This information baffled me and made my brain spin. If you had known Thomas, yours would have, too. He is the incarnation of the stereotypical geek. His favorite meals are hamburgers, pizza and steak. What else to drink but beer or coke.
This is what really happened.
Thomas found Ingress, or Ingress found Thomas, hard to tell. Ingress is a mobile online portal game from Google. There are two teams, the blue team (Resistance) and the green team (Enlightened). My friends are frogs (Enlightened) and fight the smurfs (Resistance).
Ingress is basically a mobile, augmented digital version of Risk (a strategy board game). Ingress is a user driven platform where the players continuously add new portals. A portal is object or structure in the categories art or exceptional architecture, required to be located in public areas for everyone to reach. The portals are the key in Ingress. You get rewarded with energy, weapons, keys to other portals and that’s what the teams are really fighting about, owning the portals in order to create triangular zones and regions.
Social Innovation
Ingress has several dimensions. Gamification, Gratification, Augmented Reality, Technology, Social Business, the fact that G+ found its prime audience.
Social Innovation
In an unscientific but still very describing survey by Simulacrum, there are quite a few interesting stats to pay attention to, here’s a handful.
93% walked more
88% have seen places they otherwise wouldn’t have
74% have met fellow players in real life
2% of players made air trips especially to reach Ingress locations
16% have bought a new device or hardware to play the game
8% have upgraded their phone/data subscription
40 year old grown men change their social behavior, having fun and taking an active part in a social sci-fi universe in their chase of beating blue smurfs.
On a trip to London, John made us do a detour of three hours on our way to Heathrow. This was because he “had” to pick up a unique portal key from a guy from Stavanger, who happened to be in London at the same time. This guy showed up with his nice wife and kid in tow(the wife also plays).
What strikes me as interesting, is how an online game with real-world interaction can result in great health benefits. It hints to that we can look at problems like obesity with fresh eyes and other methods in the future.
Ingress has given me a small glimpse of the vast area of untouched ground in social innovation. It tells me that we have yet to reach a higher potential when it comes to mixing people with science and technology. It certainly has made me very curious about what is waiting for us around the next corner.
The second really important topic is what do we miss by not giving every person on the planet access to internet. And that’s what my next post is about, stay tuned.
Thanks for reading, hope you liked it!
Author: Linda Firveld
Sources: Ingress.com, a game by Google. Simulacrum blog. Ingress players.
Foto: Ingress.com
Credits: Jorunn Newth, Simen Sommerfeldt, Jan Pedro Tumusok for reading through, giving me advice and checking my spelling.
