Computer Games

One of the ways I knew I was getting sick was that my ability to code dropped through the floor, so I’ve been fiddling with things from time to time as a test. I’m still veering between faint positive tests and negative tests, but I got a wild hair and wrote some Python today. Credit for the underlying text and mechanics goes to Oliver Darkshire (original). I have taken the liberty of skipping assassination attempts when there’s no chance of success and decided that you can’t try an assassination attempt after an ending is reached. ...

My friend Pongo wrote an artist’s statement about Ingress. She speaks truth: I have worked with Pongo for over a year now and her ability to infuse the canvas of the game with story is inherently artistic. I play for different reasons than she does. I’ve been coordinating the actions of teams for 20 years now, at first on AmberMUSH but soon thereafter in my professional career. I’m good at it. Ingress is a difficult but satisfying instance of that task, in a framework that requires me to think on several different layers (people, logistics, tactics, and on occasion grand strategy). ...

On Saturday, Susan and I spent the day in West Seattle doing an Ingress mission series.

My perspective: veteran Ingress player, no previous experience with Pokemon Go, a fair bit of mobile gaming work experience. I’m not gonna do the whole “wow, look at the wild news story!” thing. Hot take: geo-located gaming generates interesting behavior patterns. I do have one item I can’t resist sharing, though. Pokemon GO chauffeur services are here. (But don’t buy egg hatching services, since you’re not allowed to let someone else use your account even if they’re carrying your phone.) ...

This is what I did with my evening. To be precise, I had a small part in creating the conditions that made this possible. We did not execute perfectly for various and sundry reasons, but that’s what the human ability to learn and improve is for. For non-Ingress players: the primary means of scoring points in the game is creating fields. Bigger fields are more points. Fields are always triangles. You create fields by generating links between portals. You make a link between two portals by going to the source portal and using up a key to the destination portal. ...

I think I’m the first Ingress player in the Bay Area to hit platinum specops, which means I’ve done 200 missions. (Missions are player-generated mini-quests that can be as easy as interacting with 4 portals or as hard as figuring out a set of passphrases over multiple miles.) This was not super-hard to do, but it did require a lot of persistence and some planning. My 200th mission was Climb Mount Davidson (original) by Agent hiryu; it was a nice walk up to the top of Mount Davidson, which was not terribly strenuous but which rewarded me with a great view nonetheless. My longest one – probably Hike Mt. Wanda (original), in Contra Costa County, which was a couple of miles of hiking up a nifty trail. ...

Susan and I spent the afternoon hanging out at Point Bonita Lighthouse on the off chance that someone of the blue persuasion would drop by and try to do something interesting, in which case we had plans to dissuade them. As it turned out, we did get one visitor, but since our teammates had already done something larger and more interesting, there was no chance of tumult even if she’d had plans. ...

I’ve been playing a lot of Ingress recently. Short form: it’s Google’s augmented reality alien invasion PvP game; you physically go to in-game portals, which correspond with the locations of landmarks, public art, and so on, and perform various actions which lead to creating fields of influence over various areas. The two factions are competing to control the most minds; it’s literally scored in terms of mind units. Kind of sinister when you get right down to it. ...

So saith Massively. I am not at all surprised given what I know about the engineering teams working on that title. I am, nonetheless, tickled pink by this paragraph: From my 50-hours-of-playtime perspective, though, the launch has in fact been completely lag-free. It’s also been one of the more polished overall launches I’ve experienced in a number of years, though I wouldn’t say it’s number one (Lord of the Rings Online had fewer quest bugs out of the gate, which was all the more impressive since smooth MMO launches were unheard of in 2007). ...

My current secret MMO crush is Funcom’s The Secret World, which will be a modern dark fantasy conspiratorial MMO. I don’t expect much from it, which is why it’s a crush – the ideas are hot but as much as I want to like each and every Funcom MMO, there’s always been a bit of a gap between concept and execution. Hope springs eternal nonetheless. Now there is a trailer, which will probably not bear that much resemblance to game play. There is also a sort of informative interview. Starting locations will be London, New York, and Seoul. I so much want this game to be good.