Pokemon vs. Ingress

Well the UK release of Pokemon Go occurred on Thursday 14th July and I reinstalled the App to my complete lack of surprise it failed to logon restarted the App and tried to logon again again again...until I closed it down.  If I tried to register not through my Google account it pointed me at a site that told me due to the high number of new accounts being created they have limited the number that can be added at any one time.

Before all of this however I visited the town (was a city until they forgot register for it) Rochester, Kent, UK.  It is a level 8 Ingress Enlightened (Frogs) farm of about eighty portals, I play for the Resistance (Smurfs).  The thing about Ingress is you get to blow stuff up as opposed to catching fluffy animals and then training them to fight one on one battles for you.  Blowing stuff up in an augmented reality is quite a de-stresser and at same time creates an adrenaline boost so much so I was quite wired for the rest of Thursday, however it reminded me of how much I like the game.

Do I want to blow stuff up for real, DEFINITELY NOT!  There are other aspects of Ingress like creating farms, fielding, hacking kit, glyph hacking kit, guardians etc which allows you to play the game the way you want.

You have chat within the game also, unfortunately any form of open chat environment on the Internet always leads to Trolls.  Pokemon Go does not have chat functionality whatsoever not surprising since there is no age limit on Pokemon Go unlike Ingress which is set to thirteen and older, you do not want young kids subjected to trolls through the game.  They get enough of that via every other form of social media.

Ingress has the capability to trade items between players unfortunately this can lead to cheating in the form of dual accounting whilst Pokemon Go does not have that feature at the moment.  Although one of the first reviews I read of the game suggested that trading would be part of the game.  Maybe that will be in a future release.

The thing about Ingress is that you can play as a lone wolf or as a team player or both it is entirely up to you.  From what I have seen of Pokemon Go so far it is centered on single player game play whilst it does have some team aspects not nearly as much as Ingress.

My suggestion to you is if you have kids let them play Pokemon whilst you play Ingress.  The PokeStops/Gyms are a direct copy of the Ingress Portals although they have thinned them out somewhat.

Ingress is the grown up version of Pokemon Go not surprising since it came first and is effectively its parent game.

Pokemon Go in its first week generated $14.04 million since its release whereas Ingress has only made $1.1 million this however is a poor comparison since Ingress only recently added a purchase system on the App last year whereas Pokemon Go started with it and Pokemon itself is a huge well known brand.

The irony is that the child has far surpassed its parent in earnings alone. 

Additional note: Pokemon Spawn points are linked to XM generation in Ingress.

Selfish Meme

Social media is selfish, people on Twitter for instance will follow expecting to be follow back.  Even people’s profiles state that they will follow you back if you follow them.  And how many friends do you have on Facebook that you actually know personally in the flesh, spoken to face to face.

I have noticed recently having promoted this blog using Twitter using various hash-tags for each post that more people are following me and based upon their own tweets it would seem that they had not bothered to read my actual blog post.  If they had they probably not have followed me, they have assumed from the hash-tag that I would be interested in their tweets.  I have been added into an addiction list based upon the #drug I put on blog post about coffee, so if you want people to follow you use lots of hash-tags.

It is not necessarily just the Internet, how often do you ask someone how they are expecting them to ask you the same so can tell them what bad day you are having?  The Internet (Social Media) however seems to have extended our selfish capabilities by giving us different tools to let the world know you exist.  Would this then be also a selfish blog?

I would like to think my blog is my altruism kicking in, whilst I do promote on Google+ and Twitter the reason I want people to read it is because they may find it interesting and/or informative.

Social Media is the perfect transport for the selfish meme, not all memes are Internet based at least not yet.

Here is an example of a Meme that never dies: Downfall

Particularly funny and very topical, some might say it is not actually selfish?!?