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So last night I was driving around until 4am playing secret agent.

I don’t know if I’ve shared with you folks my little obsession with a game called INGRESS. It’s a cell phone ARG game created by Google’s Niantic. My brother got me into it and now my whole family plays. 

Now I’ve been a pc gamer since my first 286 Dos machine, but ARG was something completely new for me. It takes you away from the big screen and outside. You have to walk around and interact with the real world and your allies and enemies are players in your home town. For a shy girl like me who often struggles to find a reason to leave the house, it has led me to explore places and meet people I would never have otherwise. I’ve made some amazing friends, had crazy adventures, and witnessed incredible feats of coordination and cooperation from players all over the globe.

It’s also a game with interesting demographics. In my experience, players are typically college age and older. Teams are often a fascinating mix of ages (some of the most hardcore players I know are retired) and a pretty even distribution of men and women. In fact, more than half of the regional cell leaders I play with regularly are women. There are only two factions, so you can find allies wherever you go. You can play anywhere in the world with cell coverage, and the more you travel, the more your gameplay widens. Playing in pairs and groups is advantageous, so it’s a great game for nerd couples, friends who like exploring together, and families with older children. My family is spread out geographically, and for us it’s been a great excuse to stay connected. Family holidays have gone from low-key dinners and boring shopping to nerd parties bent around maps and plans, tense hours as we sit in a deserted parking lot waiting for the signal to smash and link.

My local team was forged in the torrential rains of Persepolis, one of the large tournament events Niantic organizes every couple months. I barely knew the people I carpooled down to Toronto with thinking we were in for a fun, silly day of running around the street capturing imaginary portals. A hour in, the skies opened up. We huddled around our target in dripping coats and ponchos, phones encased in ziplock bags, fighting every intense 10-minute battle barely able to see our fingers, the enemy hidden in nearby storefronts and alcoves, the back and forth so quick sometimes no one held a portal for more than a second. For four hours we braved wind and rain. Bike teams wiped out on streetcar tracks. Many phones were sacrificed. Not once did anyone complain or give up. At the end of the day, crammed into a restaurant for the wrap-up party, we were drenched, laughing, and transformed into a unit addicted to unique thrill that Ingress offers.

You can play Ingress casual and you can play alone, but the teamwork aspect is where the game really changes. I play for the Enlightened faction, and there’s a longstanding joke that getting ENL to work together is like herding cats. But when it happens, it’s magical. There’s nothing quite like spending months planning a field to cover a huge swathe of territory, collecting keys, making contacts, positioning agents, creating schemes to distract the enemy... then watching dozens, even hundreds of agents, work together simultaenously, racing against the clock, to build a virtual structure, block an enemy op, or move a shard. Whether you play for the scoreboard, the badges, or just to pass the time on a boring commute, it’s a game with the flexibility to fold it’s way into your life and connect you in a deep way to your city.

Ingress is not a perfect game. In many ways I’m most eager to see what will be its successor because there is so much unexplored potential in the ARG model. But if you’re looking for a gaming experience that’s a little different, but still has that sense of community you get with online MMORPGS, it’s defintely worth checking out (and it’s free!).

But of course you should join the ENLIGHTNED, because we’re fun, easygoing outside of ops, and unpredictable as a herd of cats on the nip.