Deep Dive: 5 lessons learned from 10 years of Ingress

gamedeveloper.com:

Game Developer Deep Dives are an ongoing series with the goal of shedding light on specific design, art, or technical features within a video game in order to show how seemingly simple, fundamental design decisions aren’t really that simple at all.

Earlier installments cover topics such as the scientific modeling behind the irrigation and water systems of Timberborn, how the 2D art of Songs of Glimmerwick benefited from a 3D art pipeline, and how the synergy between art and audio disciplines and a solid base of real-world data formed a surprisingly faithful televised broadcast experience in F1 Manager 2022.

In this edition, Ingress engineering director Michael Romero looks back at ten years of development on Ingress, Niantic's predecessor to Pokémon GO, to tell us what community-driven game design has taught him.

Ten years ago, long before Pokémon GO was a gleam in anyone’s eye, Niantic Labs, then just an autonomous unit inside of Google, released Ingress, a territory control game that requires going out into the real world.

It was a challenge to encourage players to walk outside and play a game in the real world, but we found there were people who seemed to be looking for a reason to go outside, while others were excited by the fact that there were only two teams. These social connectors then set out to build a network of players for their faction. Since the game is played in the real world, these networks also grew into face-to-face interactions. Quickly, the Ingress team realized this was something special, and we turned our attention to supporting this new community.

Developer: Niantic LabsPublisher: Niantic, Inc.Release Date: November 15 2012Platforms: Android, iOSNumber of Developers: About 12Length of Development: 10